The not so Great Escape: It's seen as the epitome of British heroism thanks to THAT film. But a new book says it was a futile suicide mission - driven by one man's towering ego
By Guy Walters
As the men’s heads emerged from the tunnel, the first thing they noticed was the cold.
The temperature was below freezing, and a thick layer of snow lay on the ground.
Silently and nervously, each escapee watched his breath condense while waiting for the two tugs on the guide rope to signal it was safe to leave.
Just 50ft away was a watchtower — but, thankfully, its occupant’s full attention was on the prisoner-of-war camp from which the men had tunnelled.
Although it's seen as the epitome of British heroism thanks to the film, a new book says the Great Escape was driven by one man's towering ego
Occasionally a sentry walked past on patrol — they would all keep their heads down, though, because of the icy air.
When the rope was tugged, the men hauled themselves out of the tunnel and scurried across open ground to the woods.
There, they reassembled in discreet pairs or groups of ten to try and look like innocuous teams of workmen.
Then they made their way across country to one of two known stations.
Some men decided to go it alone, reckoning it made them less conspicuous. But every single one of them cursed the cold Polish night.
As they tramped through the snow — their worn boots and thin trousers hopelessly ineffective — they probably even longed for the warmth of their bunk beds in the barrack huts.
Nevertheless, the Allied airmen were encouraged by the fact they were taking part in what they hoped would be the greatest British-led mass escape from a German PoW camp.
The aim was to get 200 of them through the tunnel and create havoc for the Nazis’ home forces, who would be deployed to search for them. In effect, the airmen would be creating a new Allied front inside Germany.
But at around 5am, as dawn was breaking, a patrolling guard stopped in his tracks. A small cloud of condensation rising from a hole in the ground had caught his eye.
Unslinging his rifle, he cautiously went to investigate and saw the tell-tale signs of footsteps in the snow — many, many footsteps in the snow. And then he saw a man lying on the ground, a man who had just emerged from the hole. He was called, as the guard would shortly learn, Squadron Leader Len Trent.
As soon as the guard pointed his rifle at Trent, a figure emerged from the woods, shouting: ‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’
Vainglorious: Squadron Leader was played by Richard Attenborough in the film
The guard let off a round, but into the air — whereupon Trent jumped up and tried to implore him in German not to fire.
Apparently, though, Trent’s linguistic skills were less than perfect, and instead of shouting, ‘Nicht schiessen!’ he said, ‘Nicht scheissen!’ — therefore imploring the guard not to empty his bowels.
Within seconds, the guard’s shooting and shouting was answered by his colleagues. Soon Trent and three other men found near the tunnel were frogmarched back to camp.
They could not know it but they would be the lucky ones.
By the middle of the morning, the Germans completed their headcount. The tally caused the commandant a near heart-attack. Seventy-six prisoners had escaped — which did, indeed, make the British breakout the largest of the war.
What would become known as the Great Escape was now on.
THANKS to the movie The Great Escape, what happened next is well known — or, at least, we think it is. When I started researching the true story for my new book The Real Great Escape, I assumed it was a straightforward tale of murderous Nazis and British derring-do.
Although I knew — like most, I suspect — there was no such thing as the motorbike chase which featured Steve McQueen in the movie, I nevertheless thought it was, as Hollywood movies go, pretty close to the truth.
But as I started digging in the archives and listening to old interviews with people who’d been in the camp, I began to realise that the Great Escape was really not that great at all. In fact, far from being a source of national pride, it was something we should consider keeping quiet about.
In truth, the escape was a failure.
Although the bravery and ingenuity of the men who broke out of Stalag Luft III is rightly celebrated, they were misguided in their reasons for doing so. Furthermore, they were warned that by mounting a mass escape, they risked being shot — which is eventually what happened to 50 of them on the orders of Hitler.
In short, the Great Escape was almost a suicide mission, and it had no value to the war effort whatsoever. To make matters worse, it actually helped the Germans.
To get the bottom of why the Great Escape was not so great, one has to look at the man who led it — Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, (played by Richard Attenborough in the film).
At the time of the breakout in March 1944, Bushell was 33, which made him an old man in PoW terms. Shot down in a Spitfire on his first day of combat operations, he’d been a prisoner for nearly four years. And more than most, he deeply resented captivity.
Twice before he had managed to escape, but a ‘home run’ back to Britain had eluded Bushell, who was determined to have had a ‘good war’.
As a graduate of Cambridge, a daredevil skier who had competed for Britain, a combative barrister and — thanks to his father’s success in South Africa’s diamond mines — a wealthy man, he was very much what we would today call an ‘alpha male’.
He was certainly not among the estimated two-thirds of Allied PoWs who never took part in escape activities.
Many of these didn’t think they had what it took or were simply content to sit out the war in safety behind the barbed wire. Most had survived near-death experiences, and the idea of getting back into a Lancaster bomber or a tank did not appeal.
The Great Escape from the Stalag Luft camp in Poland - German territory before the war - was heralded as the single greatest flight for freedom attempted by POWs during WWII
A trolley in the famous 'Harry' escape tunnel originally built by Allied airmen. But the book reveals privately, some PoWs had doubts, with one calling it an 'act of military madness' that served no purpose other than to satisfy Bushell's ego
But when Bushell arrived at Stalag Luft III in September 1942, he was determined to hit back hard at the Germans, who were reputed to have tortured him when he was recaptured following his last escape.
