AN RAF doctor who escaped from a Second World War PoW camp has died at the age of 102.

Tom Cullen, from Kelvedon, qualified as a doctor in September 1939.

He joined the RAF and was posted first to Egypt and Greece, and then to Crete, which was under heavy attack by the Luftwaffe.

Although suffering from dysentery, he tended to hundreds of wounded men without the benefits of proper lighting, sterilising equipment, antibiotics or even an operating table.

In 1940 he was captured when Hill 107, now the final resting place of 4,465 soldiers in Crete, was overrun.

He was taken on a 12-day journey by train to Stalag XXA, a prisoner of war camp in Poland.

It was a fort surrounded by a moat and was guarded by armed soldiers in watch towers.

Family friend Harry Carlo said: “For a while he was able to work as a doctor and used to describe this in letters home, often with casual self-effacing humour such as ‘did a bit of dysentery and dentistry today’ and ‘performed an acute appendectomy yesterday’.

“He wrote of dissecting an amputated leg before ‘pickling it’.

“Mostly his letters were of a chatty type, usually asking after the dogs, how the cricket team he played for were doing and asking for a pair of Middlesex Hospital rugger socks and other clothing items.”

By late 1943, Tom was actively involved in planning to escape with promised help from the Polish resistance movement, and on February 29, 1944, at about midnight, he and a friend managed to cross the frozen moat, climb the fence and were spirited away by the locals.

Harry said: “All the guards had rushed to deal with a ‘riot’ by all the other prisoners, stage-managed with such success that neither man was hindered in their dash to freedom.

“In the safe hands of local Poles they were soon spirited away to Gydinia, a port on the Baltic, put below deck in a ship loading coal and 36 hours later arrived in Malmo in neutral Sweden from where they were flown home.”

Tom was later awarded a Military MBE for his “heroic” work as a doctor in the prison camp.

Tom had been a Colchester Royal Grammar School student and was school captain in 1934.

He distinguished himself on the games field before studying medicine at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School.

After being demobbed, he worked as a surgeon in Kettering General Hospital.

He married wife Molly and they went on to have four children.

Harry said: “For several years he worked very hard to get official recognition for those brave Poles who risked their lives throughout the escape but who were never honoured.

“He very much regretted his failure to get such recognition, largely due to the sensitivities of the Cold War tension between Poland and the West.

“In 2017 he was guest of honour at the annual cricket match at the Grammar School between the school 1st XI and the ‘old boys’. The scorecard of the match in 1934 showed Tom taking seven for 43 but still being on the losing side.”

Tom Cullen died last month.