Cyril Bown - A Story Passed Down Generations

My great-grandfather, Cyril Bown, was in WW2 in the Royal Engineers and he was captured and put in Staleg 344 Prisoner of War camp. He escaped from there, and some German farmers hid him, fed him and clothed him. A lot of Germans, especially in rural areas, disagreed with the war. Cyril was captured and taken to Colditz, Prisoner of War camp. There he and his fellow prisoners hatched a plan to escape. They built a glider without any of the guards knowing, to try and escape. Cyril was one of the people responsible for building a wall in Colditz to hide the glider which they planned to use to escape. We have heard that the character in the film The Great Escape "Taffy" is based on my great-grandfather. Taffy was Cyril Bown - how incredible is that!!

Sir Douglas Bader was a fighter pilot, shot down by Germans and lost both his legs. He was so determined that they gave him wooden legs, and so he flew his fighter plane with wooden legs and he was shot down and sent to Colditz.

Cyril was one of his "batmen", he carried him on his back up to bed every night and he used to come downstairs on his bum.

My gran Beatrice, Cyril's daughter, always told my uncle that the best thing that could have happened is that her dad never managed to escape from the Colditz as 12 escaped and 11 of those 12 were shot dead, and only 1 survived. The tunnel they dug collapsed before they all got out. They dug an underground tunnel, and they were putting all the soil down their trousers, going into the exercise yard and dropping the soil out without the guards knowing.

He was released by the Russians near the end of the war. Cyril got home, but unfortunately, his wife May, because he was reported as missing in action and he couldn't send a postcard as he was in Colditz, May his wife had remarried while he was away at war.

The photos are of him in the pantomime in Colditz and he's smiling! I love history and love this story.