Big Red Book
Celebrating television's This Is Your Life
Lieutenant Colonel Sam DERRY DSO, MC, TD, DL (1914-1996)
THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Samuel Ironmonger Derry, soldier, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews outside the BBC Television Theatre.
Sam, from Newark, Nottinghamshire, was a member of the Royal Artillery during the Second World War – one of thousands who escaped at Dunkirk. He was subsequently transferred to North Africa, where as a major in the 1st Field Regiment, he was awarded the Military Cross, before being captured a second time in June 1942. Imprisoned at Chieti in the Abruzzo region of Italy, he led the escape committee, organising the construction of four tunnels ensuring freedom for many fellow prisoners.
His own second escape was made by jumping from a Rome bound train, en route to what would have been his final incarnation in a German prison camp. Sam ensured the passage to freedom of several thousands of British and American soldiers who were stranded in the Italian countryside after escaping from German captivity. Operating from within the Vatican itself, with the help of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, his Rome escape line became famous for defying German efforts to locate its source and destroy its organisation.
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Series 8 subjects
Rupert Davies | Kenneth Revis | Sydney MacEwan | Cleo Laine | Arthur Baldwin | Edith Sitwell | Ben Fuller | Robert Henry McIntosh