The effort required to accomplish the scheme became one of the most pervasive elements of life at Stalag Luft III. The escape itself would be a dangerous business that relatively few prisoners chose to risk, but of the 10,000 POWs in the camp, nearly half volunteered to participate in the extensive preparations Bushell’s plan called for.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in British Heritage magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

The obstacles separating the prisoners from freedom would have taxed human ingenuity even if the POWs had not been forced to execute their plans covertly. Security, however, demanded that every conversation be spoken in whispers and every preparation undertaken in dark corners. At the same time, German inspections and searches continually interrupted the work.

The sandy local soil presented the prisoners with their most basic problem. Their tunnels caved in almost as fast as the prisoners could dig, unless they braced them up firmly with boards. Fortunately, the Germans constantly enlarged the camp throughout war, and lumber and tools intended for constructing new barracks littered the compound. If the German guards noticed that boards tended to disappear, they did not pass their observations along to their superiors out of fear that they would be punished for their carelessness. Prisoners also collected wood by removing many of the slats beneath the mattresses in their bunks, and fashioned tools from metal condensed milk cans that arrived by the hundreds in Red Cross packages.

Bushell insisted that the prisoners call the three tunnels Tom, Dick, and Harry, so that the guards would never overhear the word ‘tunnel’. Because sentries made regular searches for tunnel entrances, the prisoners took ingenious precautions to disguise them. Tom’s entrance lay beneath the floor of a dimly lit corner of a narrow barracks hallway. A drain in the floor of a washroom disguised Dick’s entrance, so that it was literally underwater. A concrete slab under a stove concealed Harry.

A network of spies called ’stooges’ also kept every possible approach to the entrances under constant surveillance. When sentries–which the prisoners dubbed ‘goons’–came into view, the stooges signalled the tunnellers to abandon their work and seal up the entrances. This war of wits between the stooges and the goons ended in a decisive Allied victory. In nearly a year of almost constant tunnelling, the Germans never once caught the POWs at work.

As worked progressed, Tom, Dick, and Harry evolved from dark holes in the ground into primitive but efficient Tube systems, complete with ‘railway’ tracks, miniature trolley cars, and transfer stations. The prisoners named the stations in tunnel Harry ‘Piccadilly Circus’ and ‘Leicester Square’. They tapped into German electrical lines to light the tunnels, and constructed their own hand-powered pumps and ducts to keep fresh air circulating.

The work of equipping prisoners for their dash to freedom may have been even more ingenious. Forgers duplicated complete sets of identity papers, overlooking no detail that would make the hand-drawn documents look authentic. Every mark on each document had to be painstakingly hand-drawn to simulate typewriting or official stamps and seals. A clandestine photo studio provided identity photos, using a camera donated by a big-hearted guard who believed the prisoners just wanted to send pictures home to their families.

The most intricate documents took forgers a full month to duplicate, but sometimes other skills produced quicker results. The prisoners bribed several of the German guards to supply other needed materials. One guard even agreed to take some blank forms home for his wife to type up.

The clothing needed to make 200 escaped air force officers look like German civilians was made from blankets, altered from service uniforms, and stolen from a camp store. Some material found its way into camp in packages sent by the prisoners’ families. The British intelligence services in England helped out by sending blankets that had been secretly marked with patterns for civilian business suits. The patterns remained invisible until the prisoners moistened the blankets. The captives also received shipments of what appeared at first glance to be fresh R.A.F. outfits, but which were actually cut in the style of German Army uniforms so they could be easily altered.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to