- Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (November 11 1922 - April 11 2007) (pronounced) was an American novelist known for works blending satire, black comedy, and science fiction, such as "Slaughterhouse-Five" (1969), "Cat's Cradle" (1963), and "Breakfast of Champions" (1973). - Paul Brickhill
Paul Chester Jerome Brickhill (December 20 1916 - April 23 1991) was an Australian writer, whose World War II books were turned into popular movies. Educated at North Sydney Boys' High School, before World War II, Brickhill worked as a journalist. During the war, he was a fighter pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force. - Donald Pleasence
Donald Pleasence, OBE (October 5, 1919 - February 2, 1995) was an English stage and film actor. - Jack Edwards
Jack Edwards, OBE (Chinese: 艾華士, 24 May 1918 - 13 August 2006), was a former British World War II army sergeant and a POW survivor, most well known for his dedicated efforts of tracking down Japanese war criminals and the relentless determination displayed in defending the rights of Hong Kong war veterans. - Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (June 21, 1905 - April 15, 1980), normally known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre (pronounced:), was a French existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and critic. He was a leading figure in 20th century French philosophy. - Douglas Bader
Group Captain Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader, CBE, DSO and Bar, DFC and Bar, FRAeS, DL, RAF (21 February 1910-5 September 1982); surname pronounced) was a successful fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. Bader is upheld as an inspirational leader and hero of the era, not least because he fought despite having lost both legs in a pre-war flying accident. - Laurens van der Post
Sir Laurens Jan van der Post (aka Laurens van der Post) December 13, 1906 - December 16, 1996. Famous 20th century Afrikaner author of many books, farmer, war hero, political adviser to British heads of government, godparent of Prince William, educator, journalist, humanitarian, philosopher, explorer, and conservationist. - Konrad Lorenz
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (November 7, 1903 in Vienna - February 27, 1989 in Vienna) was an Austrian zoologist, animal psychologist, and ornithologist. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, developing an approach that began with an earlier generation, including his teacher Oskar Heinroth. Lorenz studied instinctive behavior in animals, especially in greylag geese and jackdaws. - Hans-Dietrich Genscher
Hans-Dietrich Genscher (born March 21, 1927) is a German politician and member of the Free Democratic Party (FDP). He was Foreign Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1974-1992, making him Germany's longest serving Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor - Louis Zamperini
Louis S. Zamperini (born January 26, 1917 in Olean, New York) is a World War II prisoner of war survivor, inspirational speaker, and former American competitive runner. - James Clavell
James Clavell, born Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell was a novelist, screenwriter, director and World War II hero and POW. Clavell is best known for his epic Asian Saga series of novels and their televised adaptations, along with such films as "The Great Escape" and "To Sir, with Love". - Roger Bushell
Squadron Leader Roger Joyce Bushell RAF (August 30, 1910 - March 29, 1944) was a South African born Auxiliary Air Force pilot in Britain who organized and led the famous escape from the Nazi prisoner of war camp, Stalag Luft III. The escape was later used as the basis for the film The Great Escape. The character played by Richard Attenborough, Roger Bartlett, is modeled after Roger Bushell. B.A. James who participated in the Great Escape, … - Pappy Boyington
Colonel Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, USMC, (December 4, 1912 - January 11, 1988) was an American fighter ace. Boyington flew initially with the American Volunteer Group ("The Flying Tigers") in the Republic of China Air Force during the Second Sino-Japanese War. He later commanded the famous U.S. Marine Corps squadron, VMF-214 ("The Black Sheep Squadron") during World War II. Boyington became a prisoner of war later in the war. - Evan Mecham
Evan Mecham (born May 12, 1924) was the 19<sup>th</sup> Governor of Arizona. A decorated veteran of World War II, Mecham earned his living as an automotive dealership owner and occasional newspaper publisher. Periodic runs for political office earned him a reputation as a perennial candidate along with the nickname of "The Harold Stassen of Arizona" before he became governor. - Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI (Latin: "Benedictus PP. XVI"; Italian: "Benedetto XVI"), born Joseph Alois Ratzinger on April 16, 1927 in Marktl am Inn, Bavaria, Germany, is the 265th and reigning Pope, the head of the Catholic Church, and as such, Sovereign of the Vatican City State. He was elected on April 19, 2005 in a papal conclave, celebrated his Papal Inauguration Mass on April 24, 2005, and took possession of his cathedral, the Basilica of St. - Jacob E. Smart
