Richard Pape

Richard Bernard Pape MM (17 March 1916 – 19 June 1995) was a British Second World War escapee, adventurer, autobiographer and novelist.

Pape was born in 1916 in Roundhay, Leeds, Yorkshire. He worked as a journalist in the Yorkshire Post'''s publicity department, but on the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the Royal Air Force.

He became a sergeant navigator in a Short Stirling bomber. On a 1941 mission he was shot down close to the German/Dutch border, was twice captured and twice escaped. Following his second capture, he was tortured by the Gestapo. He was repatriated by the Germans on health grounds in 1944. He went to live in South Africa and wrote a book-length account of his adventures, Boldness Be My Friend, which he said he wrote to exorcise the demons which plagued him after the war. He then wrote a book, Cape Cold to Cape Hot (1956), about his adventures en route, which reportedly came close to killing him. He also worked as Principal Publications Officer of the Australian administration's Department of Information. He would spend nine and a half years in Papua New Guinea and, while there, he met and married his second wife, Stephanie Helen Prouting, a solicitor working for the Public Solicitor's Office in Port Moresby.

In June 1965, Pape returned his Military Medal to the Queen in protest at The Beatles having been awarded the MBE. He was quoted as saying: "The Beatles' MBE reeks of mawkish, bizarre effrontery to our wartime endeavours."

He died in Canberra, Australia, in 1995 at the age of 79.