Great Escapes (13 page)

In the spring of 1940 Roger Bushell escaped by hiding in a tumbledown goat shack tucked away in the corner of a field. The prisoners had been allowed out to a field adjoining the compound and had started a mock ‘bull-fight’ with the goat so as to draw the attention of the guards. Whilst this was going on Roger Bushell slipped into the goat shed and hid.

After the prisoners had been returned to the camp, Roger Bushell waited until midnight before making his way across the fields. Meanwhile, during the previous months, another tunnel had been successfully dug and seventeen of the prisoners made their way quietly into the woods just outside the wire. Escaping prisoners were on a learning curve and once free, found it difficult to find their way without a compass, money or sufficient food to sustain them. All seventeen were caught the following day.

In the meantime Roger Bushell had got within 30yds of the Swiss border, when a German border guard challenged him. Pretending to be a slightly drunken ski instructor who had been celebrating in the village, he persuaded the guard that he was genuine, but the guard wanted to confirm it and invited him into the guard post. Roger Bushell realised that he would be exposed and made a run for it. Unfortunately he ran into a cul-de-sac, with a very high wall at the end, followed by heavily-armed Germans.

Returned to the
Dulag Luft,
he was quickly transferred to a new camp on the shores of the Baltic. Joining him were the seventeen other escapees from their previous camp. Within hours the group was hard at work planning the next escape attempt and by the end of the first year over forty tunnels had been started. The problem was that water lay under the compound at a depth of only 4ft, and so the tunnels had to be very shallow. The Germans were well aware of this and would drive heavily-laden wagons around the compound collapsing the tunnels as they passed over them.

These setbacks never once dampened the prisoners’ spirits, in fact just the opposite, it spurred them on to think of other ways. But before they could put any of their new ideas into action, they were herded into railway cattle trucks and shipped off to an unknown destination somewhere in Germany. During the journey, Roger and a Czech officer serving in the RAF, Jack Zafouk, prised up some of the floorboards so that they could lower themselves down onto the tracks when the train slowed down to a crawl.

One by one they dropped through the hole onto the tracks. Unfortunately one of the other men slipped and fell under the wheels of the train and died. Roger and Jack got clear and jumped on a series of goods trains that were headed for the Czech border where Jack’s brother lived. When they arrived, he fed them, gave them some money and the address of a friend in Prague who would shelter them.

Arriving in Prague, the friend set them up in an apartment with a host family. They could not leave because Roger could not speak Czech and Jack was afraid that some of his friends might recognise him. After some weeks, the Resistance was contacted and arrangements made to get them out through Turkey, but just when they were about to move, the deputy chief of the
Gestapo SS Obergruppenfuhrer,
Reinhard Heydrich, was shot and killed by members of the Czech Resistance. All hell broke loose. Hostages were taken off the streets and members of the Resistance who were captured were tortured and then executed. The town of Lidice was levelled and all the men over fifteen years of age were rounded up and placed in a barn. The following morning they were all murdered. A further nineteen men and seven women, who were working close by, were sent to Prague and they too were shot. The remaining women were sent to Ravensbrück where almost half of them died. The children were taken to a concentration camp. Over 1,300 people were murdered in retaliation for the killing of Heydrich.

The two men stayed in the apartment, until one morning the front door-bell rang and as none of the family was in, Roger and Jack kept quiet. The next thing the door flew open and five German soldiers burst in and the men were arrested and taken to the Gestapo. The host family were later arrested, tortured and then executed.

Roger Bushell was held and interrogated by the Gestapo for several months before finally being sent to
Stalag Luft III.
It is said that Bushell only escaped the firing squad because of Major von Masse, the chief censor officer at
Stalag Luft III,
who knew and liked Roger. Von Masse’s brother was Generaloberst von Masse, and he used his position to get Roger Bushell transferred to the prison camp. Jack Zafouk was sent to Colditz.

The Kommandant of
Stalag Luft III
was Oberst Friedrich-Wilhelm von Linden-Widau. He was a professional soldier and had fought and been wounded during the First World War, winning the Iron Cross Second and First Class. He was strict but very fair and would not tolerate any ill-treatment of prisoners, being one of the few Kommandants who operated strictly within the rules of the Geneva Convention.

