Bill Ash

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American-born British writer and Marxist who served as a fighter pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II. Ash has been called "WW2's Greatest Escaper." He was shot down on 24 March 1942, made a prisoner of war and was noted for escaping detention almost a dozen times. On 17 May 1946, he was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his escaping activities. He ended the war as a flight lieutenant. Demobilised back in England at war's end, he discovered that the act of "taking the King's shilling" in 1939 had robbed him of his US citizenship and that he was now a stateless person. Ash acquired British citizenship and went up to Balliol College, Oxford, on a veteran's scholarship, to read PPE. He then joined the BBC, working alongside a young Tony Benn, who became a lifelong friend. Beginning in the 1960s, Ash wrote a series of novels, including Choice of Arms and Ride a Paper Tiger. Politics, however, remained his chief interest. Finding him too quirky and individualistic, the Communist Party rejected his application for membership, and he co-founded the Communist Party of Britain. He also brought his academic background to bear on the subject, publishing a study entitled Marxist Morality. In later life Ash served for several years as chairman of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain and helped to encourage young writers through his work as a script reader for BBC Radio and later as literary manager at the Soho Theatre. His book The Way to Write Radio Drama remained the best on the subject for more than 20 years. Ash married twice and had a son and a daughter from his first marriage. He died on 26 April 2014, aged 96. In August 2015, the BBC reported: "When Ash died aged 96 last year his obituaries noted that he was said to have been the model for Virgil Hilts, the lean, leather-jacketed airman played by Steve McQueen in the 1963 film The Great Escape. Link to Wikipedia biography