The star of Carry On films who helped WWII prisoners escape

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BBC story here.

The Great Escape and The Wooden Horse are two classic British World War II escape films, but what is perhaps less well known is that one of the team involved in both of the escapes that inspired them would go on to become a star of the Carry On movies.

...Butterworth, who appeared in 16 Carry On films, helped hide the sand for the escape tunnels featured in the Great Escape and was on the organising committee for the tunnels featured in The Wooden Horse, but it has taken decades for the full story to emerge...

In Carry on Camping, Peter Butterworth played the avaricious campsite owner, Josh Fiddler. In Carry On Up The Khyber, he was the libidinous preacher, Brother Belcher, and in Carry on Don't Lose Your Head, he was Citizen Bidet.

However, in Stalag Luft 3, he was an officer and code writer in MI9, the military intelligence agency responsible for organising escapes from prison camps. It was a mystery to even his own son until long after his death in 1979...

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Most of those involved were captured and sent to a special prison that held high risk POWs. Read a book on this years ago, very interesting as many were SOE.
 
Most of those involved were captured and sent to a special prison that held high risk POWs. Read a book on this years ago, very interesting as many were SOE.

Colditz Castle was the site. At least two excellent books have been published on the stories around Colditz, including quite a good portrait of the Wehrmacht officer who was the German counter intelligence operative. Dave_n
 
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