The Password Is Courage 1962 Dirk Bogarde, Maria Perschy, Alfred Lynch, Nigel Stock,

WW 2 War Comedy Drama
Sergeant-Major Charles Coward is a senior British NCO incarcerated in the prisoner of war camp at Stalag VIII-B. He encourages his fellow inmates to escape, and tries to humiliate the German guards at every opportunity.
When he is being transferred to Stalag VIII-B, the injured Coward escapes from a forced march, finding refuge in a French farmhouse and barn that is soon requisitioned by a German army unit setting up a field hospital. Believed to be a wounded German soldier, Coward is taken to a hospital, where his identity is discovered, but not before he is awarded the Iron Cross as he lies in his hospital bed.
Coward is sent on to Stalag VIII-B. On the way to the camp, he engineers the total destruction of an enemy ammunition train: He and his fellow prisoners toss flaming bundles of straw, set on fire with his cigarette lighter, into the passing rail cars.
At the camp, he and his fellow prisoner Bill Pope become involved in an elaborate escape plan. The Germans find a tunnel – but it is an old and abandoned one. Coward then attempts to deceive his camp commander and Luftwaffe officials, indicating that he has knowledge of a secret allied bomb sight. He receives special favors, which he uses to bribe the camp guards to get vital materials needed for the coming escape.
When his ruse is discovered, Coward and his friend Pope are transferred to a work camp in occupied Poland. The camp's commanding officer says Coward is a traitor, hoping his fellow prisoners will kill him. The Nazi scheme fails.
The prisoners trick the Unteroffizier, into thinking he was responsible for a devastating fire that Coward actually engineered. Using this, Coward extracts an extraordinary privilege: going to and from the neighboring town without an escort. He makes contact with an attractive Polish resistance agent, who provides him with maps and other information. He also joins his fellow prisoners in acts of sabotage, including wrecking a huge supply train. He and Pope are sent back to their old Stalag, smuggling the papers past the initial strip search inspection by pretending to be infested with lice.
The escape plan proceeds apace, with every detail accounted for, and the day comes for the 100 chosen men to escape. Coward is the one to break open the vertical access tunnel into a pine grove. He strikes thick tree roots delaying the escape. This leaves 20 men stuck in the tunnel and 180 in the hut. A guard is seen approaching. The men decide to cover up by singing, pretending a party is going on. The concertina player sacrifices his place in line and goes outside, pretending to be drunk. The guard takes him away.
Coward breaks through, but they are short of the woods. The men must run for the trees when the searchlight passes. At the train station. Irena suddenly appears and helps Coward get on the train for Vienna. Once there, they kiss and he promises to return after the war. She goes to buy his ticket, but Coward must surrender to guards in order to protect her. He finds several of his captured comrades, including Pope, waiting under guard in the station's office.
Coward and Pope are assigned to the IG Farben work camp, near the Belsen concentration camp, “whose name is now a symbol for the most bestial depravity in the entire history of mankind.”. The war progresses and they eventually escape. While posing as workmen clearing rubble, they meet a jeep full of American G.I.s who tell them the front line is only a mile away, but there is a “road full of krauts” in their way. They steal a nearby abandoned fire engine and firemen uniforms and speed down the road, bell ringing. A German convoy on that road moves aside, and they drive off to freedom, singing “There is a Tavern in the Town”. A full chorus of men’s voices joins in the verse: “Adieu kind friends, adieu, adieu…”