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Capt. Charles Vyvyan Howard DSC

Discussion in 'WWII Obituaries' started by GRW, Sep 21, 2022.

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  1. GRW

    GRW Pillboxologist WW2|ORG Editor

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    "A hero pilot who took part in the famous Great Escape plot at a German prisoner of war camp during the Second World War has died aged 102.
    Captain Charles Vyvyan Howard was held at the infamous Stalag Luft III camp in what is now Poland after being shot down and captured in 1941.
    In March 1944, prisoners led by RAF Squadron Leader Roger Bushell escaped through a tunnel they had ingeniously dug in secret.
    The 1963 film the Great Escape, which stars Steve McQueen, tells how all but three of the men were re-captured soon after fleeing – and 50 of them were subsequently executed.
    The men involved dug not one but three tunnels - which were named Tom, Dick and Harry – so that, if one or two were discovered, they would have a back-up.
    To distract the guards from the covert digging of the tunnels, Captain Howard used his fluent German to engage them in conversation.
    Captain Howard, who lived in Banbury, also helped in the successful 1943 plot immortalised in the 1950 film The Wooden Horse.
    He was among the inmates who continuously jumped over a vaulting horse that covered the trap door of another escape tunnel as it was being built.
    Three men eventually successfully escaped and made it back to Britain.
    Speaking to the BBC on his 100th birthday in 2019, Captain Howard said: 'It was bloody awful but you were in it and that was it - you couldn't just walk out of the door.'
    His son, also called Vyvyan, told the BBC that his father had a 'quiet wisdom' and he only told his family about his war experiences 'later in life'.
    In January 1945, Captain Howard and other inmates were marched westwards in the depths of winter in what was known as the Long March.
    It was one of dozens of so-called 'death marches' that the Nazis forced both PoWs and concentration and extermination camp survivors to undergo as Russian forces approached from the east in the final months of the war.
    In May 1945, the Long March inmates, including Captain Howard, were liberated by British forces at Lubeck.
    Captain Howard later said that he owed his life to advice given by a Polish soldier that he should never take his boots off.
    If he had done so, his feet would likely have swollen and he would not have been able to get his boots back on.
    Captain Howard continued his military career after the war and was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for gallantry for his actions during the Suez Crisis in 1956. "
    www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11234279/Great-Escape-hero-distracted-guards-tunnels-dug-WWII-dies-aged-102.html
     

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