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I Books |
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A Gallant Company |
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by Jonathan F. Vance |
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Reviewed By D. M. Knights |
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MSRP: $8.99 (paperback) I suspect most modelers are familiar with the film, The Great Escape (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. 1963). Besides having an all-star cast, (Sir Richard Attenborough, James Garner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and James Coburn) the film has one of the best musical scores of any American film of the last 40 years. I saw this film first in the late 60s or early 70s. It captured my imagination immediately. I knew the film was based on a true story. However, I also know that Hollywood tends to take liberties with their accounts of true stories. Recently I had a chance to finally read the story that formed the basis of the movie. A Gallant Company is as the subtitle says “The true story of The Great Escape”. The book is published by I Books, inc. with a publication year of 2000. ISBN0-7394-4242-2. The book is 315 pages long but a very quick read. Many of the early chapters in A Gallant Company starts by describing the way in which many of the prisoners came to be in Stalag Luft III, the prison camp where The Great Escape took place. Most of these early chapters concentrate on many of the so-called 50, the prisoners who were executed upon their recapture after the escape. Given that the story had been put through the Hollywood production machine, I was surprised to learn how closely the movie followed the actual story of the escape. The character played by Sir Richard Attenborough, Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett (also known as Big X), was actually a man named Squadron Leader Roger Bushell. If you watch the movie, you will see that Attenborough’s character has a scar above the eye that gives the one eye a slight droop. It turns out this is because the real person, Roger Bushell had suffered such an injury in skiing in prewar Switzerland. The scenes in the movie involving James Garner and Donald Pleasence (who ironically actually was a prisoner of the Germans in World War II) sneaking onto a German airfield and stealing an aircraft are not just a plot device in the movie. Two of the escaped prisoners did sneak onto an airfield and managed to start not one, but two aircraft, but were captured before they were able to actually get in and take off. Unfortunately, the story does not have a happy ending. Only 3 of the 79 prisoners who escaped actually made it to a neutral country. All three of those prisoners were pilots from occupied countries who were able to blend in to the populace rather than the British or American escapees who were much easier to spot among the civilians of continental Europe. Fifty of those who were recaptured were summarily executed, apparently upon the personal orders of Hitler himself. The epilogue of the book details the British efforts to bring to justice those responsible for the execution of “The Fifty”. I highly recommend this book. It is a quick, exciting, interesting read. Also, when you are done, you’ll dig out your DVD and watch The Great Escape with a renewed appreciation for the story. |
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