John Akehurst had become one of the most experienced and talented members of Bomber Command by mid-1942.

He had more than 750 flying hours over enemy territory when his bomber crashed during a raid over Bremen.

But while he would never fly again, his war was far from over.

Yesterday, we told how the member of Churchill’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) had been captured before attempting a daring escape from a moving train.

It was the kind of insubordination the Nazi High Command was eager to stamp out.

Along with his navigator, Mike, he was taken to a nearby Dulag Luft. Officially a transit prisoner of war (POW) camp for air crew, the bases were in fact where prisoners were interrogated, often with torture.

He recalled: “We were subjected to days of questions... lots of shouting from others with very little food to bring you to heel.”

After six weeks of interrogation and being locked up in a cell, the pair were reunited with the rest of their crew and told to fill out Red Cross forms.

“They gave us the Red Cross forms with lots of questions on and said just fill up the form and the Red Cross will notify your relatives. We won’t use it ourselves (some chance). They asked us to give an account of the train trouble and then stuck us on a train for Stalag 8B.”

On arrival at the camp, which is in modern day Poland, they were tied up by their hands and left all day. This punishment he later discovered was retaliation for what Canadian troops did to German prisoners following the failed Dieppe raid.

The conditions were not much better than the Dulag Luft. They had their boots and clothing taken away from them and were handed only a couple of blankets for warmth.

But he was not there for long. Now treated as a dangerous prisoner, the German High Command wanted to make an example of allied captives attempting escape.

He was sent to the high-security Stalag Luft III, which was the scene of The Great Escape, while awaiting his pending court martial.

Despite the tight security, Mr Akehurst described the conditions there as being like a hotel compared with Stalag 8B. Prisoners were given clothing, boots and allowed to wash and shave. They were even given a knife, fork and spoon.

On his arrival he was met by RAF sergeant and camp leader James Dixie Deans before settling into camp life. By now his notoriety as a prisoner had spread around the German ranks as, when on parade on December 7 1942, his name was called out.

“I was marched off under guard to the cell known as the Cooler in The Great Escape.

“Although it was solitary confinement, sometimes I was able to come out of the cell in the evenings when the serving NCO was not there.”

Steve McQueen In the 1963 film, Steve McQueen famously bounced a baseball against the wall to keep his mind occupied. But for Mr Akehurst it was cards and popular board game battleships – which he played with others on a piece of paper.

He recalled: “One evening I was in an adjourning cell playing cards with another POW when the sergeant came back.

“I remember playing battleships, the game when you have a number of squares on a piece of paper marked one side with numbers, the other with letters and you took turns to call until you had sunk all your opposite battleships.

“This was done with a hole in the water piping with the cell next door. I also spent my time with crosswords from the camp and drawing on the wall of my cell with crayons.”

While in the camp he was involved in the escape attempt that was the focus of The Great Escape.

Three tunnels, codenamed Tom, Dick and Harry, were dug from the camp huts. They went deep into the ground and came out the other side of the German fence.

Prisoners used whatever materials they could find to dig and prop up the tunnels.

Mr Akehurst’s son, Roger, recalled his father telling him how he would find it difficult to get any sleep because all the slats in his bed had been used to wall the tunnel.

He had been ready to attempt escape with the others but was locked up in the Cooler. Of the 76 who went under the wire, 50 of them were killed by the Gestapo.

One day, while again in the Cooler, he was visited by the Swiss Red Cross, who informed him he was to be taken to Dresden’s Luftwaffe Headquarters for a Nazi court martial.

Very few were dealt with in such a way during the war, but the High Command wanted to make a point.

Recalling the hearing, he said: “I have never seen so many high-ranking officers and Swastikas – quite impressive.”

The room was packed with lawyers. Akehurst’s was squadron leader Roger Bushall, who was the man behind The Great Escape plan (played by Richard Attenborough in the film). He was later shot by the Gestapo for his part in the escape attempt.

He had studied law at Cambridge before the war, but this came as no assistance as Mr Akehurst was sentenced to nine months in a prison in Poland.

It was there he spent some of his darkest days of the war.

He was locked in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day with no looking out of the barred window allowed or lying on the mattress – which had bedbugs.

Food was one container of soup a day, which consisted of pea pods, potato peelings and hot water. There were no toilets, with prisoners having to press a lever to get the attention of the guard.

While conditions were grim, prisoners were given two cigarettes during smoking parade and had to smoke them then and there.

They were strip-searched to make sure they did not take them back into their cell. But the ever resourceful Mr Akehurst had a method to escape detection, as he recalled in his diary.

He hid tobacco by mixing it with dust and smuggling it to his cell.

For a lighter, he collected some flint from the parade ground along with a razor blade and struck the two next to a toothbrush he was given – which in those days were mostly flammable.

The tobacco was separated from the dust and rolled in paper.

His secret smoking technique helped keep his spirits up over nine long months before he was released and taken to a small army camp somewhere in Poland.

Being a working army POW camp, conditions were far better than those he had endured for the previous nine months.

Each day they were sent out to dig roads and work in factories and farms in return for eggs, chocolate, soap, bread and even booze.

Despite the perks, it was something he had reservations about. Writing in his diary, he said: “The poor old airmen in the Luft camp never saw an egg, booze or fruit at any time – this is because they did not work.”

But he had no time to worry about it, with another escape plan being organised.

The plan was to jump the German line and make their way to Sweden. They were fixed up with forged passports and papers with all the necessary stamps and were even provided with German money to get by. But with the prisoners ready to leave at a moment’s notice, the plan was foiled.

