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The Long March: the final chapter
Over 100 weary veterans, cadets and Royal Air Force personnel have finally made it to the end of their Long March.
The men and women have arrived at Sprenberg train station in Germany where the original marchers were herded to and put on cattle trains for other prison camps closer to Berlin.
Support staff have helped along the route getting up at 4am every day to put the boilers on and remove ice from the sausages to get the marchers ready for the day's walk.
Those that had to undergo the march 65 years ago were not so lucky and ate what they could catch or find.
Former Flight Lieutenant Eric Foinette, an RAF Navigator who became a Prisoner of War after his Wellington bomber was shot down, started his 95th birthday the same way he marked his 30th – by starting a journey from the Prison Camp Stalage Luft III, in Zagan, Poland.
He said: "We left the camp on 28 Jan 1945, my 30th birthday.
"It was a rough time, with no food, and chaps had to scrounge what they could along the way.
"As they got nearer to the Western Front, allied aircraft mistook the great columns of marchers for Germans, and had opened fire on them.
"One RAF Sergeant had built up a good relationship with his captors and they allowed him to go through the German lines to the British near Hamburg where, he was able to pass on the message not to raid the marchers as they were actually RAF prisoners."
As the marchers approached their final destination at the railway station, the Central Band of the Royal Air Force greeted them with the sound of the Great Escape which, resulted in all those taking part from the oldest at 95 to the youngest at just 13 years old to smile, but did not stop a gentle tear slowly ebbing from cold and tired faces.
Read part one here
Read part two here
Read part three here
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Weather for Aylesbury
Tuesday 07 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -8 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: -5 C to 1 C
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