The Dodger

the long version

"The ... story of Johnny Dodge, a wartime hero and a pivotal figure in the escapade immortalised in the ... Hollywood film The Great Escape. ... American-born Dodge was a cousin by marriage of Winston Churchill. When the Second World War broke out, he volunteered for the Army but was quickly captured after the debacle of Dunkirk. He became a prisoner of war and an inveterate escapologist and troublemaker - eventually becoming one of the ringleaders of the 'Great Escape.' Surviving the murderous Gestapo, he was thrown into a VIP compound of the Saschenhausen concentration camp on the orders of Heinrich Himmler - but escaped once more. After recapture, Johnny was spirited away to Berlin with Hitler's interpreter, who sent him on a clandestine mission to his cousin in Downing Street. His odyssey through the dying embers of the Third Reich to Switzerland and freedom in the company of a louche Nazi apparatchik is the last curious escapade in the story of Johnny's adventurous life. ..."--Book jacket.