Why Australian ‘Great Escape’ survivor Paul Royle hated the movie

Paul Royle, an Australian pilot who took part in a mass breakout from a German prisoner of war camp during the second world war that is remembered as The Great Escape, has died in his hometown of Perth, his son said on Friday. He was 101.

The escape was the subject of a 1963 Hollywood movie, The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen, a work of artistic license that Royle loathed.

Royle died on Sunday at a Perth hospital following surgery on a hip fracture that he suffered in a fall in a nursing home three weeks ago, his son Gordon Royle said.

Royle’s death leaves only one survivor of the 76 men who escaped from Stalag Luft III, near Sagan 160km southeast of Berlin: 94-year-old British man Dick Churchill, a former squadron leader, the son said.

The survivors had formed a sort of club and had kept in contract through a newsletter called the “Sagan Select Subway Society” which listed the passing of each member. The latest newsletter among Paul Royle’s belongings showed that he and Churchill, of Devon, were the last survivors.

“I called Dick Churchill yesterday and said ‘I’m bringing you the news that you’re the last one,”‘ Gordon Royle said. “He was sad but stoic.”