The Great Escape: A Canadian Story

by Barris, Ted

  About ten o’clock, the German lock-up guard from the Vorlager went through the North Compound closing shutters and barring the hut doors from the outside for the night. Shortly afterward, King, Ker-Ramsey, and Langford began to wonder what was wrong. Seventeen escapers had been in position since 9:30, but nobody was moving through “Harry” yet. The first two men up the exit shaft—Les Bull and Johnny Marshall—had been battling for thirty minutes to open the exit to the tunnel, but the wooden ceiling at the top of the shaft was wet, swollen, and wouldn’t budge. Bull and Marshall, both dressed as civilians bound for the early morning trains, had to strip down to their underpants so as not to soil their business suits and try to free the wood and break through the soil above. Bull finally succeeded in prying the boards loose, and then, using a small shovel, broke a hole through the soil and snow above. He felt the cool air of the winter night on his face as the hole widened and he could see the night sky above, the stars unobscured by wire. Up the last rungs of the ladder, he poked his head through the hole. The sight was both awesome and terrifying.

  Just as the tunnel engineers had planned, the exit to “Harry” was well outside the wire. However, the reason Bull could see so many stars as he peered up the exit hole was that there was no tree canopy blocking his view. There was nothing overhead. “Harry” was short of the pine forest by ten feet. Worse, the goon tower was just forty feet away. Worse still, the path of two sentries posted outside the wire—one pacing between the tower and the gate to the east, the other walking to the west fence and back—passed within thirty feet of the exit hole. Even without moonlight, at ground level a sentry would spot anyone moving in the open against the blanket of snow in an instant. All this Bull reported to Marshall and Bushell, who’d by now reached the base of the exit shaft. Amid the frustration and panic rising among the lead group, Bushell weighed the options. They could put the whole thing off and dig farther, but the digging and dispersal units had virtually shut down and were in escape mode. And with the compound-wide final preparations, there was a good chance ferrets would stumble across something to draw them to Hut 104 and “Harry’s” trapdoor. Then it dawned on Bushell: they couldn’t postpone the escape. All the documents were dated March 24, 1944.

  Just as quickly, the solution dawned on Les Bull. At the edge of the woods, closest to the exit hole, lay a blind, a tangle of timber and brush. Birkland, Clark, and Harsh had spotted the ferrets hiding behind it spying on kriegies during the push to complete tunnel “Tom” the previous summer. Bull concluded if they attached a signal rope from the top of the escape shaft ladder, up through the exit hole, and out to the blind, a controller behind the blind could signal with a tug on the rope when the way was clear of German sentries. It was settled in an instant. They tied a new rope to the top rung of the ladder and—when the sentries were out of view—Bull unravelled the rope to the blind and prepared to signal the next man, Johnny Marshall, through. Bushell quickly scribbled the sequence on the wall at the base of the shaft, so each man would read the note and know what to do.

  “Pause at top of shaft. Hold signal rope tied to rung. Receiving two tugs, crawl out. Follow rope to shelter,”[18] it said.

  Bull got into position behind the blind in the woods and waited for the sentries to come back into view, stop at the tower, turn, and retrace their steps out of view. He tugged twice on the rope and Wally Valenta popped up, wriggled through the snow across the distance to the blind, and entered the woods. A few minutes later Roger Bushell, number three, did the same. Big X had planned to travel with Robert Stanford Tuck, but with the British ace purged to Belaria a month earlier, his new partner was Bernard Scheidhauer, the fourth man through the exit and into the woods. The improvised “controller in the blind” system meant the interval between men was now longer than the planned two or three minutes, but at least the system was working.

