Roger Bushell, head of the escape committee, was a master at hiding a deathly serious business with an easy-going smile.
The purge and transfer of 19 Commonwealth air officers away from Stalag Luft III to Belaria, the satellite prison camp, on Feb. 29, 1944, put several key escape committee department heads – Floody, Fanshawe, Brown and Harsh – out of action.
Ironically, the anti-tunnelling guards did not purge Roger Bushell, apparently on the assumption that Big X had disconnected himself from all escape attempts. Indeed, Bushell made certain he was spotted in innocuous pursuits – attending language classes and rehearsing for an upcoming production of “Pygmalion” at the North Compound theatre. In fact, he extolled fellow kriegies to redouble their escape efforts.
With Wally Floody, the original tunnel king, out of the picture, digger Robert Ker-Ramsey took the lead underground in Tunnel “Harry.” Frustrated by the loss of their compatriots, the tunnellers ramped up their workload.
The crew underground doubled with two diggers at the face of the tunnel and two in each of the two halfway houses – Piccadilly and Leicester Square – moving the sand out even faster. Carpenter Jim McCague had assistance preparing timber for shoring up the tunnel walls and Gordie King’s shift on the bellows pumping air through the ventilation system went to 8 hours.
John Colwell, a.k.a. “The Tin Man,” worked above ground making utensils POWs needed, and below ground “disappearing” sand.
Flying Officer John Colwell (below left), a peacetime chicken farmer from Vancouver Island, kept a daily and detailed diary of the kriegies’ experience through this period. “March 1. Six inches of fresh snow. They purged POWs to Belaria on morning appell. March 3. Made a pair of wooden chuppils (sandals). March 4. Made baking pan. Saw a daylight raid by USAAF.”
If his diary references seemed clipped, it’s because F/O Colwell, a.k.a. “The Tin Man,” spent most of these early March days and evenings in his other job, receiving sand through the theatre seat trapdoor and disposing of it beneath the raked floor boards of the North Compound theatre. With the volume of excavated sand multiplying exponentially, Colwell’s crew increased in number tamping the sand into every nook and cranny of the theatre basement. They were “disappearing” upwards of a ton of sand every few days.
In the last days of February, when Tunnel “Harry” was 100 feet short of its completed run underground beyond the wire, the escape committee at Stalag Luft III learned valuable information. One of X Organization’s nemeses, anti-tunnelling guard Unteroffizier Karl Griese, was about to go on leave.
Karl “Rubberneck” Griese, the anti-tunnelling guard at Stalag Luft III.
In the weeks before his rest time away from the compound, Griese (whom the POWs nicknamed “Rubberneck,”) had been snooping more suspiciously than usual around the North Compound barracks. He had periodically ordered impromptu appells, when POWs had to line up across the sports grounds beyond the theatre for roll calls (presumably to catch any kriegies who might be absent and in a tunnel).
In the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between Rubberneck and the POWs, when the spot searches came, the kriegies made sure they dawdled en route to the assembly area, to allow tunnel crews enough time to be pulled from “Harry” and cleaned up before appell.
During this same period – as the end of February approached – Rubberneck sprang a sudden search in Hut 104 (where the entrance to “Harry” was located,) then one in Hut 110. Then, he assembled Wally Floody, George Harsh, Wings Day and Roger Bushell and strip-searched them.
Ley Kenyon’s sketch “The Purge.” Feb. 29, 1944, 19 POWs were marched out of Stalag Luft III to Belaria. (Kenyon sketch with permission)
Then on Feb. 29, 1944 (70 years ago today), Rubberneck delivered a nearly fatal blow to the escape committee before taking his leave. That day, during morning appell, the pesky ferret appeared with 30 additional guards. They called out the names of 19 kriegies, including Floody, Harsh, Peter Fanshawe, Kingsley Brown, MacKinnon “Mac Jarrell, Gordon “Nic Nicholl, Robert Stanford Tuck, Jim Tyrie and Gwyn Martin. The 19 were searched for two hours and then marched under guard through the main gate (no time to retrieve any belongings) and down the road to a satellite POW camp at Belaria for good.
“They just wanted to get rid of us,” Floody said. “But they had a pretty good shot at it, because they got the man in charge of sand dispersal (Fanshawe), the man in charge of security (Harsh), an intelligence specialist (Brown) and myself, a tunnel digger.”
Pengelly knew and used his skills in photography, cartography, calligraphy and bribery.
By the last week of February, Flight Lieutenant Tony Pengelly had been a POW in the German military prison system for three and a half years. Shot down in November 1940 and imprisoned first at Stalag Luft I (at Barth, Germany) and then transferred to Stalag Luft III (near Sagan, Poland) in 1942, Pengelly had graduated from escape committee member-at-large to leading a forgery section. But since he also handled the distribution of Red Cross parcels, Pengelly took on the added duty of using the premium items in the parcels to bribe German guards.
