This Great Escape

by Andrew Steinmetz

  McQueen was an experienced rider and liked to do his own stunts—hell anybody’s stunt—but insurance rates for the rising star were hugantic. The director John Sturges gave McQueen the green to buy all the bikes he needed and to hire stuntmen of his choice. McQueen hired his friend Bud Ekins, who flew over with several pals from north Hollywood, where Ekins owned a bike shop.

  Meanwhile, a rider comes whipping around the curve. An Australian stuntman by the name of Tom Gibbs plays the German tripped by Hilt’s wire at 2:11:13. Ekins had tried the stunt several times with no success. Tom Gibbs the Australian landed the stunt on his first try, but had to perform it three times before the camera caught it. The shot was done with a simple cut—a switch from the skid to a shot showing the bike hitting the ditch. Look closely at the thrown rider’s carcass: McQueen’s stunt double, Bud Ekins, is substituted for Gibbs in the second half of the shot.9

  2:11:20

  Exterior Shot. River’s Edge. Dawn is breaking. The watery sham before our eyes represents the Bobr, a tributary of the Oder; but the scene was filmed on a stretch of the Rhine between Wiesbaden and Koblenz.

  Here fugitives Charles Bronson and John Leyton, aka The Tunnel Kings, have made it—surprisingly by sauntering lethargically through the brush—to the river’s edge.10

  Cut. The camera switches angle and The Tunnel Kings open their eyes wide and see: there is a small wood dock along the shore, and a skiff bobbing in the water. The escapees register a doubletake. Who can believe their eyes? 11

  2:11:38

  Exterior Shot. Country Road. Day. Fields. Herbivores grazing. Unidentified escapee thumbing a ride. He must be another hard arser. Back in the day, German-speaking prisoners were gifted train tickets and travel passes by the escape committee, while the arsers were sent out in the waist deep snow wearing great coats and carrying blankets, without so much as a false identity. But the movie was filmed during summertime. No great coat for this unidentified escapee. He is wearing a long black leather coat and carrying a package of some kind. It can’t be fudge, can it?

  Momentarily, a covered truck comes to a stop. The arser exchanges words with the driver and tips his hat before going around the front of the truck. He hops inside the cabin beside the driver, shifts his weight, and the truck is in gear.

  2:12:01

  Exterior Shot. River’s Edge. Day. The Tunnel Kings hop off the dock into the boat. Leyton steadies the rudder, while Bronson manhandles the oars. Their skiff is a rowboat, after all. 12

  The soundtrack is almost Handelesque, a harpsichord lapping and flowing as the escapees glide downriver to the Baltic Sea.

  The river scenes are based on the Per Bergsland and Jens Muller escape story. Bergsland and Muller reached neutral Sweden by boat via Stettin. The only other successful escapee from the March 1944 breakout was a Dutchman by the name of Bram van der Stok. Van der Stok was the 18th man out of the tunnel. The night of the escape, he’d taken the train to Breslau and counted ten other escapees on the station platform. His next stop was Dresden. At Halle, he changed again for a train to Holland. This part of the journey took thirteen hours. Throughout, the Gestapo walked through the train car checking the papers of every passenger. Bram van der Stok made it to Gibraltar via Belgium, France and Spain. In total it took him four months to get to England.

  2:12:23

  Exterior Shot. Roadside. Day. Hilts wheels his motorbike out of the ditch dressed in full Wehrmacht drag. Obviously McQueen harvested his outfit straight off the stuntman’s back. Without much ado, he speeds off down the road on his brand new ride.

  2:12:50

  Exterior Shot. Day. Out in the country. The train zips along like a theme to the soundtrack. The plot in a capsule slips through Silesia, chugging on stealth. Suspense and smooth sailing to the box office.

  Nature’s passivity, its spectatorship, is criminal. The sunshine is maddeningly neutral. That’s naturalism for you.

