By the summer of 1944, Lieutenant Woehrle had been a prisoner at Stalag Luft III (later made famous by the 1963 film “The Great Escape”) for more than a year. A bombardier aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress, he had already beaten some incredible odds. His plane was shot down by German flak the previous May over the Bay of Biscay. Four of his crew members were killed when a group of Focke Wulf 190 fighters strafed the burning plane. A faulty parachute fractured his jaw and dislocated his shoulder.

Compared with the Gestapo camp where he was interrogated, Stalag Luft III, in what is now western Poland, could have been much worse. Most prison camps were. But Stalag Luft III, for aviator officers only, was run by the Luftwaffe, and its administrators generally treated captives with the respect common among airmen.

Still, it was a prison. Despite the Red Cross packages, the men were always hungry. Lieutenant Woehrle lost 30 pounds. Young men who once talked about pinup girls instead fantasized about favorite recipes.

Around that time, Lieutenant Woehrle came across a Patek Philippe advertisement. He had given his old watch to a camp chaplain, who he decided needed it more than he did.

“I knew that they were expensive because Patek Philippe was a name I had seen in Harper’s Bazaar or Esquire,” he said. He knew it was a long shot, but he tore out an order form anyway, and mailed it with a note promising to pay the watchmaker once he was freed.

Months passed; he forgot about the watch. To his surprise, one day it arrived. Camp administrators were reluctant to give it to him. They feared he might use it to bribe a guard. They relented when a ranking American colonel promised that the lieutenant would do no such thing.