  Deeper into the pine forest, the kriegies stood up without fear of being seen. For two years those pine trees—a green wall—had been a physical and psychological barrier keeping them from the outside world. Now it concealed them from the compound they’d just fled. Among the first groups assembling in the woods were Wally Valenta, Johnny Marshall, Des Plunkett, and Freddie Dvorak, all bound for Valenta’s and Dvorak’s homeland, Czechoslovakia. Next, Roger Bushell and Bernard Scheidhauer, who planned to hook up with the French Underground in Alsace and Paris. Shortly afterward came the two Norwegians, Halldor Espelid and Nils Fugelsang, who’d taken Canadian Dick Bartlett’s sixteenth spot, along with New Zealander Arnold Christensen and James Catanach, one of whom had switched with Canadian Frank Sorensen; they were headed through Berlin to the Danish frontier. The eighteenth man out of the tunnel, in his “immaculate” suit, was Bob van der Stok; he too was making his way toward the station with intentions of getting across France and through Spain back to England. They exchanged “see you in London” send-offs, and then dashed into the night. They had all been instructed to vary their routes into the railway station. There were three options: stairs to a walkway west of the station, directly across the tracks to the eastern entrance of the station, or through a subway that ran under the tracks into the station.

  Bushell and Scheidhauer as well as Plunkett and Dvorak emerged from the woods and approached the station just as an express train en route from Breslau to Berlin arrived at Sagan. The first two entered the station in plenty of time to purchase their tickets and board. Meanwhile, Plunkett and Dvorak were blocked at the eastern entrance to the station by a passing Russian work party; when they diverted to the subway under the tracks, they were stopped by a railway worker and a guard. However, at exactly that moment, there was confusion all over the station and marshalling yard because an air-raid siren sounded and the station lights went out. The two kriegies took advantage of the moment and dashed aboard the express without tickets. Dutch airman Bob van der Stok got caught in the same confusion; he was just outside the southern entrance to the subway under the station tracks. A soldier questioned him, and van der Stok explained he was a foreign worker trying to board the train. Conveniently for van der Stok, the soldier insisted he follow instructions and enter the air-raid shelter, which in turn led him conveniently to the subway under the tracks to the station and boarding platforms.[19] But by now, the entire Sagan area was in blackout against a looming Allied bomber attack.

  It was just before midnight when the sirens sounded at Stalag Luft III. Wings Day, twentieth in the escape sequence, had just begun his climb down the entrance shaft. By the time he reached the bottom of the ladder, the Germans at the Kommandantur had cut electrical power to the entire prison facility. Everything above and below ground fell into darkness. The single benefit from the blackout was that it snuffed boundary lights and tower searchlights too, which expedited the escapers’ dash from the exit hole into the woods.

  Back inside the North Compound, however, “lights out” required hut shutters to be opened and fat lamps in the hut rooms doused; it also sent the hundführer and their dogs patrolling through the compound. Inside Hut 104, dozens of hard-arsers lay still in hallways and in bunks throughout the perceived danger of the air raid. With electricity cut off to “Harry” as well, tunnel travellers couldn’t judge the distances, the whereabouts of the halfway houses, or even how close they were to the tunnel walls. Ker-Ramsey was quick to realize the additional danger of throwing already jittery escapers into total darkness in such a confined space, and he immediately began lighting fat lamps along the tunnel. The escape schedule was falling further behind. Instead of taking two or three minutes, it was now taking a man at least six minutes to travel the full length of “Harry” and up the exit shaft.

  As he moved northbound through the tunnel, Wings Day helped Ker-Ramsey light the lamps, then completed a hauler shift at the base of the escape shaft before exiting the hole himself. But the anxiousness around the blackout amplified the tension in the tunnel. Most of the first thirty-five men, including Canadians Gordon Kidder, James Wernham, and George Wiley, carried
suitcases; while they were only made of cardboard or plywood, some were bulky and difficult to pass through “Harry” without making separate trolley trips. Some of the men and bags caused derailments of the trolley. Others bumped into shoring and caused small cave-ins. Tom Kirby-Green, thirtieth in the tunnel, derailed between Piccadilly and Leicester Square and his shoulders bumped a weakened shoring. It broke and sand caved in, burying him from his waist to his shoulders. Canadian digger Hank Birkland, on duty at Leicester Square, realized the problem, crawled back to Kirby-Green, and freed him from the sand. Birkland then worked feverishly in the darkness to clear the sand and replace the shoring boards. Bob Nelson faced a similar problem a short time later near Piccadilly.