General Jacob Edward Smart (May 31, 1909-November 12, 2006) was a U.S. Army Air Force leader in World War II and Cold War era Air Force general. Smart was born in Ridgeland, South Carolina, the son of a railroad conductor, and was educated in the public schools of South Carolina and Georgia, and at Marion Military Institute in Marion, Alabama. He graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1931 and entered flight training with the Army Air Corps. - Per Bergsland
Sgt Per Bergsland (born on January 17 1919, died June 9 1992) was a Norwegian POW in the German POW camp Stalag Luft III. A member of the RAF 332nd Squadron stationed at North Weald airfield, Bergsland's Spitfire "VB AB269 AH:D" was shot down by a German FW-190 during the Dieppe Raid on August 19 1942. After arriving at the POW camp, he gave his name as 'Rocky Rockland' to the Germans, … - Ernest Gordon
Ernest Gordon (1917 - 16 January 2002) was the former dean of the chapel at Princeton University. A native of Scotland, Gordon spent three years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during the Second World War. He chronicled his experiences on the Death Railway in his book "Through the Valley of the Kwai". The book served as an inspiration to the film To End All Wars which opened in 2002. - Jesse Monroe Knowles
Jesse Monroe Knowles was a Lake Charles, businessman, civic leader, former member of both houses of the Louisiana State Legislature from Calcasieu Parish, and a survivor of the Bataan Death March in World War II. He was born in Merryville in Beauregard Parish but had resided in Lake Charles since 1935. Knowles graduated from Lake Charles High School (renamed Lake Charles Boston High School after desegregation). - Charles Upham
Captain Charles Hazlitt Upham VC and Bar (September 21 1908 – November 22 1994) was a New Zealand soldier who earned the Victoria Cross twice during the Second World War: in Crete in May 1941, and at Ruweisat Ridge, Egypt, in July 1942. He is only the third person to receive the VC twice, the only person to receive two VCs during the Second World War and the only combat soldier to receive the award twice (the other dual recipients, … - Marian P. Opala
Marian P. Opala is a Justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. He was appointed to the Court's District 3 seat by Governor David L. Boren in 1978, and retained by the voters in 1980, 1982, 1988, 1994, 2000 and 2006. He served as the Court's Chief Justice from 1991 to 1992. In addition to his judicial career, Opala is an adjunct professor of law at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Tulsa, specializing in British and American legal history and constitutional law. - David Westheimer
David Westheimer (born April 11, 1917 in Houston, Texas; died November 8, 2005) was an American novelist best known for writing the 1964 novel "Von Ryan's Express" which was adapted as a 1965 movie starring Frank Sinatra. Westheimer, a Rice University graduate, worked as an assistant editor for the "Houston Post" from 1939 to 1946 except for those years spent with the Air Force during World War II. - Kazuo Sakamaki
Kazuo Sakamaki was a Japanese naval officer. He was one of ten sailors (5 officers and 5 petty officers) who volunteered to attack Pearl Harbor in a Ko-hyoteki class midget submarine. Of the ten, the other nine were killed (including the other crewman in his sub, Kiyoshi Inagaki) and Sakamaki was captured by the Americans, becoming the first prisoner held by the Americans in World War II. He found work with the Toyota Motor Corp. - John Rarick
John Richard Rarick (born January 29, 1924) is a lawyer in St. Francisville, the seat of West Feliciana Parish, who was a Democratic congressman from southern Louisiana between 1967 and 1975. A staunch conservative, he frequently quarreled with his party's increasingly liberal philosophy and leadership. In 1980, he sought the presidency as the nominee of the former American Independent Party, which had been founded in 1968 by George C. Wallace, Jr., of Alabama. - C. R. Boxer
Charles Ralph Boxer (born 8 March 1904 at Sandown on the Isle of Wight - died 27 April 2000 at St. Albans, Hertfordshire) was a distinguished historian of Dutch and Portuguese maritime and colonial history. - Eric Lomax
Eric Lomax (born 1919) was a British army man who was sent to a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in 1942. He is most famous for writing a book, "The Railway Man" (ISBN 0-09-958231-7), on his experience before, during, and after the war, which won the 1996 NCR Book Award. John McCarthy, a journalist who was held hostage for five years described Lomax's book as "an extraordinary story of torture and reconciliation". - Lorne Welch
Patrick Palles Lorne Elphinstone Welch, (12 August 1916 - 15 May, 1998), known as Lorne Welch, was an engineer, pilot and Colditz prisoner of war. He was educated at Stowe School,and became an engineer and then an engine test flight observer at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough. He also learned to fly gliders at the London Gliding Club. He took up power flying becoming an instructor in 1939. - Wally Floody
