the great escape

December 30 movie: The Great Escape. Ending the year on a high note, with one of my favorite war movies. I've written about it on previous viewings, so this time I'll just add that over the summer Georg and I saw a PBS special about the real events that inspired the movie. The special was fantastic. They had a team of archeologists excavate the third tunnel which the Nazis had never discovered. The team found all kinds of artifacts stashed inside the tunnel, like passport stamps made out of shoe soles. Then the show brought several survivors who had participated in the escape back to visit the site of the tunnel. They closed by showing a stone monument the survivors had made at the time, with the names of the 50 soldiers who had been killed. It was an amazing show. I highly recommend it especially if you've seen the movie.