  2:12:54

  Interior Shot. Train compartment. Day. The ticket collector enters the coach and strides past James Garner and Donald Pleasance and the McCallum character Dispersal. Garner shoots up, lights a cigarette, and follows the ticket collector through the doors of the coach ahead. Garner will explore. He is The Scrounger. In the next coach, he encounters the rosy-hued Nazi youth, the grey-faced witch, and the sleepy SS men (as for the latter: it must be their higher functioning evil which makes them so drowsy). The camera also catches a glimpse of Big X and his sidekick, Intelligence.

  Cut to a close-up of James Garner at 2:13:23. Garner hauls on his cigarette and stares coldly ahead. Michael Paryla is coming from the opposite end of the car. Paryla yanks the sliding door. Garner retreats the way he came; presumably having seen enough. On his way, Garner whispers tally-ho to the McCallum character. Tally-ho is a codeword (obviously). Garner moves on. He nudges The Forger on the shoulder (by this point Blythe is flying blind and on the surface of things he cannot tell an American from a German) and escorts the Donald Pleasance character towards the exit.

  McCallum is nonplussed. He sits back firmly. Tally-ho must mean nothing to him. Has he not studied the script?

  McCallum replaces his wire-rim spectacles and adjusts his newspaper. He reads what every passenger on the train is reading. Die Völkischer Beobachter. The paper of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, The People’s Observer. The headline is visible: Tag für Tag hohe blutige Verluste der Sowjets.

  ‘Day After Day More Bloody Losses by the Soviets’. The war is not going well. The Ostfront is a bitch. Remember, this is March, 1944.

  2:14:07

  Interior Shot. Train. Day. The Gestapo man Michael Paryla continues his rounds. He glances at the identity cards offered by the pair of SS officers. He stops at Big X and Intelligence. There is something about them. Here at last the camera has our man Paryla speaking his first lines.

  Gestapo: Ihre Pässe bitte. Your pass, please.

  (He takes their passbooks.)

  Gestapo (after a pause): Vous êtes Français?

  Big X: Oui.

  Intelligence : Moi aussi.

  Gestapo: Merci.

  Big X: Merci bien.

  2:14:24

  Interior Shot. Train. Day. The Scrounger and The Forger continue to retreat, cars ahead of our Gestapo friend, sprinkling Tally-ho. They are making for an escape, by jumping from the train.

  2:14:34

  Interior Shot. Train. Gestapo Michael (standing) flips through the pages of Dispersal’s passbook.

  Gestapo: Sie reisen für Ihre Firma?

  Dispersal: Ja. Für mein Gescheft.

  Are you travelling for your company? Yes, for my business. Gestapo Michael studies Dispersal’s passport, then the live specimen before him, before uttering a lacklustre Danke. Mind, Michael barely permits ‘Thank You’ to exit his lips. It is a hesitant, trapdoor-of-a-Dan-ke; you could say even, a begrudging ‘you are lying to me and we both know it’ kind of Thank You.

  He exits the coach and the door slides shut behind him and that’s the last an English audience sees of this actor alive. The running time is 2:14:56.

  Aftermath

  26

  Hitler received the first full Gestapo report at his mountain residence Berghof, in the Bavarian Alps, on Sunday morning, _____ hours after the breakout.

  Incensed. Humiliated. The Fuhrer ordered a nationwide manhunt—eine Großfahndung—the largest of wartime.

  100,000

  Oberregierungsrat Max Wielen, Breslau area chief of the Kriminalpolizei, sets the trap.

  The nationwide search order is broadcast on German radio. More than _______ German troops join the hunt. Gestapo and Sicherheitspolizei work through trains checking papers. Local police and regular troops and the home guard watch over the fields and country lanes, while Hansel and Gretel sweep the forest.

  5,000,000

  An estimated _
_____ German citizens spend time looking for the escaped prisoners.

  Holy gross gangs of dung!

