"WASH IT UP - pale Rider", Ya Fukin DweeDB.

"Arthur Preacher" <science@zzz.com> wrote in message 
news:f1323830-b1b3-47c0-a31e-2364af0cad07@k5g2000pra.googlegroups.com...
On Mar 19, 6:37 am, Paul <plwims...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Bill Dean has died aged 87 on 9 March. I couldn't find much about him
in the nationals, but here's a bit from the Salford Advertiser,
written last November.

He joined the RAF in 1940 at the age of 18 as an aircraftsman but
applied successfully for an officers course as a trainee pilot.

He was sent to America and Canada for training and got his pilot�s
wings in 1941, when he was assigned to Ferry Command, taking B29s,
Hudsons and other aircraft from Chicago to Montreal, before they were
shipped overseas.

After being posted back to Yorkshire, he became part of Bomber
Command, seeing 14 missions over Hamburg, Berlin and Cologne. He was
shot down over Berlin in January 1944 when he was just 20, blown out
of his aircraft with a bullet hole in his leg.

He said: "I landed in a field in Potsdam and hid in a barn overnight.
I was bleeding badly and the following morning I tried to enlist the
help of a Russian POW, who was working in a field nearby.

"Before he could do anything I was spotted by a German officer and
taken to a flak battery, after which I was transferred to the Hermann
Goering Hospital in Berlin for treatment."

He was taken to Frankfurt for interrogation by the SS, and had his
head forcibly held under water for minutes at a time as well as being
threatened with a firing squad.

Eventually, he managed to convince them he was not a spy and was
transferred to Stalag Luft III in February 1944, barely a month before
the mass escape.

Bill was assigned to gardening duties but remembers the buzz around
the camp as the escape tunnels were being constructed.

He said: "I helped Flight Lt. Colin �The Forger� Blythe do the fake
passports. The man was almost blind but he was an absolute genius at
his job.

"He taught me to how to make a totally authentic passport.

"They were undistinguishable from the real thing, and we used
anything, any scraps of paper and inks to create them."

Bill was not one of the 200 selected to escape and can still recall
the night the plan was put into action.

He said: "It was very bad, very bad indeed. I�d had my doubts about
the whole thing, particularly as one of the tunnels didn�t quite make
it to the surrounding forest as had been planned.

"We were in our hut and we heard the shooting start when the Germans
realised what was going on.

"Eventually, 76 men got out but it was dreadful because, more or less
the next morning we knew it had not been a success.

"When we heard that 50 of the escapees had been murdered it made us
very angry, but not, strangely enough, with the officer at the camp
and their men, who carried out the executions.

"We knew, because we were servicemen ourselves, that they were ordered
to do it and that it would have been impossible for them to disobey.

"Our real anger was at the Nazis and the SS who were behind the
shootings.

"In fact, the Commandant was a decent man, I used to have
conversations with him about Macbeth, poetry and the arts.

"After the escape, he got into a whole lot of trouble. I remember him
saying to me �My war is over.�"

In January 1945 as the Russians were advancing towards the camp, all
the remaining prisoners were taken on a 200 miles plus forced march
through the snow to a camp at Luckenwalde, south of Berlin.

In sub-zero temperatures and under constant attack from aerial
strafing by the Russians, Bill watched as two comrades weakened by the
conditions, including lack of food, died.

By the time he reached the camp he was down to eight stone. The camp,
he recalls was much worse than Stalag Luft III, and was over-run with
rats and beetles.

By April of that year, security at the camp slackened and he was able
to walk out one day and head in a westerly direction.

After being given shelter by a German woman for a couple of months, he
was spotted walking along the road one day by an advancing American
armoured vehicle.

He said: "I just put up my hands and said �Don�t shoot, I�m an escaped
British airman� Luckily, I convinced them and they took me with them
back to headquarters and eventually I was sent to Brussels and on back
to England."

Bill Dean went back to serving in the RAF but, because of his wartime
experiences, was put off by flying for a long time, preferring to work
in a maintenance unit in Nottingham.

Gradually, in the 1950s, he took to the cockpit again with the City of
Chester Squadron, flying jets and rising to the rank of Acting
Squadron Leader.

In 1956 he went into business for himself, as a retailer of luxury
goods to delicatessens and cafes in the Manchester area.

He married in 1946 and has one daughter and a grandson.

Of the film The Great Escape, Bill is scathing. He said: "It was a
load of bullshit, just a commercial film to entertain the public,
which it did very well.

"But there were no Steve McQueen characters or glamour. It was a
terrible time and we did everything we could - from concert parties to
plays and poetry readings - to keep us from the reality of our
imprisonment."

Even so, Bill would like to re-establish contact with some of his
former comrades and relieve those days. He said: "My days in Stalag
Luft III have left me with many precious memories of the courageous
men who engineered the Great Escape.

That must have been terrible-"What did you do at Stalag Luft?"
"The gardening."