Alex Cassie

Alex Cassie was born on December 22, 1916 in Cape Province, South Africa as Alexander Cassie. He was married to Jean Stone.

Only child of George Cassie and Jessie Cassie who immigrated to Scotland. After high school, he studied psychology at the University of Aberdeen in Aberdeen, Scotland and graduated in 1938.

He joined the Royal Air Force in 1940. In 2004, 17 of the prisoners who had been involved in the "Great Escape" reunited at the Imperial War Museum in London, England to commemorate sixty years after the event. Archaeologists had excavated one of the tunnels at Stalag Luft II and recovered artifacts such as the rubber stamp carved from a heel of an airman's boot and used to forge documents for escapees.

He was a pilot of the Royal Air Force bomber flying missions over Germany and France when his plane was shot down after it attacked a submarine in the Bay of Biscay in September 1942. He and his crew were picked up by a French fishing boat and turned over to the German authorities. He was immediately taken to the Stalag Luft III and remained there until January 1945 when the Germans emptied the P.O.W. Camps and forced the prisoners to march west. They were liberated by the British in April 1945.

He helped forge official documents for the 76 Allied Prisoners of War who escaped through a 30 foot shaft and crawled through the 340 foot tunnel below the escape proof Stalag Luft III Camp in Eastern Germany on March 24, 1944 and March 25, 1944. The story inspired a book and movie both entitled "The Great Escape." Of the 76 escapees, 73 were re-captured and 50 were executed on Hitler's orders.