  73

  ______ of the seventy-six POWS are tracked down, the majority in the days following the break.

  8

  Meanwhile, by the electromechanical typewriter, Gestapo chiefs in ____ cities receive unprecedented and top secret orders.

  Hitler wants the lot shot, Geneva Convention or not. He wants them dead. But. Hitler’s top darlings, Himmler and Goering, are against this.

  ‘To shoot them all would make it obvious that it was murder,’ Goering sputters.

  50

  This number, symbolic of the utmost reserve and fair play, is calculated not to do irreparable damage to relations with neutral nations.

  The Sagan Order was commissioned by Himmler and penned by his second in command, Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner: “The increase of escapes by officer prisoners of war is a menace to internal security. After interrogation the officers are to be taken in the direction of their original camp and shot en route. The shooting will be explained by the fact that the recaptured officers were shot while trying to escape, or because they offered resistance, so that nothing can be proved later. The Gestapo will report the shootings to the Kriminalpolizei giving this reason.”

  So:____. ____ British bunny rabbits will be shot.

  3

  Neutral nations. Sweden, with whom Nazi Germany traded for iron ore, is one. Portugal, with its wolfram, is a second. Doing irreparable damage to relations with Switzerland, on whom the Nazis depended for their looted gold transactions, seems, in perfect hindsight, to have been an utter impossibility.

  Name ____ neutral nations during the Second World War?

  1

  It is left to ____ man in Berlin to compose the wish list. The Gestapo and SS for their part will happily carry out the killings.

  Kriminalpolizei Chief Arthur Nebe

  (Reviewing the records of the recaptured prisoners and

  marking names with a red cross):

  Der muss dran glauben. He gets it.13

  ?

  The same clever set piece is repeated, in separate locations, throughout Germany, from Saarbrucken to Munich.

  At dusk, the recaptured POWs are herded into a covered truck. After several hours on the Autobahn the vehicle stops and the prisoners are entreated to watch the sunrise. Since it is such a long journey to camp, why not therefore jump from the cargo deck and stretch your legs? Cigarette? Also for your friend. Take this opportunity to relieve yourself.

  According to courtroom testimonies, handcuffs were removed and the majority of men were shot from behind, in a relaxed posture: in a field, flies open, smoking while urinating and watching the morning stars, the fading lights, but probably scheming, already dreaming of their next escape attempt.

  On examination the exit holes were found at the skull base.

  2

  Because fifty is a statistic and ____ is a tragedy.

  On the night of the escape, S/L Roger Bushell and Sous-Lt Bernard Scheidhauer found their way to the Sagan railway station and caught a train to Breslau. Then east to Saarbrucken. Waiting on platform for a train to Alsace, Bushell and Scheidhauer were questioned by a uniformed German in French. Posing as French businessmen, both Bushell and Scheidhauer conversed admirably. But the German used an old trick: he shot a question at Bernard Scheidhauer in English, and Scheidhauer answers in English. The game is up. 14

  In Saarbrucken, Roger Bushell and Bernard Scheidhauer were interrogated by the chief of the local Kriminalpolizei, Emil Schultz. Schultz, along with Oberlieutenant Dr. Leopol Spann, Gestapo Chief at Saarbrucken, and driver Walter Breithaupt, murdered Bushell and Scheidhauer by the side of the autobahn on the way to Kaiserslautern.

  ‘Bushell crumpled slowly onto his right side.’ Eerily precise descriptions likes this one, in Paul Brickhill’s memoir, were lifted from courtroom testimonies.

  Their bodies were taken to Nene Bremm concentration camp near Saarbrucken for cremation. The urns containing the ashes were then returned to Sagan for burial. Bushell was thirty­three and Scheidhauer twenty-two. 15

  23

  Of the remaining ____ recaptured POWs, seventeen are sent back to Sagan, four to Sachsenhausen, and two are locked away in the high security Colditz Castle.

  3

  Only ____ escapees—one Dutchman, two Norwegians—make it to freedom. It must taste great.

