The greatest escape story in history that you may have never heard about happened on March 24, 1944, when 76 Allied aviators escaped from a Nazi POW camp.
Historians have called it “the most famous prison break in history.” Although the German Luftwaffe designed and planned the Stalag Luft III camp to be inescapable, the British, Americans and Canadians proved the Nazis wrong. A film in 1963 entitled “The Great Escape” paid tribute to the famous escape.
Since the Nazis wrongly believed the POW camp was inescapable, they underestimated the resourcefulness of these brave pilots. While reading a story on the Great Escape, I learned the maximum-security prison was located 100 miles southeast of Berlin. The Nazis thought they had thought of everything, including raising prisoner housing off the ground to prevent tunneling. The Nazis went even further and buried microphones 9 feet underground along the fence line.
It took these determined pilots an entire year to construct the tunnels named, “Tom, Dick, and Harry.” Six hundred prisoners took part in the digging of the 300-foot tunnels. Prisoners building the Harry tunnel worked for days on end on the building’s support columns to avoid being seen working under the housing unit. A trap door underneath a heating stove was always burning to keep the Nazis from looking underneath. Not to mention the prisoner of war camp was built on yellow sand, making it easy for the Nazis to spot any digging that was taking place.
They worked in the claustrophobic tunnels in their long johns to avoid their clothes being stained by the yellow sand.
According to one source I read, “They excavated 100 tons of sand which they concealed in socks and pouches and then discretely sprinkled onto the ground and raked in the small gardens tended by the prisoners.”
According to https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-true-story-of-the-great-escape, it was “Leader Roger Bushnell, who conceived the plan for the mass escape in the spring of 1943…Three bloody deep, bloody long tunnels will be dug…one will succeed!”
Bushnell, who was a skilled aviator, was shot down in his plane during the evacuation at Dunkirk in 1940.
Two of the tunnels were discovered, but the Harry tunnel succeeded. Harry was dug to a depth of 30 feet to be out of range from the microphones. The tunnel had over 4,000 boards the prisoners took from their sleeping huts to make sure the tunnel would not collapse. Electricity was wired in the tunnel to make sure it had lighting along the 2-foot-wide tunnel courtesy of a power grid they tapped into. There were chambers housing air pumps for the tunnel. Spoons, knives, forks were used to dig. Mattresses, bed sheets and pillowcases were fastened against the tunnel walls to muffle sounds.
As the tunnel was completed, they waited for a cloud-covered moonless night to make their escape. The escapees also had maps and fake IDs, and were in civilian clothes to try to avoid detection.
When the tunnel was discovered by a German sentry as the 77th person exited the escape hatch, a massive, organized search ensued. At this point, the German Gestapo assumed command of the camp. Within a few short weeks most all the prisoners were recaptured. Hitler, being incensed by the escape, ordered all the men who were recaptured to be executed against the rules of war established by the Geneva convention. Twelve of the executioners were later found guilty of murder and sentenced to death even though they had an order from the Fuhrer himself.
The new camp commander was horrified by the executions, so he permitted the remaining prisoners to erect a memorial that still stands to this day.
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Richard Stride is the current CEO of Cascade Community Healthcare. He can be reached at drstride@icloud.com.