The camp itself covered an area of 59 acres and was surrounded by 5 miles of perimeter fencing consisting of two high barbed-wire fences, 9ft high and 5ft apart. Interspaced, at 150yds apart around the perimeter, were guard towers that were manned twenty-four hours a day, fitted with searchlights and heavy machine guns. After several expansions the camp held over 10,000 prisoners of war.

Feeding such a large number of prisoners was difficult, bearing in mind that there was a war on and feeding prisoners came low down on the list of priorities for the German government. The ration was made up in the following way: breakfast – very thin slices of bread, margarine and ersatz jam; lunch – the same again; dinner – potatoes with barley or sauerkraut and once every three weeks minced horsemeat.

It was estimated that each man needed 3,000 calories a day, but the rations only allowed for 1,300–1,500 and so the remainder was made up from Red Cross parcels. These were issued at the rate of one parcel per man per week. The German guards themselves fared little better with regard to food, which of course inevitably encouraged bartering between the guards and prisoners, cigarettes and chocolates being the main currency.

The opening up of
Stalag Luft III
as a secure camp for habitual escapees only served to bring together some of the most skilled engineers, tailors, forgers and surveillance experts available. Roger Bushell knew this the moment he walked through the gates and within days he was hatching plans to get out. Just days after he had arrived, the whole section of that camp was moved to the North Compound, which had recently been completed.

After settling in and surveying the surrounding area, Roger Bushell noticed that the trees around the camp had been cut back for approximately 30yds, which meant that any tunnels would have to extend over 100ft beyond the wire. Despite this, he approached the SBO (Senior British Officer) Group Captain Herbert Massey and the escape committee with a tunnelling idea that, if successful, would see 250 men escaping. This would, had it happened, cause the German military horrendous problems and thousands of German soldiers to be taken away from the fighting Front, in an effort to catch the escapees.

The building of such a tunnel was to be a massive undertaking and would need complete secrecy and the co-operation of almost everyone in the camp. Amongst the German guards were a group of known ‘ferrets’. These men would enter the compound without warning and search for anything that would lead them to a possible escape attempt. They would on a regular basis clear a hut of its occupants and systematically strip and search everything in there. If they discovered a tunnel, they would often allow the digging to continue until it neared completion, then they would pounce. The reasoning behind this was to effect a demoralising situation in the hope that the prisoners would not bother again. In fact it did quite the opposite.

Codenamed ‘Tom’, the tunnel was one of three built from the North Compound of the camp. The others, ‘Dick’ and ‘Harry’ were started at the same time in May 1943, but it was decided to concentrate on just the one tunnel. The head of the escape committee, Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, or ‘Big X’ as he was known, had started planning an escape from the moment he had been moved from the East Compound in April 1943.

After a great deal of thought the committee gave the go-ahead to Roger Bushell’s idea and in charge of the tunnelling would be a Canadian Spitfire pilot and former mining engineer, Flying Officer Wally Floody. Escape kits would be required for each man and that task was put under the control of Flight Lieutenant Johnny Travis. Amongst the most important items that were required were compasses. These were made from gramophone needles for the needle pivot, to which a piece of a sewing needle was fitted by means of a soldered pivot joint. The solder came from the tins of bully beef that were in the Red Cross parcels. Slivers of broken razor blades were also used and incorporated into tiny cases made from melted-down broken Bakelite records. Little circles of paper were painted with the points of the compass and fitted into the base of the cases. Broken glass was cut into circular discs and pressed into the warm Bakelite to form a waterproof seal.

Rubber stamps depicting the German eagle holding a swastika were made from the rubber heels of old boots. Some of the documents had the eagle embossed, and this was achieved by making a mould out of soap and casting the stamp in lead. The lead was obtained from melted silver paper. A stamping machine was made with a centring device, which enabled the embossing of documents to be carried out.

Travel passes and work permits had to be made complete with photographs and the master forger responsible for this department was Tim Walenn. To gain access to these passes guards were bribed and in some cases threatened with exposure for having traded with prisoners, which was against the rules. One guard was even cajoled into providing a miniature camera complete with film. The team of men who made the passes turned out to be master forgers and produced documents that were almost identical to the real thing. They even named their department ‘Dean and Dawson’ after a well-known London travel agent.