His plan was to construct three tunnels and proceed on the assumption that if the Germans discovered one, they would not suspect a second — and if they did find a second, they would never suspect a third.
From Bushell’s arrival to when the tunnel used for the breakout was completed (it was dubbed ‘Harry’), a whole ‘escaping’ industry was set up to provide essential kit such as false papers and civilian clothes, which were modified from RAF uniforms with varying degrees of success.
Despite all the preparations and ingenuity, though, it seems nobody stopped to ask Roger Bushell why the escape was really taking place.
Privately, some PoWs had doubts, with one calling it an ‘act of military madness’ that served no purpose other than to satisfy Bushell’s ego.
Thanks to the movie The Great Escape the story of the mass escape from Stalag Luft III in Sagan is well known
After all, by the time the escape took place, the PoWs knew the Allies were on the front foot, because recently downed aircrew entering the camp were talking about the preparations being made for D-Day.
There was no point in the PoWs risking their lives with the war so clearly going Britain’s way. Even the Germans thought the escape was a ‘silly idea’ — but for different reasons.
The guards would often tell the PoWs that if they mounted a mass breakout, all the forces available in the Reich would be put on full alert, thus making it much harder for the escapees to make their way home.
One German officer went as far as telling the PoWs they would be better off escaping in small groups, as that would avoid a general alert.
Furthermore, a general alert would be counter-productive for the Allies. When 43 Allied PoWs had tunnelled out of another camp the previous year, the ensuing search netted not only all the escapers, but a staggering 14,000 other escaping PoWs, foreign workers and convicts.
By mounting a great escape, Bushell would be placing at risk every enemy of the Nazis who was on the run.
There was another, more sinister reason why the Germans warned the PoWs not to mass-escape. Throughout 1943, as the British and U.S. bombing campaign wreaked havoc on German cities, downed Allied airmen often found themselves being lynched by angry mobs.
Various Nazi officials decreed that escaping PoWs could expect to be shot, and although these orders exempted Americans and Britons, a provision was made that escapers of these nationalities could be handed over to the Gestapo. Everybody knew what that might entail.
The Germans at Stalag Luft III repeatedly warned Bushell and his fellow officers that they would be risking the ire of the Gestapo if they attempted an escape, and if they did, ‘it would be their last’.
But with preparations so far advanced, and believing the Germans were bluffing, Bushell decided to press on.
Flight Lieutenant Sydney Hastings Dowse MC was a Royal Air Force pilot who became a prisoner of war and survived The Great Escape. But of the 76 men who managed to get away, nearly all were recaptured within 48 hours
The escape happened on the night of March 24-25 — and from the very start it was beset with problems.
A few of the men suffered claustrophobic panic attacks in the tunnel, while others forgot to pull through behind them their fellow escapers, using special trolleys.
A power cut did not help, nor did the fact that it took two hours to open the exit trapdoor because it had swollen with damp. And, infamously, the tunnel fell short of its intended target — the woods —which meant the PoWs had to emerge into the open.
Of the 76 men who managed to get away, nearly all were recaptured within 48 hours.
The general alert had performed its function very well, aided by the harsh weather that meant some escapers had to seek refuge in obvious places such as barns where they were quickly found.
Not only that, many of the forged papers contained mistakes that gave the men away, and they were also frequently rumbled by their less-than-convincing ‘civilian’ clothes.
Bushell was captured on the afternoon of March 26 with his French escape partner Bernard Scheidhauer at Saarbrücken railway station on the French-German border, 450 miles from the camp.
His papers were at fault, although it is also likely he inadvertently replied in English to a question put to him by a policeman — a mistake ascribed to his companion (played by Gordon Jackson) in the film.
Bushell and Scheidhauer were delivered into the hands of the Gestapo, who said they’d drive them back to the PoW camp.
However, on the way, the two men were ordered out of the car for a rest stop. As they urinated next to some trees, they were shot in the back of the head by two Gestapo officers.
According to one account, Bushell writhed on the floor and had to be shot again.
In total, 50 of the Great Escapers were killed all over the Reich. Unlike the film — where a large group were herded from a truck and shot — the men were slaughtered singly or in small groups by Gestapo officers who later claimed they were merely following orders.
Although the crime did not merit the punishment (the shootings were pure murder), it cannot be said Bushell and his men were not warned.
Of course, risks have to be taken in war, but they need to be taken for a good reason. There was no really good reason for the Great Escape other than an admirable but ill-conceived idea to ‘do one’s bit’.
The tally was grim. For the price of 50 lives just three men — a Dutchman and two Norwegians — got back to Britain.
As one former Stalag Luft III PoW told me recently: ‘I sometimes think it wasn’t worth it. Fifty men’s lives it cost to tie up those Germans. Inevitably, they would have lost the war — and 50 people would have been alive today.’
- The Real Great Escape by Guy Walters is published by Bantam, at £20, next Thursday. To order a copy for £16.99 (p&p free), call 0844 472 4157.