The Great Escape: A Canadian Story

279 Pages·2013·3.74 MB·English

by  Ted Barris

About the Author
Ted Barris is an accomplished author, journalist, and broadcaster. As well as
hosting stints on CBC Radio and regular contributions to the Globe and Mail,
the National Post, and various national magazines, he is a full-time professor of
journalism at Centennial College in Toronto. Barris has authored seventeen non-
fiction books. In 2011 he received the Canadian Minister of Veterans’ Affairs
Commendation and in 2012 the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Also by Ted Barris
military history
Behind the Glory: Canada’s Role in the Allied Air War Days of Victory:
Canadians Remember, 1939–1945
(with Alex Barris, 1st edition, 1995) Deadlock in Korea: Canadians at War,
1950–1953
Canada and Korea: Perspectives 2000 (contributor) Juno: Canadians at D-Day,
June 6, 1944
Days of Victory: Canadians Remember, 1939–1945
(Sixtieth Anniversary edition, 2005) Victory at Vimy: Canada Comes of Age,
April 9–12, 1917
Breaking the Silence: Veterans’ Untold Stories from the Great War to
Afghanistan
other non-fiction
Fire Canoe: Prairie Steamboat Days Revisited Rodeo Cowboys: The Last Heroes
Positive Power: The Story of the Edmonton Oilers Hockey Club Spirit of the
West: The Beginnings, the Land, the Life Playing Overtime: A Celebration of
Oldtimers’ Hockey Carved in Granite: 125 Years of Granite Club History
Making Music: Profiles from a Century of Canadian Music (with Alex Barris)
101 Things Canadians Should Know About Canada (contributor)
To air force veteran Charley Fox and military history
buff Dave Zink—both gone now—who challenged me
to properly retell this great, great story.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: “Heroes Resurface”
1 The King’s Regulations
2 Bond of Wire
3 “Spine-Tingling Sport”
4 Escape Season
5 Servant to a Hole in the Ground
6 “Shysters and Crooks and Con Men”
7 The Play’s the Thing
8 “Through Adversity to the Stars”
9 The Hate Campaign
10 Long Road Home
11 “A Proud, Spectacular Distraction”
Notes
Photograph Credits
The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to
reproduce the copyright material in this book. Every effort has been made to
trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright
material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be
grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future
reprints or editions of this book.
The author would like to acknowledge the following for the use of published and
unpublished works as follows: A Gallant Company, Jonathan F. W. Vance,
permission from copyright holder.
Air Force Association video interviews, 1970s and 1989, permission from rights
holders National Air Force Museum of Canada, Trenton.
Bonds of Wire, Kingsley Brown, permission from copyright holder Ethel Alle.
Forced March to Freedom, Robert Buckham, permission from copyright holder
Nancy Buckham.
Frank Sorensen collection, permission from Glenn, Stephen, and Vicki
Sorensen.
Goon in the Block, Don Edy, permission from copyright holder.
In Enemy Hands, Daniel G. Dancocks, permission sought through Hurtig,
Random House.
It’s All Pensionable Time, George Sweanor, permission from copyright holder.
John Colwell diary, permission from copyright holder Harold Johnstone.
John Weir letters, permission from Mrs. Frances Weir.
Lonesome Road, George Harsh, permission from publisher W. W. Norton, New
York.
One Man’s War: Sub Lieutenant R. E. Bartlett, RN Fleet Air Arm Pilot, Stuart E.
Soward, permission from copyright holder Sheila Soward.
Serving and Surviving: An Airman’s Memoirs, John R. Harris, permission from
copyright holder.
The Great Escape, Paul Brickhill, permission from rights holders David Higham
Associates, UK.
The Great Escape, Stalag Luft III (from the original drawings made by Ley
Kenyon 1943), permission from copyright holders RAF Museum, Hendon, UK.
The Tunnel King: The True Story of Wally Floody and the Great Escape,
Barbara Hehner, permission from copyright holder.
They Were So Young, Patricia Burns, permission from copyright holder.
“Tom, Dick and Harry of Stalag Luft III,” Bob Nelson, unpublished manuscript,
permission from Sally Hutchison.
Acknowledgements
THE CONTEMPORARY ROAD to Zagan is nearly as inhospitable and
neglected as it must have been in 1942, when the town became neighbour to a
prisoner-of-war camp. Even when I travelled on it in 2010, most of the one
hundred miles of road southeast of Berlin, primarily in western Poland, didn’t
seem to have ever enjoyed priority status. The post-Soviet-era asphalt was still
as patchy, the lanes still as poorly marked, and the rough countryside terrain still
encroaching the roadside shoulders right to the road surface as it likely had when
the Nazis occupied Poland during the Second World War.
Likewise, the Zagan (the Polish spelling of Sagan) train station at the edge
of town looked as if it hadn’t enjoyed any remodelling since it was built in the
early 1900s. When I walked inside, I could almost see the first wave of Great
Escape fugitives hurrying through ticket queues and platform document checks
by guards in the morning gloom on March 25, 1944, to get aboard the Breslau-
to-Berlin express train without raising suspicion. And the trees—the omnipotent
pine forest to the south—between the railway platforms and the prison camp
looked as dense and claustrophobic as they must have been to the air force
officers trying to escape a generation ago.
When I approached the actual North Compound site at Stalag Luft III, now
overgrown with mature trees, dense underbrush, and weeds, I could see scattered
bricks and concrete pads where the barracks huts had stood on blocks. None of
the buildings remained. I could see the foundations of the infirmary, the cooler,
and the coal store. Beyond it, farther south, I could see the fire pool, the cement
floors of the kitchens (with scorched circles where huge soup cauldrons had
boiled every day). Beyond them lay the brick foundation of the North
Compound theatre (where a fourth tunnel, “George,” has just recently been
unearthed). And finally, on the surface of the still very sandy soil, I walked
along a walkway of crushed stone with wooden borders, just twenty inches wide
(the same width of the tunnel), showing above ground where tunnel “Harry” had
stretched underground—some 336 feet—from the concrete pad beneath Hut 104
to beyond the Stalag Luft III fence, but just short of the woods.