Major George Drew, who has died aged 87, helped his fellow prisoners to cope with the boredom and deprivations of Colditz Castle during World War II by producing potent homemade alcohol.

He and his friend Pat Fergusson first tried to brew from the sugar and raisins from Red Cross parcels, but failed. Then they realized that there was sufficient sugar for fermentation in the turnip jam supplied by the Germans. Mixing the jam with yeast and water, they used a piece of purloined drainpipe and a large can, sealed with plaster of Paris from the sick bay, to produce hooch for such events as St. Valentine’s and St. Patrick’s Days.

However, the effects of the more than 100 proof alcohol could be severe, even leading to temporary blindness. Dental fillings would fall out. If a man was having obvious difficulty walking and talking in the castle yard it was said that he was “jam happy.”

When Drew and Fergusson took part in the British television series “Escape From Colditz” in 2000, they made their potion for the first time since 1945. Taking the first glass before the camera, Drew said “Dear God,” remarked that the smell was not quite as bad as it used to be, then drank again. “Oh Christ,” he gasped.

He found a less lethal diversion in carving some 40 statues of nude women, though he admitted that there was one trouble: “The memory was lacking.”

The son of devout Congregationalists, George Shepherd Drew was born on March 5, 1918. After military school at Sandhurst, he became a platoon commander in Northern Ireland. On the outbreak of war in 1939, his platoon, the Northamptons, formed part of the expeditionary force sent to France.

Drew remembered wondering dreamily in the relaxed atmosphere of the “phony war” whether to win the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest military decoration, “straight away and get the others later on in the week, or whether to work up to it slowly.” They were stationed at the Belgian border, and moved to near Arras to prevent Rommel from driving towards Calais.

After a skirmish in which several men were lost, Drew led a convoy over a canal in Belgium, where they found none of the defensive shelter they had been promised, and were quickly overrun. They were being marched off into captivity when the artillery barrage they had expected finally arrived.

He was taken first by train to a camp at Laufen, in Bavaria, where a dead donkey helped make up for the lack of Red Cross food parcels. It was while sitting on the ground in the sun that he picked up a small branch and started to whittle away with a knife; to his astonishment, he found that a tiny, misshapen little man emerged from his efforts.

After being transferred to Warburg, he and his friend Fergusson built a tunnel, through which they duly escaped across the battlefield (the same one where the Marquess of Granby had lost his wig in a charge in 1760) and reached a railway line.

After walking several miles, they entered the woods, and flopped down to hear footsteps. Drew felt something pulling his trouser leg and, turning over to surrender, found that it was a fox. The pair jumped on several trains, which took them to a nearby loading zone, and walked along a deserted autobahn before turning into a field and falling into the hands of a German patrol.

Drew used his solitary confinement in a French camp at Soest to read through Hugo’s “Italian in Nine Days,” an Italian dictionary and “Pinocchio” in the original, then was transferred to Eichstatt, where he worked on a highly professional tunnel escape by 65 prisoners.

He and Fergusson reached the Danube, where they found a boat without a paddle, and drifted across to the other side. On landing they were challenged and ran into the arms of a policeman. Such inveterate escapers were now deemed suitable for Colditz.

On arrival at the castle, Drew quickly became conscious that there was a hierarchy, and that he represented “a very amateurish lower-class tunneler,” compared with “a professional upper-class escaper going through the main gate at will.”

He used his skill to carve not only nudes – “I had not mastered how to show drapery” – but fantasy figures for a chess set. The black pieces included Merlin as the king, Hecate as the queen, and members of the distilling team as the different pawns; while, among the white, the walrus and the carpenter were the bishops and the gryphon and mock turtle the rooks.

He made fake German belt buckles, and forged an eagle stamp onto a shoe heel, spending months cutting away with a razor blade before it was inked with an indelible pencil and spit to reproduce the right shade of purple ink for stamping on German official documents. But when Hitler ordered 50 men to be shot after the mass breakout from Stalag Luft III, London forbade any more escapes.

Following liberation, Drew rejoined his battalion at Brunswick. He was next posted to Vienna and then Trieste, where he guarded the commander, General Sir John Harding. He later was posted to operations against Mau Mau in Kenya, and then to Aden and Malaya before retiring from the army in 1973.

In later life, he was devoted to his small farm in Somerset, which he described as paradise. Even when blind he enjoyed driving his motorbike around his fields, accompanied by two mutts.

George Drew, who died on October 20, did not believe in an afterlife; but he said that if there was one, he and Fergusson would talk for eternity and try to come home: “On past form we will not quite make it.”