208265 F/Lt. Bennett Ley Kenyon Royal Air Force 419 Squadron I met Ley Kenyon in the Chelsea Arts club in the 1970s when researching images for a book on WWII escapes. He was an artist, and was ordered to record the building of Harry. The drawings were hidden in Tom Tunnel at the forced evacuation but were returned to Ley after the war; the whole experience was so traumatic for him however, that he had barely looked at them since until I came along. He expressed some annoyance that the character in 'The Great Escape' mainly based on himself was depicted as showing fear and even cowardice while carrying out the task of recording the tunnel, which he vehemently denied.
A number of the drawings Ley Kenyon made of Harry Tunnel can be found online at The Great Escape
|