The real Great Escaper
Roger Bushell was the mastermind behind the audacious Stalag Luft III break immortalised in the 1963 film. But the true story of Big X has remained untold. Until now
Roger Bushell hated tunnels. He always avoided the Tube and had been a deeply claustrophobic boy who feared enclosed spaces, even though he grew up on a South African gold mine. He had no intention of following in the footsteps of his father, Benjamin Daniel Bushell, a mining engineer who had learnt his business in the Canadian Klondike and managed some of the most dangerous and difficult mines on the gold reef east of Johannesburg.
But on the night of March 24, 1944, Squadron Leader Roger Bushell was crouching anxiously 30ft below the frozen German countryside in a tunnel that was 2ft by 2ft, waiting for his turn to break out of Stalag Luft III, the prisoner of war camp now famous as the scene