Andrew L. Stone (1902–1999)

Sergeant-Major Charles Coward (Dirk Bogarde) is a senior British NCO incarcerated in the prisoner of war camp Stalag VIII-B. He encourages his fellow inmates to escape, and tries to humiliate the German army guards at every opportunity.

When he was being transferred to Stalig VIII-B, the injured Coward escaped from a forced POW march, finding refuge in a French farmhouse and barn that is soon requisitioned by a German army unit needing to set up a field hospital. Inadvertently thought to be a wounded German soldier, Coward is taken to a hospital, where his identity is soon discovered, but not before he is awarded the Iron Cross as he lies in his hospital bed.

Coward is sent on to POW camp Stalig VIII-B, but on the way to the camp he engineers the total destruction of a passing enemy ammunition train using tossed bundles of straw, set on fire with his cigarette lighter. At the camp he is involved in the elaborate tunnel-digging schemes and plans an escape with fellow prisoner Bill Pope (Alfred Lynch). Unfortunately an older, closed tunnel is discovered by camp officials, but not their primary tunnel. Coward then attempts to deceive his camp commander and Luftwaffe officials that he has knowledge of a secret allied bomb sight. He receives special favours, which he uses to bribe guards to get vital materials needed for the coming escape.

When his ruse is discovered Coward is transferred to a work camp in Poland where he is set up by the Germans as a traitor, with the camp's commanding officer trying to use his fellow British prisoners to kill Coward. When the scheme fails, he tricks the Unteroffizier (Reginald Beckwith), into thinking he was responsible for a devastating fire that Coward had actually engineered. Coward extracts an extraordinary privilege in being able to go to and from the neighbouring town without an escort. When he makes contact with an attractive Polish resistance agent (Maria Perschy), he attempts to leave Germany by rail with his new friend providing assistance, but he is captured at a railway station.

After the failure of that escape, Coward and his other escape partner, Pope, are assigned to the IG Farben work camp. They manage to escape again by masquerading as workmen clearing rubble in a rural area. After learning that the American front line is only a mile away, they steal an unattended fire engine in order to get past the enemy soldiers blocking their escape. Their plan works. A German troop convoy on the road moves aside to allow them to speed past to get to a non-existent fire, and they drive off to freedom. (fonte: imdb)… (meer)