

  • Horace Greasley captured by Germans and sent to camp in Polish Silesia
  • Fell in love with Rosa Rauchenbach, who worked as an interpreter
  • After being moved to new camp, would sneak out at night to see his lover
  • Also pictured demanding more food from SS Chief Heinrich Himmler
  • Wrote a book about his experiences, now being made into Hollywood film

Like so many captured British soldiers in the Second World War, he tried constantly to escape. But despite crossing the wire over 200 times, Horace Greasley would always creep back in to captivity.

This incredible story of the young PoW sneaking out for snatched moments with his German sweetheart is testament to the enduring power of love amid the hatred and suffering of war.

Discovery would have meant death by firing squad for Horace, but the risks run by his lover Rosa Rauchenbach were just as great. Having hidden her Jewish roots from the Nazis, she was an interpreter at the camp where he was held.

Defiance: Horace Greasley comes face-to-face with SS monster Heinrich Himmler

At the age of 90, Horace recounted his exploits in a book, Do The Birds Still Sing In Hell? Now, the wartime romance is being turned into a Hollywood movie.

When Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia in Spring 1939, 20-year-old Horace was working as a barber in his home town of Ibstock, Leicestershire.

One of his clients offered him a safe, well-paid job as a fireman, but Horace opted to join the army. After seven weeks training with the 2nd/5th Batallion Leicestershire Regiment, he was sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force.

Fearless: Horace Greasley as a 20-year-old soldier before his capture, left, and in retirement in Spain

Captured by the Wehrmacht during the retreat to Dunkirk in 1940, Horace had to endure a 10-week forced march across France, Belgium and Holland. Exhausted and malnourished, he ended up in a marble quarry labour camp in Polish Silesia.

Rosa, the 17-year-old daughter of the quarry director, was working as an interpreter in the camp. Horace recalls an instant mutual attraction, and the two snatched meetings whenever they could.

But the two were forced apart when Horace was transferred to Freiwaldau, 40 miles away. To see his lover Horace had to remove the wooden bars from his cell window, crawl under the camp's perimeter fence, and make a break for the chapel that was the location for each rendez-vous.

Once out, Horace had no chance of escape. The nearest neutral country was Sweden, 420 miles to the North. Instead, he would creep back into the camp under the noses of his captors, often with packets of food for his comrades.

These illicit trysts were not Horace's only act of defiance. An incredible photo shows the emaciated prisoner face-to-face with SS leader Heinrich Himmler. Showing the mass murderer his protruding ribs, he demanded more food for Allied PoWs.

Entitled to escape...but at risk of death

Around 135,000 British PoWs were held by Germany in WWII. Most were treated relatively well, as both nations were signatories to the Geneva Convention (1929) and the Red Cross had access to camps.

Officers were never made to work, and other ranks were usually compensated for forced labour. This relatively humane treatment resulted in a  3.5 per cent death rate among British PoWs in German camps, the lowest of any Allied nation.

Most PoWs were held in camps in Germany, some in Poland.

Under international law, POWs were entitled to try to escape. However the German 'bullet decree' allowed guards to shoot those who did.

The secret MI9 unit was set up to assist with escape attempts by British PoWs.

Stalag 383 was regarded as the best camp. Guards left its day-to-day running to British officers, and pets were allowed. Stalag IX-B, meanwhile, was one of the worst. PoWs slept 160 to a room, sharing a single tap and a hole in the ground for a toilet.

In 1945, Freiwaldau was liberated by the Allies. Although Horace travelled back to England and Rosa became a translator for the Americans, the two continued to communicate by letter.

But the correspondence suddenly stopped when Rosa died in childbirth. Horace never found out if the baby - who also perished - was his.

Swearing he would never take orders from anyone again, Horace ran a hairdresser's, a taxi company and a haulage firm back in Leicestershire. He met his wife Brenda in 1970, they married in 1975, and retired to Spain in 1988.

Aged 89, Horace was introduced to the ghostwriter Ken Scott, and his story appeared in print in 2008, time for his 90th birthday. His tale told at last, he died in February 2010.

Now Mission Impossible III producer Stratton Leopold has been asked by US filmmakers Silverline Productions to bring the book to the big screen.

Scott - who will fly to America for a read-through of the script - told the Mirror: 'I can say it will be a mix of German and British actors and they are A-listers.

'As for the director, they are currently choosing between two. Finally people will see Horace's amazing story on the big screen'.