James Leslie Robert Long (21 February 1915 – 12 April 1944), known as Cookie, was a British Vickers Wellington bomber pilot who was taken prisoner during the Second World War.

His father was a senior member of the Octagon Chapel a congregation of the Plymouth Brethren and Les Long grew up within the religious community.

His call up papers were issued soon after war broke out and he applied for the Royal Air Force to complete his pilot training.

At 19:43 hours on the evening of 27 March 1941 Long took off in a Wellington Mark Ic bomber (serial number R1335) from RAF Honington to attack a target at Cologne, Germany.

[6] Long was one of an initial batch of persistent escapers,[7] who were sent to the new Stalag Luft III in the province of Lower Silesia near the town of Sagan (now Żagań in Poland) on 21 March 1942.

During the escape he made two emergency repairs to the tunnel due to roof falls[14] and after breaking out quite late accompanied by Tony Bethell who was an appointed "marshal", one of the dozen men appointed to wait in the forest after escaping to collect a pre-selected group of ten men who would then be led westwards as initial stage guides[15] Long joined a group known as the "hard arsers" because they planned to walk alone the entire trip homewards rather than catching trains.

They made excellent progress after that walking alongside the main railway line to Frankfurt (Oder) but found the trains travelling too fast to jump aboard.

[32][33][34]) Shortly afterwards, a communication arrived from England to advise Long that he had successfully completed the requirements for a degree of Bachelor of Arts in Economics.