- Title: The Welsh Great Escape
- Date: 30th December 2003
- Summary: In the dead of night in March 1945, 70 German prisoners of war tunnelled from a camp in Bridgend and escaped over the sand dunes. The Welsh Great Escape follows the fate of the POWs as a huge manhunt was set underway and soldiers, the home guard, dogs, local children and girl guides, tracked them down. Two of the German POWs return to the site for the first time in more than 60 years and visit the very hut from which they escaped. One describes how they stole the doctor's car, were given a 'jump start' by three British soldiers and then picked up a Welsh hitchhiker, who showed them the way to Gloucester. The film includes interviews with a former camp guard, the daughter of camp commandant Lt Col Darling, and the daughter of Inspector May, responsible for Police Plan X. She recalls how, as the prisoners were rounded up one by one, her father tracked the progress of the operation by sticking swastikas into a map.
- Description:In March 1945 seventy German prisoners,many of them members of the SS,escaped from a P.O.W. camp in Bridgend Wales. Using extensive dramatisations this documentary tells the often humorous tale of their successful breakout and their hugely unsuccessful attempts to melt away into the Welsh Countryside.
- Broadcaster:Channel 4
- Collection: Channel 4
- Genre:Documentary and Factual
- Producer:Hartswood Films Ltd.
- Programme Episode:Episode 1
- Transmission Date:30/12/2003
- Rights:UK and Eire
- Decade: 2000s