Flight Lieutenant Wally Floody, (born Clarke Wallace Chant Floody) (April 28, 1918 - September 25 1989) in Chatham, Ontario. By 1932 Wally grew to be well over 6 ft tall and was active in teams sports, especially basketball and football at Northern Vocational School. In 1936 Wally headed north to work at the Preston East Dome Mines in Timmins, Ontario as a mucker shovelling the rock and mud into carts to be hauled up to the surface. - Charles Durning
Charles Durning (born February 28, 1923) is a Golden Globe Award-winning American actor of stage and screen. - Hans Georg Dehmelt
Hans Georg Dehmelt is a German-born American physicist, who co-developed the ion trap. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989 for this work on ion traps, together with Wolfgang Paul. At the age of ten he was enrolled in the "Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster", a Latin school in Berlin, and was admitted on a scholarship. After graduating in 1940, he volunteered for service in the German army. - Jack Churchill
Lieutenant Colonel Jack Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, DSO and Bar, MC and Bar (September 16, 1906-March 8, 1996), nicknamed "Fighting Jack Churchill", fought throughout World War II armed with a bow, arrows and a claymore. He once said "any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed". Churchill graduated from Sandhurst in 1926 and served in Burma with the Manchesters. He left the army in 1936 and worked as a newspaper editor. - Peter Butterworth
Peter Butterworth (February 4 1919 - January 16 1979) was an English comic actor who appeared in sixteen of the "Carry On" films. He was married to fellow actor Janet Brown, who presented Picture Book on 1950s BBC Children's Television and later was a celebrated impersonator of Margaret Thatcher. Their son Tyler Butterworth is also an actor. He also appeared in "Doctor Who" as the first Time Lord villain, the Meddling Monk, … - Bram van der Stok
Bram van der Stok MBE (Oct 13, 1915 in Pladju, Sumatra - Feb 8 1993, Virginia Beach), also referred to as Bob van der Stok, was the most decorated aviator in Dutch history, as well as one of the few to escape from the German POW camp Stalag Luft III. - Jens Müller
Jens Einar Müller was a Norwegian pilot trained in Little Norway in Canada and POW in the German POW camp called Stalag Luft III. In 1942 he was an officer in the Norwegian 331 squadron at North Weald in England. On June 19, after completing a so called "Roadsted" mission his Spitfire Mark V (tail number AR298) was shot down by a German Focke-Wulf Fw 190 just off the Belgian coast after running out of ammunition. - Clive Dunn
Clive Dunn OBE (born 9 January 1920) is a retired English actor, singer and entertainer best known for his role as Lance-Corporal Jack Jones in the BBC sitcom, "Dad's Army". Born in London, a cousin of actress Gretchen Franklin, Dunn played small film roles from the 1930s onwards. After a break for service in the army in World War II, in the course of which he spent four years in prisoner-of-war camps and labour camps in Austria, … - Bert Shepard
Robert Earl Shepard (born June 28, 1920 in Dana, Indiana) was a baseball pitcher who had his right leg amputated after his fighter plane crashed in Germany during World War II. He went on to pitch in one major league game for the Washington Senators in 1945. The 5"11", 185 lb. left-hander taught himself to walk and then to pitch with an artificial leg while confined in a German POW camp. In 1945 Shepard was back in the United States and wanted to resume his pitching career. - David Stirling
Colonel Sir Archibald David Stirling DSO, OBE (November 15, 1915 - November 4, 1990) was a Scottish laird, mountaineer, World War II British Army officer, and the founder of the Special Air Service. - Patrick Reid
Patrick R. Reid, MC, MBE, (13 November 1910 - 22 May 1990), (later Major) in the British Army, and noted non-fiction / historical author. Educated at Clongowes Wood College and Wimbledon College. A British Prisoner of War, he was held captive at Colditz Castle. One of the 'Laufen Six', Reid arrived at Colditz in November of 1940. Reid was one of the lucky few to escape successfully, although he did not return to England until after the war. - Talbot Rothwell
Talbot Nelson Conn Rothwell OBE (12 November 1916-28 February 1981) was an English screenwriter. Rothwell was born in Bromley, Kent, England. He had a variety of jobs during his early life; town clerk, police officer and pilot. He was made a prisoner of war during World War II after being shot down over Norway. It was during this period, while incarcerated in Stalag Luft III, that he started to write. Peter Butterworth was in the same camp and the two became firm friends, … - Arthur Ernest Percival
Lieutenant-General Arthur Ernest Percival, CB, DSO*, OBE, MC, OStJ, DL, (26 December 1887 – 31 January 1966) was a British Army officer and World War I veteran. He built a successful military career during the interwar period but is most noted for his involvement in World War II, when he commanded the forces of the British Commonwealth during the Battle of Malaya and the subsequent Battle of Singapore.
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