"Great Escape" POW dies at 92

[BigTex]

The phone trilled at 6:30 in the morning at Jim Hoel’s Evanston home on August 27, 2003, a day that proved unassailably that truth is stranger than fiction.

He fumbled for the phone and listened as a man with an English accent asked, “Hello, is this Jim Hoel?”

When Mr. Hoel said yes, Peter Cooper exploded with excitement.

“We’ve got your watch!” said Cooper, who was calling from near London.

A World War II veteran, Mr. Hoel hadn’t seen his Gallet Commander for more than 60 years, since his B-26 Marauder plane had been shot down in the Netherlands on May 17, 1943. He scrambled from the wreck, inflated his “Mae West” life vest and swam to the bank of the Maas River, where a dozen Nazi soldiers waited, guns aimed at him.

“One German, in the Queen’s English, said, ‘I’m afraid for you, sir, the war is over,’ ’’ said Mr. Hoel’s son, Gil.

Mr. Hoel became a resident of Stalag Luft III, famed for the tunneling Allied POWs whose story was the basis for the rousing 1963 film “The Great Escape.’’



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