"A war hero who escaped from Nazi prison camps four times has died at the grand old age of 101. David Thomas Davies repeatedly fled from capture but refused to speak about his wartime experiences for many years - even to friends and family including wife Betty and their four children, Michael, Graham, Andrew and Ann. But he later revealed how he was desperate not to remain in German hands and would repeatedly try and escape. Mr Thomas was first captured at the Battle of Crete while serving in the Royal Artillery on the Greek island in 1941. He was among hundreds of soldiers that were put on wagon trains and taken to the infamous Stalag 18A Nazi prison camp near Wolfsberg in Southern Austria. He managed to escape from the camp, and made his way to Hungary, but was later recaptured by the Nazis. While in Hungary, he escaped again and was recaptured twice more. He was then taken to the barbaric concentration camp of Zemun, near Belgrade, now the capital of Serbia but once of Yugoslavia. In later writing, he described Zemun as 'quite simply hell on earth.' He spent a total of three years as a prisoner of war, finally escaping one last time, after which he rejoined the fighting in Yugoslavia. He said: 'You want to forget it, because if you can't forget it, it will impair the rest of your life. It would make things very difficult for you. But you can't ever forget everything. 'I thought to myself, "I need freedom - I don't want to be a prisoner", and that's what drove me to keep on going.' www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8205255/War-hero-defied-Nazis-escaping-prison-camps-FOUR-times-WWII-dies-aged-101.html
