War hero is gone but not forgotten
The night of March 24/25 marked the 80th anniversary of the March 1944 mass escape, known as the Great Escape, of 76 Allied airmen held captive in the German Stalag Luft III prison camp.
This anniversary is particularly relevant to Ekurhuleni residents because the leader of the escape, Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, was born in Springs as the son of a mining engineer.
This mining background stood Bushell in good stead when he planned how to dig three escape tunnels from Stalag Luft III. These tunnels had the codenames Tom, Dick and Harry.
Bushell decided to have multiple tunnels dug so that even if the prison camp guards found one, escape work could continue on the two remaining tunnels.
An idea of the scale of the tunnelling work is visible from the line drawing below of the Stalag Luft III North Compound from which the Great Escape took place.
Tom was discovered within a few metres of completion, and the Dick was used to store the sand excavated from Harry.
Harry, at 130 feet (39.62m) when completed, was the longest prison camp escape tunnel ever dug.
Bushell had hoped 200 prisoners could escape at once, but Harry proved shorter than planned, and the tunnel’s exit was close to a guard tower. The forged pass documents prepared for the escape had already been date-stamped and could not be used the next month.
The escape’s leaders, therefore, decided to proceed with the mass escape as scheduled. Bushell arranged for the first escapee to hide in the trees beyond Harry’s exit and tug on a rope whenever the coast was clear.
Unfortunately, after only 76 prisoners had escaped the alarm was raised. Of these prisoners, all but three were recaptured, and 50, including Bushell, were executed. The Great Escape, however, succeeded in its primary goal of diverting enemy resources from the war effort.
An estimated five million Germans were deployed to trace and recapture the escapees. By this measure, it is arguable that Bushell was the greatest individual contributor below the high command level to the Allied victory in World War II.
After The Great Escape, the Stalag Luft III prisoners of war began digging a fourth tunnel, named George, from beneath the North Compound theatre. However, before they used George, Russian troops liberated Stalag Luft III.
There are two films about The Great Escape. The first is an award-winning film of 1963 titled The Great Escape.
The second, made in 1988, is titled The Great Escape II: The Untold Story. One of the subplots in Steven Spielberg’s 2024 miniseries, Masters of the Air, about American daytime bomber missions over Germany in World War II, deals with the experiences of US airmen held captive in Stalag Luft III.
Information on accessing the films and the miniseries during a TV streaming service’s seven-day free trial is available here.
About the author – Peter Griffiths
Peter lives in Boksburg with his wife, Cindy, and his two adult sons, Conway and Brogan. He is qualified to teach English literature and history at Grade 12 level but has spent most of his working life as a technical writer in the IT sector.
Peter has been the chairperson of the East Rand Military History Society since 2014 and is interested in using computer technology to bring history to life for future generations.
