A BOURNE End pilot who was part of the legendary 'Great Escape' from a German prisoner of war camp is the subject a new book.

The story of RAF man Bernard Green, who escaped Stalag Luft III before being recaptured, has been been told by his grandson, who spent a year studying letters and trawling through documents at the Imperial War Museum.

Flight Lieutenant 'Pop' Green, who lived for much of his life on Wharf Lane and worked at the former Soho Paper Mills in Wooburn Green, died aged 84 in 1971.

His escape from the POW camp alongside 78 others was immortalised in the 1963 film The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough, and he attended its world première in Leicester Square in 1963.

Author and retired teacher Laurence Green was 21 when his grandfather died and said: “The escape was a thing he just wouldn't talk about, he was a very quiet sort of man and I never was able to bring it up with him.”

But by sifting through family and public archives, as well as his grandfather's original war letters, Laurence, 61, has been able to piece together his extraordinary story of survival.

In July 1940, Flt Lt Green's Hampden bomber plane was blasted from the sky. He was captured and detained at Stalag Luft III, in Sagan, and at 59 was the oldest the prisoners to escape in March 1944.

Three men made ‘home runs’ with 76 recaptured, of which 50 were shot under the direct orders of Adolf Hitler. Flt Lt Green was one of the fortunate ones not to be shot.

The book, called Great War to Great Escape, also tells how Flt Lt Green endured mud, destruction and death in the trenches of the Western Front in WWI, suffering serious injury and earning the Military Cross.