Faking some of the gate passes and travel permits caused a problem because they were typed. Tim Walenn and Gordon Brettell produced handwritten copies that were so good they could not be told from the typewritten originals. In an escape attempt, Brettell actually tested one of the passes by wangling his way onto a working party on a new part of the camp. He had hidden himself in one of the partially-built huts, then when it was dark made his way to the railway station. He was caught when he asked for a ticket to Nuremberg. He produced a travel permit saying that he was a French worker, and although the papers fooled the Gestapo, his French did not. He was arrested and it was then that he found out that Nuremberg was closed to travellers because of a recent heavy bombing raid and there were signs up to that effect. It was this that had caused the guard to be suspicious.

Fortunately the Gestapo never realised that the travel permit and identity card were forgeries and when Brettell was returned to the prison camp, he had somehow retained possession of them. Such was the quality of the forgeries that Walenn had even managed to make the typed strike-overs appear to look like authentic, original mistakes had been made.

Forging the documents was a painstaking process. Some of the documents had backgrounds that equalled those of banknotes and so any mistake would be disastrous. Such was the need for accuracy that any minor mistake would result in the document being destroyed. In the time they were in
Stalag Luft III,
the forging department, working three to five hours a day, created over 400 ID cards, work and travel permits.

Flying Officer Tommy Guest, a former tailor, made civilian and workmen’s clothes from uniforms in the continental style. He even extended his skills to making German uniforms. He had workers shave the nap off the rough serge with razor blades and then dyed it with beetroot juice or a solution made from black boot polish. Paper patterns were made from German newspapers.

Roger Bushell, with a group of his team, walked around the compound making notes of the drainage covers. Every now and then they would stop, for what appeared to be a debate about something, whilst one of their number – a small, wiry Welshman – lifted up a manhole cover and slipped down to take a look. The need for secrecy was highlighted one morning when lorries loaded with tree cuttings were leaving the compound. They were searched and a number of would-be escapees were found buried inside. One escapee, Ian Cross, slipped underneath one of the lorries and clung on to the chassis, whilst the commotion was going on. Just before the lorry moved off, the chief of the security officers, Oberfeldwebel Glemnitz, the chief of the ‘Ferrets’, spoke to the driver and the next minute the lorry shot off towards a part of the compound studded with tree stumps. The whole camp held its breath as the lorry lurched towards the stumps, waiting to see Ian Cross crushed to death as it ran over them, but it stopped just short.

Oberfeldwebel Glemnitz then strolled up to the lorry, leant down and, with a broad grin on his face, invited Ian Cross to come out with the words, ‘Your room is ready for you in the cooler, Mr. Cross’. Seconds later a downcast Ian Cross appeared and was marched off to the delight of the guards. He would spend the next two weeks in the prison block. Roger Bushell turned to his team and pointed out that whatever they thought of the German guards, they were not to consider them stupid. It was quite obvious that the guards were well aware of what prisoners would do when there was a distraction and the opportunity arose.

It was decided that there were to be three tunnels. The first one was to go under the western wire from Hut 123 and was codenamed ‘Tom’. The second was to go from Hut 122, was codenamed ‘Dick’ and would join up with Hut 123, whilst the third would go from Hut 104 and go under the northern wire. It would be codenamed ‘Harry’. Roger Bushell made the point that no one was to ever mention the word ‘tunnel’ again, but to refer to them always under their codename.

Roger Bushell and the tunnel engineers visited the huts looking for likely places to place the trapdoors, because it was here that the ‘ferrets’ detected most tunnels, so the trapdoors had to be perfect. Within twenty-four hours they had selected the three places from where the tunnels would be started. Fortunately German workmen had left some cement in the compound and this was quickly spirited away. The man assigned to making the traps was Flying Officer Minskewitz, a Polish officer serving in the RAF. He measured up the size of the trapdoor he needed and cast a concrete slab 2ft square. The slab was reinforced with bits of scrap wire that had been picked up. He also used the wire to make a couple of lugs that were recessed into the concrete, but could be levered out with a knife. Once out, wire could be passed through them to form handles so that the whole thing could be lifted with ease.