TV Review: The Great Escape: The Reckoning

Published on Monday 2 November 2009 18:02

The Great Escape: The Reckoning, Channel 4

WE KNOW the story so well we hardly need to watch it anymore; in fact, despite the jokes that The Great Escape is shown every Christmas, these days it never is. But most British adults have seen the classic film at least once, with its most memorable scenes burned into the collective consciousness: Steve McQueen's motorbike jumping the fence; blind Donald Pleasance not seeing the soldiers who kill him; Gordon Jackson being caught when he unthinkingly replies in English.

Surprisingly, the last bit really did happen, though much of the rest was cheerfully fictionalised for the American-friendly movie. But not, however, the sad ending, when 50 of the 53 who'd got out were executed.

It's even more astonishing that a sequel was never made, because as The Great Escape: The Reckoning related, what happened after the war was just as fascinating. Perhaps it was thought too depressing, or too vengeful for a time when people wanted simply to celebrate the heroics of the war and downplay the difficult questions. But in his own way, Frank McKenna was a hero too.

He was a veteran Blackpool policeman who had joined the RAF late in the war when they raised the age limit. And he was haunted by the end of The Great Escape – though in reality the 50 were executed in ones and twos, all over Germany, on direct orders from a furious Hitler. There had been outrage in Britain at this breaking of the Geneva Convention and Anthony Eden had vowed: "These foul criminals shall be tracked down to the last man… (and] brought to exemplary justice." That was the job of McKenna and his small team, who spent three years scouring post-war Germany.

This well-made documentary was full of interesting detail – the escapees, mostly British public school types, "didn't make good social chameleons" and couldn't blend in. It was, probably, doomed all along, with thousands searching for them and a population who hated the "terror-fliers" for bombing their cities. But, as comes across even in the slightly corny movie, there was something rather marvellous about the escape attempt nonetheless.

Reconstructions can be the bane of this type of programme, but the ones here were fine, showing how McKenna devoted himself to the investigation. By chance, one of the dead escapees was an old drinking pal, but his team seemed to have searched as hard for the killers of every single one.

In the end, they tracked down most of them. Thirteen were executed themselves, 17 were imprisoned, three acquitted and 11 committed suicide. It must have been a horrible process: they nearly all argued that they were "only obeying orders" and that they or their families would have been killed if they hadn't. The daughter of one Gestapo man read his loving letters; the descendant of an Australian escapee read one from his killer's desperate sister, pleading for clemency. Another Gestapo executioner laid low until the 60s, by which time feelings had changed and he served less than two years.

One "Great Escape" survivor summed up the sad confusion of it all: "Looking back now, when we and the Germans are great mates, it just seems plain stupid."

But at the time, McKenna's dogged investigation had to hold them to account. Years afterwards, he said simply that it seemed to him that "to be murdered in cold blood for doing one's honourable duty must always be unacceptable to any decent human being".