This film was screened three times in January 2018 on Britain's Talking Pictures TV channel. I can't recall many other POW escape films relating to the Great War ("Le Grande Illusion" comes to mind) and WGN sets the tone for many such later films set in the Second World War: breezy British PoWs valiantly digging an escape tunnel and winding up their captors with banter. There's just one exception - a young pilot suffering such a mental breakdown that he is to repatriated.
The plot is said to be based on a real-life escape, the largest of the war, from Holzminden PoW camp, when 29 officers escaped through a tunnel in 1918..
The German kommandant, played by Hungarian Meinhart Maur, struck me as too much of a caricature (a gross eater, fat, pompous), but Wikipedia tells us the actual kommandant at Holzminden was constantly ridiculed by the PoWs, who nicknamed him "Milwaukee Bill".
The other roles are played reasonably enough, not least by a 28-year-old Jack Hawkins, already depicting a character (of the resolute British officer) with which he came to be identified and here Doing the Decent Thing.
I did wonder about the long flashback showing him on leave in London, but justification for its inclusion became clear later in the film. There was one poignant scene of a woman who met every leave train at Victoria Station to see if her son, reported dead, was on it.
The film ends with presumably intended irony that reflects that in 1938 (when the film was released) Britain was already apprehensive that another world war was imminent.
