Great Escape Hero’s World War II Pocket Book Discovered In House Clearance
Great Escape Hero’s World War II Pocket Book Discovered In House Clearance. A 1939 pocket book and cap belonging to a World War II Great Escape hero is heading to auction. The ‘amazing discovery’ was found during a house clearance in the Midlands, England. The book belonged to Australian-born RAF Flight Lieutenant Paul Gordon Royle. Royle will be forever remembered as one of 76 Allied airmen who escaped a Nazi prisoner of war camp 80 years ago in one of the most famous jail breaks in history. The German Luftwaffe designed the Stalag Luft III camp to be escape-proof but airmen, immortalised in the 1963 film The Great Escape, proved them wrong. On March 24, 1944, Paul was number 55 in a line of prisoners waiting to crawl out through a tunnel named ‘Harry’. Armed with civilian-style clothes, rations and a compass, they made their way out of the tunnel onto snow-covered ground at 2.30am on March 25, 1944. They spent 24 hours on the run before being recaptured by German Auxiliary Police. Royle was interrogated and put into solitary confinement but his life was spared. He was liberated on May 2, 1945 and discharged from the RAF. He returned to Australia and lived to the grand old age of 101 after dying in 2015 in Perth, the last but one veteran of The Great Escape. The Great Escape pocketbook of Flt Lt Paul Gordon Royle will be offered in Hansons Auctioneers’ August 7, 2024 Medals and Militaria Auction.
