25 March, 2013 1:29PM AEST

Local man's role in The Great Escape prison break

The 70th anniversary of 'The Great Escape' was marked over the weekend. One man involved in the famous jail break was Gold Coast man Geoffrey Cornish.

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"Not being claustrophobic, I was selected to become shift boss for the tunnelling which led to the operation which became known in later times as 'The Great Escape'. Our escape organisation was remarkable. We had tailors, map makers, forgers, carpenters, electricians, even a sleight-of-hand expert."

The above is an excerpt from the diaries of Geoffrey Cornish AO - one of the 22 original members of The Great Escape team.

'The Great Escape' Geoffrey refers to is the famous prison break that occurred during World War 2 when a group of prisoners of war used tunnels to flee from the Stammlager Luft POW camp in Barth, Germany.

After making a life for himself on the Gold Coast, Geoffrey unfortunately passed away five years ago.

But war historian and ex-military man Ross Eastgate knew Geoffrey personally and told his story to ABC Gold Coast's Matt Webber.

Ross says he met Geoffrey when he was president of the Surfers Paradise RSL and Geoffrey was a member.

"He was just an unassuming member... and then suddenly somebody said one day that Geoffrey had taken part in The Great Escape and I was stunned and started to delve into it," he says.

Ross discovered that when Geoffrey was 18, he left Australia and enlisted in the RAF (Royal Air Force) in the hope to eventually study medicine.

"He left Australia on the 26th of August 1939 and then war was declared on the 3rd of September so what had started off as an adventure to learn to fly suddenly became a war."

But on the night of April 10, 1941 his aeroplane disintegrated during night-fighter activity.

He was saved by his parachute but was then rounded up and interrogated and sent to a Prisoner of War (POW) Camp at Barth in Germany.

"In the camp he decided he would put his time as a POW to good use and persuaded the camp doctor to teach him a little bit about medicine... so that at the end of the war when he was released he could study medicine - and he was working as a medic," Ross says.

"But he was also involved in the 'escape committee'."

This team was incredibly organised, all being pilots and commission officers.

"They had tailors and forgers and all sorts of people preparing documents and uniforms and civilian clothing... they would run concerts to cover the sound of the digging, they collected powdered milk tins to make ventilation shafts so that they could get air down into the tunnels - linking them together like a tube.

"Their guards were bored and badly treated as well so they were using them to buy currency, to buy materials to make false identity documents, to get material to make clothing, boots - the whole deal.

"This incredibly complex organisation operated at the same time while they dug three tunnels."

When the team decided to make their escape in 1943 there were approximately 100 men selected who were broken down into smaller groups to break out.

Geoffrey was number eight in his batch of about 15 men, but in the end he decided not to go!

"He thought about it and decided that given that he wanted to study medicine he would probably be best staying in the camp and looking after other people... his medical skills could be put to better use in the camp, rather than trying to escape."

And this is what he did, until he and the rest of the remaining men in the camp were liberated to England.

Geoffrey then returned to Australia.

"So it was an amazing journey for a young man - through a war, through a prisoner of war camp... through one of the most celebrated adventures of the war," Ross says.

"And then he ended up here on the coast where he spent the rest of his life as a doctor serving our local community and the veteran community. A generous, unassuming, wonderful man."

Listen to the audio to hear Ross Eastgate's full interview with ABC Gold Coast's Matt Webber. Ross talks more about the tactics used to escape and the fate of the men who made it out.