Prison camp survivor Melville Carson is interviewed on TV When 22-year-old Pilot Officer Melville Carson was shot down during a bombing raid over Germany in World War II, he ended up spending three years in Stalagluft III prison camp, immortalized in the movie The Great Escape starring Steve McQueen. The 60th anniversary of the escape attempt will be marked in London on 24th March. The German guards foiled the attempt and 50 of Carson’s prison friends were shot by the SS. He is lucky to be alive today. He was no 151 on the escape list and the plot was foiled before his number came up. ‘The man who never forgot the Great Escape’ was how BBC TV broadcaster Sally Magnusson introduced Carson, during the weekly religious worship programme Songs of Praise, on 15 February.
After the war, Carson went on to work for many years as an accountant with MRA/Initiatives of Change in the UK and in the USA before his retirement to Haddington, Scotland. Magnusson asked Melville how he coped with the death of so many of his friends. 'You realise bitterness is a destroyer,' he replied, 'and you have to deal with it.' 'How did you solve that dilemma?' Magnusson asked. 'Well, I realised that if I didn't forgive and had this bitterness in my heart then I am actually sowing the seeds for the next conflict... In my case, I find I daily need to ask for the gift of a new nature, a nature motivated by the love of God and free from the burden of having to prove something about myself; a new nature of son and heir [of God], not a hired servant who is on and off duty part of the time; and a new nature that rejects the victim role and keeps the perspective of miracles.' The TV programme was broadcast from St Mary's Church in Haddington and Magnusson interviewed Carson inside the Museum of Flight, East Lothian. The Songs of Praise website said that Carson 'spent his life after the war working for Moral Re-Armament, which was previously known as the Oxford Group and is now known as Initiatives of Change.' Michael Smith
English
