Bill Ash escaping activities. He ended the war as a flight lieutenant. In August 2015, the BBC reported: "When Ash died aged 96 last year his obituaries noted that he was said to have been the model for Virgil Hilts, the lean, leather-jacketed airman played by Steve McQueen in the 1963 film "The Great Escape"". The character Hilts, nicknamed "The Cooler King" because of the time he spends in the prison camp's punishment block (which the prisoners call the "cooler") for his persistent escape attempts, steals a motorbike and tries to escape to Switzerland but is caught while using it to jump
The Great Escape (film) and "Harry" to be sealed off, as "Tom" is closest to completion. While the POWs enjoy a 4th of July celebration arranged by the three Americans in the camp, the guards discover "Tom". The mood drops to despair, and Ives frantically climbs the barbed wire surrounding the camp, to be shot dead. The prisoners switch their efforts to "Harry", and Hilts agrees to reconnoiter outside the camp and allow himself to be recaptured. The information he brings back is used to create maps to guide the escapees. Blythe becomes nearly blind due to progressive myopia caused by intricate work by