BY OUR MOVIE CRITIC ORSON DE MILLE

AS ERIC ASHLEY-PITT “DISPERSAL” in the movie The Great Escape, the late David McCallum created such an iconic death scene that it has drawn generations of fans to German railway platforms over the decades since the classic film was released.

“And for that, Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) must be grateful,” says travel agent Walter Koch of Reiseburo Kool in Munchhausen. “Young men in particular, we find, are drawn to German railway stations by the memory of McCallum running along a crowded platform while people around him dive for cover amid a Gestapo cry for him to halt, before he is gunned down. It is for many the abiding image of German railways, even surpassing Holocaust trains.”

Backpacker Russ Warpole of Dungwungbung in Western Australia says that the Tannoy Speaker announcements when you are standing on a German train station platform immediately make you imagine you are an escaping prisoner of war, “and you find yourself expecting to be called on to halt by some fierce Gestapo mouth. Can scare the shit out of you. Of course the Aussie in the movie got away. Not true in reality, I understand. But then James Coburn’s Aussie, Sedgwick, he was a little off the mark, I’d say. But compared to Hilts, the American Cooler King, on the motor bike, Coburn was spot on. Hats off to the fifty anyway, wherever they came from.”