First step, Pengelly said, involved chatting up the guards, comparing family snapshots and exchanging pleasantries. When the Canadian pilot knew his prey might soon be going on leave, he might offer the guard some coffee (something most Germans hadn’t enjoyed since 1936). To further bait the hook, Pengelly might offer some chocolate for the guard’s children. Often that gift drew the offer of a favour from the guard.
“Can I bring you anything from outside?” the guard might ask.
“Yes, if you don’t mind,” Pengelly would say. “I’d like a hundred toothpicks.”
Something that inconsequential would be sufficient the first time, but it was oil for the machine With each trip the guard made, Pengelly might repeat the exchange until it got to be habitual. And having broken the rules once, the “tame” guard wouldn’t likely refuse Pengelly’s requests, fearing the POWs might expose him. Coffee and chocolate yielded a camera, developing and printing equipment, and even the short-term loan of passes and visas.
“It was the psychology of binding a man with a thread,” Pengelly said. “They never foresaw where it led … and we paid them in wartime Europe’s vest currency – food commandeered from our Red Cross parcels.”
Most POWs said they wouldn’t have survived wartime imprisonment were it not for the life-saving contents of the Red Cross parcels.
From its first day of operation in 1942, Stalag Luft III abided by the Geneva Conventions (dating back to 1864) recognizing that air officers in the prison camp did not have to work as force labourers.
And even as late as February 1944, South Compound (imprisoning mostly American air officers) and the North Compound (holding mostly Commonwealth air officers) also received and distributed Red Cross parcels. From their introduction to the POW compounds, the contents of the parcels were pooled so that each officer got roughly an equal ration of parcel foods.
On average, each week, a POW air officer received the equivalent of a full parcel from the U.S., Canada or the U.K. Generally, the parcel contents consisted of basic ingredients (sometimes referred to as “housewife treats”) such as soup, cheese, corned beef, salmon, sardines, raisins, pudding, coffee, tea, butter, jams, biscuits, powdered milk, and occasionally sweets such as chocolate or candy.
Tony Pengelly (right) at Barth where he was just a regular member of X Organization.
Tony Pengelly, a pilot officer from Weston, Ont., fulfilled a number of responsibilities inside the compound, among them handing the distribution of Red Cross parcel contents equally among the kriegies (POWs). But as a key member of X Organization (the escape committee) as well, Pengelly had the authority from Big X (Roger Bushell) over the parcels.
“Each Red Cross parcel received, bore with it a list of contents, and from those lists, Big X commandeered anything he thought the organization could use,” Pengelly said.
When Brendan Shanahan took his turn parading the Cup, it was a bittersweet moment.
On Saturdays, 35 years ago, Brendan Shanahan the former NHL star forward, travelled to minor hockey games in west-end Toronto with his father. On those mornings at the arena, Donal Shanahan carried a newspaper under his arm; before each game “Father Don,” as he was known, would tap Brendan’s boyhood teammates on the head for good luck.
“For all those times … he got up in the morning (and) took me to the rink as a kid and tied my skates … or drove me to tournaments,” Brendan Shanahan told me in 1997, “I owe him.”
And 1997 was the year Shanahan won the Stanley Cup with the Red Wings. It was the first time Detroit had won the Cup in more than 40 years.
The image of Brendan going to the minor hockey rink a generation ago, and kids like him the generation before that, are what I call “Canadian Gothic,” not unlike the 1930s classic American painting by Grant Wood. Only in this case, the two figures are not a farmer’s wife and a farmer with a pitchfork, but rather a father with a hockey stick and a son or daughter with a hockey bag.
That’s Canadian Gothic, a vision and a symbolism I kept imagining all this past week as Canada’s men’s and women’s national hockey teams won gold medals at the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. Contrary to Don Cherry’s rock ’em sock ’em attitude being credited with the Canadian victories, I’d suggest to you that credit for Canada’s hockey gold medals at Sochi should be given to the players’ moms and dads.
Canadian women’s Team Canada.
Case in point. A few months before the women’s hockey Team Canada left for Russia, the team’s sponsor (Procter & Gamble’s “Thank You Moms campaign) arranged a special bonding dinner for the players in Laval, Quebec. My wife – a senior editor for Zoomer magazine – attended the dinner because she’d learned that the team brass had planned something different for the young women players – a surprise visit from the mothers.
The golden feeling went right round the room, as Anne Apps, who had not seen Gillian Apps since training camp in August, heartily embraced her daughter; as Nathalie Saviolidis caught up with her daughter Geneviéve Lacasse so that the two could share conversation about the goaltender’s prospects against the arch-rival Americans; and as veteran player Hayley Wickenheiser and her mom, Marilyn, talked of hers and Team Canada’s pursuit of a fourth straight gold medal.
