It was the most prolific British escape of the war, and 50 of them were executed in revenge.
Details were first brought to public attention by Paul Brickell in his factually accurate account, and later reached a much wider audience in the star-studded Hollywood blockbuster film, which sacrificed accuracy for drama.
The mastermind of the ''Great Escape'' was Squadron Leader Roger Bushell. (His role in the film was played by Richard Attenborough.) Known to his fellow-camp inmates as ''Big X'', Bushell owed no allegiance to the Geneva Conventions governing surrender in wartime. He regarded himself as still at war with Germany, and what an unconventional war he waged.
Shot down leading his squadron over Dunkirk during his first combat mission in 1940, he escaped three times from various camps and in 1944 after recapture was executed on the personal orders of Hitler. The commander of his execution squad was himself executed after the war as a war criminal, although it might be wondered what the chances of anyone defying a direct order from the Fuhrer actually were.
Bushell was a maverick; a man of his time. Born in South Africa, educated in England at a private school and Cambridge University, he became a successful if unconventional barrister, international skier, and pilot in a squadron of millionaires. He was a member of the gilded generation who barely noticed the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Taken prisoner so early in the war, and with no end to the war in sight or hope of freedom for years, he determined to escape. On one occasion he got close to the Swiss border; on another he spent six months hiding in Prague.
Before his war became active he received training in intelligence techniques, and there are still questions as to whether he might have been involved in the assassination in Czechoslovakia of Reinhard Heydrich, the sadistic Nazi governor. It will probably never be known, but he had come to Hitler's notice and this was to be fatal to his chances of survival.
The breakout from Stalag Luft III was meticulously planned; it was a tribute to Bushell's intelligence. Various things went wrong, as they so often do. It was a miracle the tunnel survived the attentions of the guards for so long.
Bushell comes across as a hard man, an angry man. Could a good-natured, likeable man have achieved as much? Probably not. He is a man who will live in the memory of readers.
- Oliver Riddell is a retired journalist in Wellington.
