A 100-YEAR-old survivor from the ‘Great Escape’ Nazi war camp celebrated his birthday last Thursday (October 29) with a flypast from the RAF over his house in Bradford on Avon.

Hugh Parry, who has lived in Bradford on Avon since 1983 but was born in Kent, served in the RAF for much of the Second World War and is one of the last survivors of Stalag Luft III, immortalised in the film The Great Escape.

To mark his servitude to his nation, an RAF plane flew over his house in Downs View – completely unbeknownst to the centenarian.

“At first I thought it would just be another birthday but then without knowing at around 3pm I was wheeled outside to watch the RAF flypast,” he said.

“It was lovely, a real honour. I knew nothing about it. I was told to look to the skies and then we saw it whooshing past. It was a lovely moment.”

Before the flypast Mr Parry was presented with a commemorative framed photo, signed by RAF squadron members, by Flight Lieutenant Scott Cotton in front of more than 30 friends and family.

The gift was a picture of a Typhoon FGR4 plane, a later model of a Typhoon plane Mr Parry flew, as well as the original document from when he first signed up to the RAF more than 70 years before.

Before the Second World War, Mr Parry was a surveyor and left for South Africa before his 20th birthday, before moving to the emerging copper fields in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, as a mine surveyor.

On the outbreak of the war, Mr Parry was keen to do his bit and after eventually managing to talk his way into joining the Rhodesian Squadron, he went on to train in England.

The British officer for the RAF served as a pilot with the 601st squadron in Malta in 1942, and the 41st squadron in Britain the following year.

Mr Parry was shot down by the Luftwaffe just outside Beauvais in northern France.

Here he was sheltered by the French Resistance, managing to evade capture for five months before eventually being tracked down by the Gestapo and taken to Fresnes prison, near Paris.

Now a prisoner of war, the then 28-year-old was interrogated harshly and extensively for information in regards to the impending invasion - no such information was extracted.

Mr Parry was then shipped off to Stalag Luft III where he remained until the end of the war. It was here that he was a participant in the digging for the world famous Great Escape.

He was then liberated in Lubeck in April 1945. Mr Parry and his wife Dale went on to have two children, Sue and Mike, and almost 40 years after the war the couple settled in Bradford on Avon, where they have lived there ever since.

“We decided to move to Bradford on Avon after leaving Kent and when we came to look round, we liked it straight away and we’ve been here for 32 years. It’s a very pretty place,” he said.