“I’ve never met so many young women who appear so comfortable in their own skins,” Jayne MacAulay wrote in Zoomer. “Elite hockey, it appears, is a college for confidence and leadership.”
While not exactly the same – because there are fat NHL salaries attached – I remember at the beginning of February, when the Leafs brass continued an annual tradition of bringing the players’ fathers along for a road-trip to Florida; on the junket the fathers watched their sons play the Panthers in Miami and two nights later the Lightning in Tampa Bay. The atmosphere of the trip some likened to a tailgate party, during which the players roomed with their dads, attended father-and-son dinners and did a little fishing. Toronto Star reporter Curtis Rush talked to Randy Carlyle about the value of such an investment.
“It’s an opportunity where we can use (the players’) dads as a catalyst and say, ‘Hey, play well for your father.’”
The record shows that the Leafs got dumped by the Panthers 4-1 on the Tuesday night. But after the hoped-for pep talk from their dads and a couple of days’ R and R, on Thursday night the Leafs came through with a convincing 4-1 win over Tampa.
Parents and coaches volunteering time and support have as much to do with the game as winning.
Over the past five months or so, I’ve carried on something of a tradition in our family. Back before Donal and Brendan Shanahan’s early Saturday trips to the rink in Mimico, back the 1960s, my dad – despite his newspaperman’s late-night hours – accompanied me to the outdoor rink in Agincourt to watch me play early-morning house-league hockey. Two generations later, this winter, I’ve accompanied my son-in-law as we watch his son Sawyer and his teal-jersey Sharks learn the skills of skating, stick-handling and shooting.
“Just like my own minor hockey days back in Agincourt,” I said to my son-in-law, “we learned it wasn’t about winning, but being there.”
Finally, I guess I should point out the irony of Brendan Shanahan’s NHL championship with the Detroit Red Wings in 1997. His traditional victory skate around Joe Louis Arena, that spring night in 1997, must have felt bittersweet.
“I regret that (my dad) wasn’t able to see me play in the NHL,” Brendan Shanahan said, “or watch me win the Stanley Cup.”
“Father Don” Shanahan, who had always “taken his son to the rink” in Brendan’s minor hockey days, died of Alzheimer’s disease six years before his son won the Stanley Cup.
At Stalag Luft III hockey ice surfaces were created on open ground using a bucket brigade to transport water to the fast-freezing ice surface – very Canadian.
During several years of captivity within the German prisoner-of-war system in the Second World War, an invitation to a kriegie (Kreigsgefanganen) to join sports – cricket, baseball or soccer – inside the Stalag compounds was actually an invitation to join the escape committee. But even imprisonment inside Stalag Luft III – 70 years ago, in February 1944 – couldn’t keep the Canadians (and like-minded Commonwealth air officers) away from their ice hockey.
The first skates used inside the prison compound were entirely homemade. Kriegies took angle irons from benches and screwed the steel to the bottoms of their boots. True to his reputation as a scrounger, Canadian officer Barry Davidson helped make the POW hockey experience closer to the real thing.
“I wrote the mayor of Calgary (Canada,)” he said. “They got skates and hockey equipment and sent them to the camp. We flooded our rinks with buckets and they were regular sized rinks, so it was lots of work.”
Hockey sticks were hard to come by and to maintain. And depending on the callibre of the players and the intensity of the play, keeping the hockey sticks in one piece was a challenge. To protect players from injury, some groups came up with special rules, such as only allowing body checks or shot blocks within a certain distance of the net.
However, there were cases of hockey games, indeed of an entire season at Stalag Luft III, coming to an end when the supply of sticks simply ran out.
Barry Davidson earned his private pilot’s licence in the 1930s, joined the RAF, but was shot down and turned his air force skills to scrounging inside Stalag Luft III.
Key to Escape Committee success underground, was a sense of situation normal above ground. Late in February 1944 – as he had done for nearly four years – Canadian Barry Davidson ensured that life among the kriegies didn’t skip a beat. As indicated in his diaries, Pilot Officer Davidson wrote that inside Stalag Luft III he assumed role of a scrounger.
“I tried digging in the tunnels,” he wrote, “but I got claustrophobic.”
So, Davidson went to work managing the contents of the Red Cross parcels – chocolate, coffee, cigarettes – into a war chest of bribery devices that could help his X Organization comrades “tame” North Compound guards. By putting such valuables into the hands of malleable guards, the escape committee could procure the makings of digging tools, the loan of a camera, and raw materials that would become the basis for an arsenal of forged documents.
An avid sportsman as well, Davidson helped secure sports gear – tennis rackets, baseballs and bats, and – for the winter of 1944 – hockey sticks and skates. Because of his contacts, Davidson helped authorities import hockey gear from the YMCA and Morgan’s department store back in Canada.
