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) is guided by the Resistance to Spain. Hilts is returned to the camp and taken back to the cooler, just as Von Luger is relieved of command of the camp by SS Lieutenant Steinach, with the indication that he will be executed for having failed to prevent the breakout. The story was adapted by James Clavell, W. R. Burnett, and Walter Newman from Paul Brickhill's book "The Great Escape". Brickhill had been a prisoner at Stalag Luft III during World War II. In the book, Brickhill noted he had been a very minor member of the X Organization, one of