  “Due to the cold weather, people were wearing warmer, thicker clothes, and being hauled through . . . they pulled down some of the roof support and collapsed the sand,” Nelson said. “When I was hauling [James Long] through, the roof fell on top of him. I had to pull him out and then when he got past me, I then had to go up the tunnel on my elbows and toes to repair the roof and clear the sand that fell in.”[20]

  As Birkland completed his repair and dispersal of the sand that had collapsed on Kirby-Green, above ground the air-raid sirens were sounding the all-clear across the POW complex and the Germans restored the electricity to their tower searchlights and consequently to “Harry’s” underground lights. That’s when Birkland, the Canadian who’d spent much of his waking life the past year digging inside Stalag Luft III tunnels, travelled through “Harry” for the last time and got his first taste of life beyond the wire. He moved out of the tunnel and into the woods, marshalling the next ten men on their way. Then he joined British air officers Les Brodrick, Denys Street, Edgar Humphreys, and Paul Royle as they made their way westward, away from Stalag Luft III and Sagan.

  With the lights back on inside “Harry,” at least those in transit could now see where they were going. However, now the escapers weren’t lugging suitcases through the tunnel, but blanket rolls, additional layers of clothing, and pockets bulging with extra food and survival supplies. And if, in addition, the hard-arsers happened to be broad-shouldered, passage along the tunnel and through the halfway houses proved just as difficult and sluggish. Word went back up top to Ker-Ramsey, the above-ground controller, who began inspecting men as they were about to climb down the first shaft. As difficult a decision as it became, Ker-Ramsey had to relieve some men of their bulkier bedrolls, extra clothing, and survival supplies. That meant that hard-arsers such as Canadians Pat Langford, Bill Cameron, Tommy Thompson, George McGill, Keith Ogilvie, and Bob McBride had to dump some extra clothing or blankets they were carrying for warmth, but they did so sensing a stronger urge to escape than to carry protection against the March cold.

  “They hoped for the sake of fellas like myself, going hard-ass, that . . . our chances of hiding out in the woods or getting something to eat would be a little better,” Ogilvie said, “but it was really cold and frosty.”[21]

  By four o’clock in the morning, the experienced members of the escape team had been clearing documents, hauling trolleys, rescuing escapers, re-shoring walls and ceilings, re-dispersing sand, and coaxing the system for more than seven hours. About sixty men had been relayed through “Harry” in that time. Dawn was less than two hours away, so Pengelly and Ker-Ramsey made the decision to call off anyone holding an escape number greater than one hundred. They were all told to stow their forged documents away, eat their escape rations, and hide whatever escape clothing they could. The escape committee hoped it could squeeze twenty or twenty-five more men through “Harry” by 5 a.m. and then close the tunnel down before the Germans learned anyone had escaped.

  Meanwhile, there was another holdup at the exit hole. Roy Langlois had just relieved Canadian George McGill at the ferret blind in the woods when he signalled another halt in the flow of escapers; he’d heard a shout coming from the guard tower. One of the sentries pacing along the fence was summoned by the tower guard—the two had apparently agreed to switch places for some reason. Then the tower guard climbed down, crossed the snow-covered road, and began walking directly toward the tunnel hole. Langlois, still hiding behind the blind in the woods, thought for sure the goon had spotted the steam rising from the tunnel hole. He was coming straight for it. Then, suddenly, the guard stopped, took down his trousers, and squatted to relieve himself. Five minutes later, the guard departed, Langlois tugged on the rope, and escapers began moving again.

  It was close to 4:50 a.m. when the controllers in Hut 104 decided it was time to shut things down. They needed to determine who the final escapers would be and give the trolley haulers—Shag Rees, Red Noble, and Tim Newman—enough time to haul them to the exit hole and then get themselves up the escape ladder and out as well. Then, the trap over “Harry” back in Room 23 of Hut 104 could be resealed and rooms around the stove returned to normal. It appeared the last group of escapers would include Lawrence Reavell-Carter, Keith Ogilvie, Michael Shand, Len Trent, Bob McBride, Roger Maw, Michael Ormond, Ian Muir, Clive Saxelby, Jack Moul, and Frank Sorensen. Mac Reilley had taken Tony Pengelly’s number, ninety-three, but just missed the cut-off.