The equipment provided kriegies some welcome recreation in a game they loved, but the hardwood from hockey sticks also burned long and hot in the barracks stoves and used skate blades often enjoyed a second life as a cutting/digging tool for the tunnellers. Thus, as the ground froze above the tunnellers, out in the appell/playground, the product of Davidson’s scrounging generated scores of hockey games, making life inside Stalag Luft III look normal … even as Tunnel “Harry” moved closer to completion.
Al Wallace never calls himself a hero, though he survived being shot down, 18 months a POW and the long march to freedom in 1945.
By Feb. 24, 1944, the 2,000 Commonwealth air officers penned inside Stalag Luft III had worked out a foolproof method of disposing of excavated sand from “Harry,” the tunnel through which the Kriegsfefangenen “kriegies” (prisoners of war) hoped to escape in a matter of weeks.
Torontonian, Albert Wallace, 22, had completed 15 operations as a mid-upper gunner aboard a Halifax bomber in RCAF 419 Squadron, when he was shot down in May 1943. After being processed into Stalag Luft III, he found himself assigned to Room 23 in Hut 104, within eye-shot of the entrance to Tunnel “Harry.” Except he didn’t find that fact out for some weeks. That’s how well kept the secret was.
Eventually, as part of the escape committee, Wallace worked as a penguin, hiding excavated sand in his pants to be dumped wherever the subsurface yellow sand could be scuffed into the white surface sand. His destination that winter was more obvious than the Germans figured.
“I remember going into the theatre one night with my bags full of sand,” Wallace said. “I was told where to sit because that’s where the trapdoor was. I sat in seat number 13, pulled my little tickies and out went the sand.”
On an exceptional day that winter, the penguins disposed of 12 tons of sand that way.
This sketch of the North Compound theatre came from the diary of P/O Barry Davidson, aka “the scrounger.”
Left idle throughout the fall of 1943, Tunnel “Harry” by Feb. 23, 1944, has been reactivated for six weeks. The Escape Committee had decided to institute the autumn digging hiatus because the German anti-tunnelling guards (“the ferrets”) had discovered the Tunnel “Tom” in September. So POWs at Stalag Luft III calculated, by calling a halt to tunnel excavation, they could lull the compound guards into believing they’d nipped the kriegies’ tunnelling efforts in the bud.
However, when work on “Harry” began again in January, a new problem loomed. Previously, “penguins” (POWs packing excavated sand down their pant legs and dispersing the yellow excavated sand into white surface sand) had “disappeared” the sand out in the compound. But with winter snow on the ground, there was no place to hide “Harry’s” deposits.
The air officers of X Organization (the escape committee) hit on a new repository for the sand. The North Compound theatre – built in the summer of 1943 – had a different structure than most buildings in the compound. It wasn’t built on stilts like the barracks huts. It had a bricked in, enclosed basement.
And beneath the raked floor boards of the main theatre lay a beckoning space … room for whatever excavated sand “Harry” could deliver. In addition to the regular carpentry work that went into weekly productions staged at the theatre, crews installed a hidden trapdoor at seat 13 in the 300-seat theatre. That trap would allow penguins to unload even more sand, more quickly and less conspicuously into the basement of the theatre.
“The theatre was a lifesaver,” one Stalag Luft III POW said. While the kriegies staged Shakespeare and Shaw on the proscenium stage in front of audiences that included German officers, beneath the raked floor of the theatre, excavated sand from “Harry” was packed into every nook and cranny. Eventually, 30-50 tons of sand was stashed beneath the most popular location in the North Compound.
Wally Floody dug 48 tunnels in attempts to escape Stalg Luft I, but his Tunnel “Harry” at Stalag Luft III delivered 80 POWs under the wire.
For those related to the men of the Great Escape and those working to ensure we always remember, I offer a countdown to the 70th anniversary: “30 Days to the Great Escape.”
By Feb. 22, 1944, Tunnel “Harry,” the third and most sophisticated excavation from inside Stalag Luft III, had advanced more than 200 feet from its trapdoor entrance beneath a stove in Hut 104 of the North Compound… north under the wire towards the pine forest outside the wire.
Since arriving at the German POW camp, 2,000 downed Commonwealth air officers within the North Compound had re-established X Organization (the escape committee) and launched full-scale escape operations, including the excavation of three tunnels 30 feet down and more 300 feet out.
By late February, Wally Floody, the tunnel king, had even constructed one halfway house (a widening of the tunnel) to allow digging crews more working space. Since being shot down in October 1941, fighter pilot Floody, now 25, had dug more than 50 tunnels during his three years of imprisonment. The Canadian tunnel king summed up his work:
“First, you’ve got to find a place to sink a shaft,” he said. “Next, you’ve got to build a tunnel very deep so the Germans can’t hear any digging. You’ve got to dispose of the sand. And most important, you’ve got to be able to do all this under the very noses of the Germans.”
