The Great Escape from Stalag Luft III by Tim Carroll

Author:Tim Carroll
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2004-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

With Rubberneck’s absence imminent, the Escape Committee immediately made plans to intensify digging in Harry. Unfortunately, Rubberneck seems to have been all too well aware of the universal euphoria that his absence would create. On the last day of February he arrived in the compound with Major Broili and a list of 19 prisoners who were to be dispatched immediately to the satellite camp of Belaria, five miles away. They were all members of the X-Organisation and included Peter Fanshawe, Wally Floody, George Harsh and Bob Stanford-Tuck. Surprisingly, Roger Bushell’s name was not among the 19. Presumably, his efforts to dissociate himself from escape activities had paid off. After being marched off to their barrack blocks, the 19 luckless men were not even given an opportunity to return. Instead, their belongings were gathered for them and shortly thereafter they were transported out of Stalag Luft III for good.

Their loss was a profound blow to the escape plans, not least because the hiatus surrounding their announced departure wasted a whole day. Those who had lost escape partners were compelled to make last-minute changes of plans. But the diggers responded to this attempted blow to their morale by redoubling their efforts. Ker-Ramsay took over as chief engineer and over the next ten days the tunnel was to progress more rapidly than it had ever done before. In one day alone 14 feet of tunnel was excavated and shored up, the air pipes fully laid and the sand completely dispersed. In the space of nine days 112 feet had been dug and shored up. By 10 March the tunnel was 348 feet in length, comfortably beyond the 335 feet that they calculated marked the tree-line. The team had left four days in which to build the final staging post and the vertical escape shaft. Remarkably, they built the staging post ten feet long in a single day, leaving them three days to finish the twenty-five-foot vertical shaft.

The construction of this vertical shaft was far more hazardous and complicated than the original entry shaft. Given that that had taken some two weeks to build it was extraordinary that the prisoners were contemplating finishing this in less than a quarter of that time. However, they were driven by a desperate desire to complete the job and they were helped by a stroke of luck when a four-foot section of the shaft “excavated” itself by collapsing into the tunnel below. The task of burrowing upwards was made just a little easier but it was still an onerous and exhausting one. It was conducted by the digger holding above his head a square frame of three boards the size of the tunnel shaft that acted as both a shield and work implement. Each of the boards could be removed. The digger would remove the first and excavate a small amount of sand before replacing the board and removing the next. After the next section of sand had been excavated the third board would be removed and the practice repeated.

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