Enemy prisoners at large after Shropshire wartime breakout
As the European war moved into its final stages, a clutch of airmen being held prisoners-of-war plotted a daring escape.
But these were not RAF men of the type who became famous in big screen versions of their exploits. They were members of the Luftwaffe, the German air force, being held in a prison camp near Market Drayton.
Their escape sparked a big search of the area during the Easter weekend of 1945.
The recapture of the four men, none of whom could speak English, was reported by the Newport and Market Drayton Advertiser of April 6, which was just over a month before the war in Europe ended.
The authorities tried not to make a big deal of escapes from British prisoner-of-war camps, but they were by no means unknown, and only a few weeks before the Shropshire escape there was a mass breakout of Germans from a camp near Bridgend in Wales using the classic means of a tunnel.
