Biography

He is survived by his son, Adrian Cassie and daughter Rosalyn Cassie Postance and four grandchildren.

He joined the Royal Air Force in 1940. In 2004, 17 of the prisoners who had been involved in the "Great Escape" reunited at the Imperial War Museum in London, England to commemorate sixty years after the event. Archaeologists had excavated one of the tunnels at Stalag Luft II and recovered artifacts such as the rubber stamp carved from a heel of an airman's boot and used to forge documents for escapees.

Only child of George Cassie and Jessie Cassie who immigrated to Scotland. After high school, he studied psychology at the University of Aberdeen in Aberdeen, Scotland and graduated in 1938.

He was a pilot of the Royal Air Force bomber flying missions over Germany and France when his plane was shot down after it attacked a submarine in the Bay of Biscay in September 1942. He and his crew were picked up by a French fishing boat and turned over to the German authorities. He was immediately taken to the Stalag Luft III and remained there until January 1945 when the Germans emptied the P.O.W. Camps and forced the prisoners to march west. They were liberated by the British in April 1945.

He was a Flight Lieutenant and British bomber pilot who was one of six prisoners forging documents for the escaped prisoners for months. They called the unit, "Dean and Dawson." He falsified hundreds of documents. He had a choice to escape but his fear of claustrophobia prevented him and he chose to remain behind in the barracks. He was an amateur artist since childhood and psychologist after his military service. They used a typewriter with German typeface. He used cold tea to age the documents. He etched official-looking stamps from boot heels.