The Great Escaper

Bernie and Rene Jordan are living in a retirement home in Hove after Rene’s health deteriorated. Bernie, who served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War, hopes to attend the 70th anniversary of D-Day, but is told that there are no spaces left on any of the group tours to Normandy for the event. Initially hesitant to leave his wife behind due to her fragile health, he is finally persuaded by Rene herself to find his own way to Normandy to join the commemorations. Bernie leaves the nursing home early one morning, takes a taxi to Dover and gets a ticket on a ferry to France. On the ferry he meets Arthur, an RAF veteran who is on a group tour to Normandy for the commemoration. When Arthur discovers that Bernie is travelling on his own, he invites him to join his group and even to share his hotel room in France. Bernie is reluctant at first but ultimately acquiesces.

Back in the UK, the care home staff are all in a panic over the mysterious disappearance of Bernie, whose whereabouts Rene does not reveal until much later in the day, when she confesses the truth to her nurse, Adele, that he has “escaped” to Normandy. In this scene it is revealed that Rene has been diagnosed with a terminal illness and has only a short time left, and that she has not told Bernie about it because it would only worry him.

Arthur obtains a ticket for Bernie at the commemorative ceremony, but Bernie gives his ticket, and Arthur’s, away to Heinrich, a German soldier who also fought on D-Day and has come to commemorate the event. Leaving the ceremony behind, Bernie and Arthur head to the Bayeux War Cemetery, where Arthur looks for his brother’s grave while Bernie visits the grave of Douglas Bennett, a comrade-in-arms who was killed at the Normandy landing on D-Day after Bernie reassured him that he would be all right. Bernie feels responsible for Douglas’ death, because he had persuaded him to leave their ship and face his fate.

When Bernie begins his return journey, he discovers that he has become a celebrity, dubbed “the Great Escaper”, and the story of his flight to Normandy has appeared in all the papers. The ferry company staff treat him like royalty and when he gets back home he finds a gaggle of reporters awaiting him. He brushes past them in dismay and goes straight to Rene, to whom he confesses the truth of his guilt over Douglas’ death, and his despair at the wasted lives of all the young men who died on that fateful day 70 years ago. Rene assures him that Douglas’ death was not his fault, and points out that he and she have lived every second of their lives together and never wasted the time they were given.

The next morning, Bernie and Rene get up early to watch the dawn break on the horizon, just as they did some seventy years earlier when they were young lovers.

A caption tells us that Bernie died six months after his “great escape”, and Rene died seven days later.

Last Updated: August 28, 2025 at 13:16