Stalag Luft III

If you’ve ever seen the movie The Great Escape, then you’ve heard of the events that surrounded the March 1944 escape attempt from Stalag Luft III. Though the escape would be considered a failure, as only 3 men out of 76 stole away without getting caught, the preparation and effort that went into this attempt is truly impressive.

Stalag Luft III was built with no allowances for escape. The barracks were raised about 2 feet from the ground so that any tunneling activity could be seen. The perimeter was ringed with seismograph microphones that detected the smallest vibrations, thus catching any digging happening just below the surface. And the ground itself was a defense against escape—the subsoil was a bright yellow sand, easy to see against the dark grey dust on the surface should anyone try to dump it out.

Not to be deterred, Squadron Leader Roger Bushell called together a meeting of the Escape Committee and proposed a daring plan:

Everyone here in this room is living on borrowed time. By rights we should all be dead! The only reason that God allowed us this extra ration of life is so we can make life hell for the Hun… In North Compound we are concentrating our efforts on completing and escaping through one master tunnel. No private-enterprise tunnels allowed. Three bloody deep, bloody long tunnels will be dug – Tom, Dick, and Harry. One will succeed!

Roger Bushell

An escape plan involving the construction of three huge tunnels was unprecedented. Along with this, the number of men Bushell hoped to help escape was insane—around 200 prisoners, all with civilian clothes and forged papers to help them flee to safety. But the plan was also clever; if one of the tunnels were discovered and shut down, the guards wouldn’t even think to look for more escape routes. It was a huge undertaking, but his passionate declaration to the committee had done its work. It was decided that “Tom”‘s entrance would be in a darkened hallway corner of one of the barracks,”Dick” would be hidden under a washroom drain sump, and “Harry” could be found under a stove.

More than 600 men worked tirelessly on the tunnels, using scavenged wooden boards from beds and other wooden furniture to brace the sandy walls. The tunnels were dug deep—about 30 feet underground—to avoid the seismograph microphones. Cans from the food the Red Cross provided the men were used as scoops, candle holders, and were part of the ventilation ducting that was built in all three tunnels. Squadron Leader Bob Nelson of 37 Squadron also invented pumps fashioned out of cans, knapsacks, hockey sticks, and bed pieces to push fresh air down to whoever was digging. And the problem of dumping the bright sand was solved as well—pouches made from socks were filled with sand and tied inside the mens’ trousers, and would discreetly scatter the sand as they walked in amounts small enough to stay unnoticed.

When the German guards started suspecting a tunneling attempt, and the planned exit for “Dick” was covered by a camp expansion, the scattering method was abandoned and “Dick” was filled with the dumped dirt from the other tunnels. Then the camp started receiving more and more U.S. prisoners, and it was decided that a separate compound would be built specifically for U.S. airmen. The prisoners threw all their efforts into “Tom,” hoping to finish it before the Americans were moved. Unfortunately, the increased activity caught the guards’ attention and “Tom” was discovered.

Work on “Harry” resumed, but by the time it was finished all of the Americans had been moved to the new camps and none were able to participate in the escape. The 200 men that were chosen to escape were divided into two groups; the first group of 100 men were considered to have a good chance of success, as they spoke German or had histories of escapes, or had put in the most work on the tunnels. The second group, called “hard-arsers,” were those who drew lots to determine whether they would go. They would travel by night without much more than a “good luck” wish to help them, since they spoke no German and had only the most basic of fake papers, clothing, and equipment.

The end of “Harry”

A moonless night on March 24th meant it was escape time. The escapees were set back when they found the exit trap door of the tunnel to be frozen shut, and had to free it. An even worse discovery was then made: the exit had come up short of the forest they had hoped would conceal their escape, and very close to a guard tower. The number of escaping men was reduced from one per minute to no more than ten per hour. The second group of 100 men were told that they would not be able to escape that night. Part of the tunnel collapsed and had to be repaired. An air raid caused the camp’s lighting to be shut off, slowing the escape further. But despite all these issues, it wasn’t until the 77th man was crawling out of the tunnel that the sentry noticed what was going on and sounded the alarm.

Despite their valiant attempts to flee, 73 of the 76 escapees were recaptured. Hitler ordered 50 of those men to be executed singly or in pairs as an example to the rest of the prisoners, Roger Bushell among them. But although the escape was unsuccessful in terms of prisoners making it home, it did divert the attention of thousands of German officers who were called in to search for escapees.

You can read more about the escape on Wikipedia or on this page about Roger Bushell. You can also search Fold3 for records about Stalag Luft III and the men imprisoned there.