A FORMER POW from York has told for the first time of his great escape from captivity during the Second World War.

Harry Best's extraordinary bid for freedom included jumping off a moving train in pitch darkness, finding refuge with an Italian family and then climbing across the snow-covered Alps to safety in Switzerland.

The dramatic saga began in 1942 when he was serving with the RAF as a flight mechanic (engines) in North Africa and was captured by a German Panzer division.

Harry, now 94, of Strensall, told The Press he was handed to the Italians and taken to a prisoner-of-war camp in Italy but later, following the Italian surrender, went back into German custody and was herded onto a train cattle truck to be taken north to a German POW camp.

He said there was a flatbed truck at the back of the train manned by Germans equipped with a machine gun but the POWs packed in the truck were determined to escape.

"We had noticed that the train slowed down every so often and so we had enlarged a hole by the door of the truck, so that we could lift the latch," he said.

"We jumped out one at a time, not knowing what was outside. It was pitch black. Fortunately, I landed on a grassy slope and was uninjured and lay still until the train had disappeared."

He met up with a New Zealander officer who had also jumped off and they walked until they saw lights in the distance, heard German voices and took cover.

After waiting in a wood, and having had no food or water, they approached a village and decided to go to the post office and ask for help. "Our luck held as we told them we were British soldiers and had escaped from the Germans," he said.

"They told us to hide while they found us somewhere to stay. In the evening, we climbed up a track to a farmhouse. We slept in the barn and ate with the family upstairs. We stayed for a month, helping them with the grape harvest and making the wine, while they were arranging for us to go to Switzerland."

Eventually, arrangements were made with people who worked in peacetime as smugglers between Italy and Switzerland to help guide them over the mountains to safety in Switzerland.

He said that sometimes they had to walk through snow lying one or two feet deep and at one point, their guide warned them to stand very still as a German spotter plane was flying overhead.

In Switzerland, after being successfully treated for pneumonia, he got to work for the British air attaché, and stayed there for 11 months before eventually being flown home to England in a Dakota in October 1944, for an emotional reunion with his fiancée Betty, whom he married months later. He later moved to York and worked for many years for Marks & Spencer.

*Harry spoke out about his escape to help publicise the annual Wings Appeal, which will see members of the York branch of the Royal Air Forces Association collecting in York city centre streets on Saturday.

Branch spokesman Ray Kidd said the registered charity provided vital comradeship and welfare support for serving and ex-serving RAF personnel and their dependants, and he urged shoppers to give generously.