  1/3

  A new Kommandant, Oberst Braune, arrives at Stalag Luft III to replace Von Lindeiner.

  Kommandant Braune outlaws Red Cross parcels and installs a strict regimen of three mandatory appells per day. Braune also shuts the camp theatre.

  The POWs grow wary when only about a ____ of the escapees have been returned to camp. They knew many more had been recaptured.

  1944

  “It was cold-blooded butchery and we are resolved that the foul criminals shall be tracked down.”

  Anthony Eden, House of Commons. London, May _____.

  250,000

  Wings Commander Wilfred Bowes and Flight Lieutenant Francis McKenna of the R.A.F. Special Investigation Branch depart for Germany in August of 1946.

  Six interrogation teams are established in Hamburg, and over _____ German citizens are questioned.

  18

  On July 1, 1947, before a War Crimes Court in Hamburg, begins the trial of _____ Gestapo men held in custody.

  Paul Brickhill attends the trial, which is held in the Curio-Haus, inside “an old-fashioned gray courtroom.”

  14

  By day fifteen of the trial, all eighteen are convicted and found guilty. Four are given prison terms. _____ are hung at Hamelin Gaol on February 26, 1948.

  1962

  Meanwhile. 2:15:03. THE MIRISCH COMPANY INC. PRESENTS. Ext—Day. Stunt doubles for James Garner and the blinkin’ Forger-gone-blind Donald Pleasance, leap from the hind caboose and tumble down the embankment and roll behind piled hay for cover. Cut to a shot of James Coburn, the chic manufacturer, all wobbly, riding stolen goods to the strains of Elmer Bernstein’s soundtrack. Cut to Charles Bronson and John Leyton rowing into the sunset, down the narrow Bobr, and never to appear on the same decorated set again. The soundtrack is poignantly aimless now until such a point as Steve McQueen—astride his ride—resurfaces at the frontier. The Alps loom ahead. The snowy peaks are lit. Switzerland, McQueen mutters under his breath (obviously Switzerland is a swear word). McQueen gives ‘er juice and speeds off right smack into a checkpoint. Bad luck. Here the hyperactive American must idle. At the roundabout McQueen is spotted by stuntman Roy Jensen, playing a German guard. McQueen lacks proper identification. He straight-legs Jensen to the gut, then heads for the hills on his modified Triumph. This audacious action by the American kicks off the finale. The chase is on. McQueen is closely followed by a flock of German stuntmen and a sidecar manned by Bud Ekins and Chuck Hayward. But no one can quite keep up. The German stunt riders hired in Munich are useless off-road. And, cut!

  Solution: McQueen rides off a secure distance—the action is stopped—he turns his Triumph around and comes riding back, changes bike, changes clothes, puts on the German uniform. Roll camera, action: McQueen rides again, over the same ground, in pursuit of himself.

  Steve McQueen is the centerpiece from here on. He speeds away from the Germans (who follow in silly numbers), eventually losing them when he changes places with his stunt double, Bud Ekins, who jumps the six-foot-wide wood and barbed wire frontier fence with great panache. The iconic fence jump was one of last scenes of the movie to be shot, in September 1962. Most of the actors by now had been sent home. The extras, many of them students from Munich or Heidelberg, had returned to the classroom. Allegedly it was McQueen’s idea that his character would steal a German motorcycle and attempt escape by jumping the boundary fence between Ger
many and Switzerland, although motorcycles were not used in the March 1944 escape. The director John Sturges climbed aboard and United Artists leapt at the suggestion (in place of the female touch, macho deliverance would do nicely: a rising star in flight is a sexy and dangerous sight).

  But first, the crew reconstructed the wartime border between Germany and neutral Switzerland. The able Sturges contracted five local farmers to build a mile long double barrier. Insurance fees kept McQueen from even attempting the jump, which nonetheless, launched him to international stardom. For many years, it was accredited to the actor, not his stunt buddy Ekins, who was paid 750 USD to do the deed.