I don't know about the rest of you, but I would love to see some photos of Matt's kids on this site. Hey Matt, don't you have a new digital camera?

This is Addyson at four months.

Rachael, I am alive! Will you come visit my house? You can come anytime you want.

'Great Escape' PoWs shot on Hitler's orders

Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday April 20, 2000
The Guardian

The execution of 50 allied prisoners of war, most of them British, in 1944 - immortalised by the film the Great Escape - was personally ordered by Hitler against objections from senior officers in the German army, according to MI5 documents released today at the public record office.

They contain a graphic account of how Hitler and key figures in his high command, including Hermann Göering, head of the Luftwaffe, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel ordered the captured escapers to be shot, dismissing out of hand suggestions it would be in breach of the Geneva convention.

Interrogated by British intelligence officers after the war, General Major Adolf Westhoff, the German officer responsible for prisoner welfare in the camps, described how an "excited and nervous" Keitel summoned him after the break-out of prisoners - including 76 RAF officers - from Stalag Luft III on the Polish-German border in March 1944.