Til Kiwe did in real life what several actors played in The Great Escape. Kiwe was a German paratrooper officer, captured in North Africa in 1943, who made several escape attempts from an American POW camp in Colorado. Once, having dyed his uniform with brown vegetable juice, he made it as far as St Louis by train before being recaptured. After the war he became a German actor in movies and TV. He was also an anthropologist who made several expeditions to Polynesia and SouthAmerica.