Mr Akehurst was transferred again, this time to the northern-most part of the German Reich to Heydekrog – or Stalag Luft VI.

He remained there until January 1944 when, with the Germans being chased by the Russians, they were ordered to move once more.

Hitler had ordered that the POWs be moved westward in expectation of the Russians coming from the east. Known as the Death March or simply The March, thousands died as they were forced to travel hundreds of miles in blizzards with few clothes and little in the way of supplies and rations.

Mr Akehurst and his fellow captives were first crammed on to a coal barge for three days and nights after leaving Memel in Latvia. They arrived at a port in Poland, which was being bombed by the Americans.

Describing the carnage, he said: “The German army stationed here opened up and a smoke screen was deployed. We were packed, handcuffed in two railway carriages and off towards Stalag Luft VI.”

When they arrived they were tormented by members of the Hitler Youth waiting for them. He writes of the soldiers charging them with bayonets and the dogs being set on them.

Many of the POWs were badly injured. They were later told the treatment was a reprisal for a failed attempt on Hitler’s life.

After a short time in Stalag Luft VI, and with the Russians fast approaching, they were forced on the road again – this time in unbearable conditions.

He recalled: “It was snowing and very cold and some of the POWs were soon in trouble. Little did they know this was to go on for three months up to the end of the war. Nowhere to sleep, we were lucky to get a piece of bread and some soup now and again.”

Mr Akehurst and two others decided to try yet another escape.

He recalled: “As we approached a forest still in thick snow the guards and dogs had to close up to get through.

“This was our chance. I, another POW called Mitchell and Tony Johnson made a dash into the woods. We expected to be fired on or the dogs to be set on us but we dived into a snowdrift and waited. No response, we were free.”

Russians That night they could hear the shouts from the march as they crept around the forest. But even now they were free from the guards, the weather and lack of supplies made their chances of survival slim.

He recounted: “We set off in an easterly direction hoping to find the Russians. Sleeping in the snow for a fortnight and eating snow for water, we ploughed on for about 14 days. Mitch began to get sick so seeing aircraft flying about I decided to make for the aerodrome.”

They stalked the base before deciding to approach some Russian airmen. To their horror, the Russians had swapped sides and were fighting for the Germans. “All hell let loose,” he recalled.

They were hauled before the German commander and thrown in a cell. Their captors transported them further west away from the advancing Russians before they were forced on foot again, this time northwards to the Stalag Luft I camp, which was home to mainly American airmen – something Mr Akehurst knew was not so bad.

He said: “The one advantage of being with Americans was they were being highly supplied with goodies, unlike the RAF.

“Life in the camp was good. They had stacks of Red Cross parcels and seemed to be comfortable in every way. Thank goodness I ended up there and not with The Death March of my fellow commander, who spent three months on the road before being shot at by friendly fighters. All groups on the ground look alike to fast-moving fighter pilots.”

Word had filtered through that the Germans were on the verge of defeat and they waited for the Russians to liberate them.

One day the unthinkable happened and the Germans abandoned the camp, leaving the prisoners in no man’s land between the retreating Nazis and advancing Red Army. After three years as a prisoner, he was free.

The novelty was not lost on him and he took the opportunity to “roam around”.

He said: “I took a sailing yacht as our camp was right on the edge of the Baltic Sea. After ferrying some of the POWs who decided not to wait for the Russians, I took them across to dry land. Unfortunately I capsized the yacht and had to swim.

“In a few days we heard the sounds of gunfire and the locals (Germans) hung white flags out of the upper windows. After a lot of shooting the Russians arrived at a camp. The leader on a big horse.”

The war was finally over and the Russian leader gave all the prisoners a horse.

Mr Akehurst and his new friends “toured the town” on their horses for a few days before American B17 Flying Fortress bombers came to take them home.

On the journey back to Ford airbase, the crew flew over Hamburg – one of Bomber Command’s key civilian targets – and he reflects in his diary “not a building was standing”.

After a “quick shower, food and new uniforms” he was packed off and sent home to see Joyce, who he had not seen for two years and eight months. He was set to go out to fight the Japanese but the atomic bombs brought an end to the war.

In a period of six remarkable years, he endured incredible hardships. He had gone from new recruit, to Bomber Command ace and SOE recruit. He had crash landed, been captured, attempted to jump from a moving train before being court martialled and involved in one of the most audacious prison escapes of all time.

After being transferred from prison camp to prison camp, he escaped The Death March and trekked across the brutal snowlands of northern Europe before being captured again.

Dreaming He experienced more in a few short years than any of us ever will in our lives. And then within days of being demobbed in 1945 he was returning to his desk job at the brewery in Eastbourne.

He ends his diary: “I went from junior clerk 1939 to Bomber Command… back again August 1945 to the same office in Terminus Road, Eastbourne. Had I been dreaming it all?”

Like many of his generation, he simply went back to the life he was leading before 1939 and carried on as if nothing had happened.

Many will remember Mr Akehurst from his time running pubs. He took over the Hampton in Upper North Street, Brighton, in the mid-1950s before moving to the Smugglers in Alfriston a decade later.

In his later life he took over the Seaford Royal British Legion, where he worked until he retired.

He raised a family and carried no bitterness or resentment from the war – in fact quite the opposite.

His son Roger said: “I remember one of my first holidays when I was young was to Germany. He didn’t blame them at all for the war or his treatment.

“He was very proud and a very caring man. He has an incredible story and one which I think needs to be told.”