My father-in-law was a pilot. During World War II, he was shot down in a B-17 over Belgium. With the help of the French Resistance, he made his way through Occupied France and back to his base in England.
I didn't equate a POW camp with a concentration camp.
Without discipline a body of men becomes rabble. Rabble dies, either on the battlefield or in a POW camp.
Senator John McCain, who spent over five years in a Vietnamese POW camp, publicly releases 1,000 pages of medical records. Now people are left with only open nagging questions: what kind of freak has 1,000 pages of medical records?
I spent five years in a North Vietnamese POW camp, kept in the dark, fed with scraps. Do you think I want to do that all over again?
[John McCain] didn't believe me. I think anybody who's been in a POW camp for five years can - take eight minutes on The Daily Show.
It was a movie [The Railway Man] that stayed with me a long time. It's still one of the things I'm most proud of. I got to know the man that I was playing and unfortunately he passed away just before the movie came out. It's one that meant a huge amount to me, and one that I'm particularly proud of.
Three days doesn't sound like a very long time, and under normal, everyday circumstances, it's not - but under POW camp conditions, it doesn't take long to wear down a man's sanity.
