Page 25 - link magazine

Graham Carter reveals how
the manner of the death of
Sdn Ldr Harold Starr in the
Battle of Britain helped to
galvanise morale – and finds
a surprising link between his
death and one of the most
dramatic incidents of the
Second World War

Steve McQueen as Hilts, the ‘Cooler King’ in The Great Escape – a character based on Harold Starr’s brother-in-law, Ken Rees,

bomber was shot down over [German]. He took the light bulb “Rees’s antagonistic attitude German aircraft as he floated
Norway in 1942 and he survived out of its socket in this half-way to his captors stemmed from his earthward, having bailed out of his
after crash-landing it in a lake and house and squeezed himself outrage on learning that his pilot burning Hurricane. ‘We would do
scrambling ashore. against the wall. Unable to stand brother-in-law had been machine- anything to disrupt the Germans,’
Captured, he found himself in the tension any longer he called gunned to death by a circling he said.”
Stalag Luft III, a prisoner-of-war out: ‘Who’s that?’ Maw answered
camp built especially for captured reassuringly and said he was the
airmen that would be immortalised last man. Back they both scuttled
as the scene of The Great Escape, along the tunnel, Shag expecting
particularly since the story of its a bullet from behind at any
three tunnels was dramatised in the moment.”
film, made in 1963. A scene familiar to cinemagoers
Rees played a key role in the was then played out when Rees and
escape, being chosen as one of the his colleague ‘Red’ were brought
tunnel diggers, apparently because, before the camp commander and
being Welsh, he was assumed to ended up in solitary confinement,
have mining skills! known as ‘the cooler’.
The third tunnel, nicknamed “His face became a shade richer
Harry, was divided into three in colour. ‘Cooler,’ he said. (It was
lengths, and Rees was positioned funny how even the Kommandant
at the first of two wider sections used that word.) Not long after,
(nicknamed Leicester Square) ‘Red’ and ‘Shag’ were duly
where trolleys were pulled along removed to the cooler.”
the length, loaded with escapers When Rees died in 2014, aged
(nicknamed ‘kriegies’). 93, the last survivor of the escape,
The book of the story, called his obituary in the Daily Telegraph
Escape to Danger, written by Paul considered whether, as some have
Brickhill and Conrad Norton, suggested, he was the inspiration
takes up the story of how Rees for Hilts, the ‘Cooler King’ in the
was involved when the tunnel was movie, famously played by Steve
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