S21 · E10

The Real Great Escape

They really should remake The Great Escape - one of the all-time classic war films - and this time get it right. Perhaps it should begin on the cadet grounds of a Sydney school and focus on two young students, feature Manly Beach and an encounter with a German surfer suspected of being a Nazi sympathiser - and move through its dramatic crescendo as the two Aussies emerge from a tunnel they'd helped build - against-all-odds - under and out of a super-secure POW camp. Then it should lose the Hollywood ending. The real story of the Great Escape is rich with coincidence, determination, grit and endurance. But is it triumphant? Judge for yourself as Foreign Correspondent tells the untold story of The Real Great Escape. We even find that German surfer - now 93 - and correct generations of misunderstanding.