  “There I sat in Hut 104, waiting the night away,” Reilley wrote. “Frank Sorensen . . . was sitting with his legs reaching for the ladder to descend into the tunnel when it all ended.”[22]

  Langlois was still positioned at the blind just inside the pine forest, marshalling his group of ten men to safety. He directed Spitfire pilot Ogilvie and burly air-gunner Reavell-Carter to his position just hidden by the pines. Next, Michael Shand, another Spitfire pilot, emerged from the tunnel exit and began crawling through the snow toward Langlois at the end of the signal rope. Right behind him was Len Trent, the Victoria Cross winner from New Zealand. Suddenly, Shand and Trent felt the rope guiding them to the blind jerk again; it was Langlois, trying to get them to stop. A guard, formerly pacing close to the fence, had deviated from his sentry’s path and was stepping through the snow right toward the escape hole, as if something had attracted his attention. Shand and Trent stopped dead in the path. The guard kept coming, nearly stepping into the hole; he still hadn’t seen the two air officers prostrate on the snow. Then, recognizing Shand’s human shape in the slush path to the woods, the guard lifted and aimed his rifle.

  “Nicht schiessen! [Don’t shoot!]” Reavell-Carter shouted as he jumped from behind the brush pile in the woods.

  Startled by the kriegie shouting and leaping into the open, the guard pulled the trigger on his rifle, but the bullet didn’t hit anybody. Reavell-Carter had no choice but to surrender. Trent did the same. When the guard finally shone his flashlight down at the exit hole, next to where he was standing, there was Bob McBride, perched on the top rung of the ladder and waiting his turn to crawl out; with no other option available, he also surrendered. To add to the alarm, the guard began blowing his warning whistle.

  That night, Don Edy had slept fitfully in Hut 123, where tunnel “Tom” had originated. He remembered the eerie stillness of the dawn broken with that single rifle shot at the north end of the compound. He and his roommates didn’t dare go to the windows to see the Germans’ reaction. They just stayed in bed and listened.[23] George Sweanor had gone to bed fully clothed, wearing socks, boots; he’d even stuck food in his pockets[24] because he figured when the Germans got wind of the escape there would likely be an all-day appell and probably ration cuts. When he and his roommates heard the gunfire and whistle blowing, they pried open the shutters covering a window at Hut 119 and saw some of the escapers in Hut 104 attempting to race back to their home huts. More gunfire and the hundführer racing into the compound soon stopped that.[25] Inside Hut 104 the secretive quiet was suddenly broken.

  “All hell broke loose,” said Gordon King, who’d been at the base of the entry shaft pumping air through the bellows much of the night. “Some of [the kriegies] stupidly ran out of the hut. They could have been shot doing it.”[26]

  Tunnel controller Ker-Ramsey and
forgery chief Pengelly reacted to the rifle shot in an instant. They passed along the order throughout Hut 104 for all forged papers and escape kits to be destroyed. Within minutes there were small fires burning up and down the halls and in every room of the hut. The next order was a full retreat from the tunnel. In moments, Tim Newman was thundering back from Piccadilly halfway house to the entry shaft, Ian Muir right behind him. Michael Ormond wasn’t long after. Finally, the trolley haulers—Red Noble, Roger Maw, and Shag Rees—began to withdraw. As he turned to retreat from Piccadilly, Rees was squeezed out of the way by the two escapers who’d been at the base of the exit shaft—Jack Moul and Clive Saxelby. With the tunnel mouth discovered, Rees felt for sure there’d be a ferret on his tail in seconds. And yet each time he looked ahead all he saw was “Sax’s bum blocking the way.”[27]

  With the last man up the shaft and out of “Harry,” the trap was sealed as quickly as it ever had been over the previous year. The stove was replaced. And blankets that had been used to muffle the sound and hide any excess sand quickly disappeared into nearby bunks. By the time a hundführer entered the block, a few minutes later, much of the obviously incriminating evidence had vanished. The German guard gathered a few greatcoats lying around in the halls and waited. His dog curled up on the coats and went to sleep.

  “Our mad haste was really unnecessary,” John R. Harris said. “A German guard coming on duty had accidentally sighted [escapee Michael Shand] leaving the tunnel exit and fired a shot, more to attract attention . . . than in hopes of hitting the fleeing prisoner. By the time he succeeded in summoning support and the Germans realized what was going on, we could have burned half the camp down.”[28]