World War Two veteran Alex Lees was one of the prisoners of war whose exploits were immortalised in the film The Great Escape.

He served with the Royal Army Service Corps during the war but was a prisoner at Stalag Luft III in what is now Poland when the break-out took place in March 1944.

He later wrote an autobiography 'Before It's Too Late', about his experiences there.

It was the prisoners' sworn duty to confound their guards and continue to fight the enemy by surviving, communicating information and, if possible, escaping.

Mr Lees slept in Hut 104, where the tunnel used for the famous escape from Stalag luft III started, and had been known as a "gardener" for his role in its creation, dumping tons of soil in the main compound as the escape tunnel grew longer.

The epic war movie, The Great Escape, whose cast includes Steve McQueen and Donald Pleasence, depicts the true events behind the massive escape plot from the prison camp. Scores of Allied servicemen made a remarkable bid for freedom, yet only three made it home. Fifty were executed and 23 were recaptured. Mr Lees himself was not an escapee as the tunnel was reserved for officers.

But like most of the prisoners there at the time, he played his part in the escape plans. Pretending to be a gardener, he would carry sand from the escape tunnels in empty Red Cross boxes, and mix it with the surface soil. This was a vital aspect of the escape plot that was also dramatised in the movie.

In an interview with the Paisley Daily Express, Mr Lees praised the film-makers for getting the details right.

He said: "It was just like the way it was portrayed in The Great Escape movie. I had been given the job of looking after the garden and I would take the dirt out to the vegetable patch, rake away the top soil, dump the earth and then cover it back up. The German guards never suspected a thing.”

He also slept in the bed of an escaping officer to confuse the guards.

“I wasn’t eligible to go through because it was for officers only," he recalled. “I had mixed feelings about it. I wanted to go but I also knew I wouldn’t have got very far because I didn’t speak German.”

Prior to capture, Manchester-born Mr Lees had been an Army driver in Greece. He remained a prisoner until the end of the war when he went back to his pre-war job as an insurance underwriter, married Isabel and had two children, Colin and Patricia.

He died aged 97 in April 2009 at an ex-servicemen's care home Erskine, in Renfrewshire, Scotland.

The chief executive of the care home, Colonel Martin Gibson, said: "It was a privilege to care for Alex over the past four years. He was respected by all those who knew him and he will be sadly missed."