Submitted by Ron Cameron
During WWII the Nazis built many Prisoner of War (POW) camps in Europe. Stalag Luft III was one of those camps, and it was built near Sagan, Poland. There are many terrific stories involvingCanadians in WWII. The Great Escape from Stalag Luft III is one of those stories, and the Drayton Valley area has a connection to it. Bill Cameron (my uncle), who grew up just west of Rocky Rapids, was one of 80 prisoners who, on March 24, 1944, escaped from Stalag Luft III.This escape is known as The Great Escape, and in 1964 a movie with that title was made in the U.S. The Hollywood celebrities who starred in the film were some of the biggest names of that era including Steve McQueen, James Garner, James Coburn, and Charles Bronson.
Like most WWI and WWII veterans, Uncle Bill did not talk much about WWII. So the story that follows is partly based on the few details that he shared with some of his siblings, and partly from a book by Ted Barris called “The Great Escape – A Canadian Story” (published in 2013). This is a terrific story and I highly recommend it.
Uncle Bill was a fighter pilot in WWII, and he flew Spitfire aircraft. In August of 1943 he was shot down over Tunisia and was captured by the Italians who handed him over to the Germans. Along with many other prisoners, he was stuffed into a railroad cattle car with no food, no water, and no bathroom facilities, and sent to Stalag Luft III. His family was notified by telegram that Bill had been shot down and was missing, and was presumed dead. It was six months before his family would get word that he was still alive. But shortly after his family got the good news that Bill was still alive, they got the bad news that Bill’s younger brother, Neil, had been killed in action in Italy. And just a few months after that they got the news that another brother, Dave, who was serving in the Canadian Army in France, had been shot in the stomach and was grievously wounded.
Stalag Luft III was divided into three different compounds which held a total of almost eleven thousand POWs, all of them being Allied air force personnel. Many of the POWs were determined to escape, and several different escape attempts were made. A British Air Force officer named Roger Bushell came up with the idea of digging a tunnel that would start inside one of the huts, go underneath the fence that surrounded the compound, and out into the forest that was just outside the fence. This evolved into the idea of digging three tunnels (each originating in a different hut), the reason being that the POWs believed it was highly likely that the Germans would find at least one of the tunnels, but they would never suspect that there were actually three tunnels being dug. This made it much more likely that at least one of the tunnels would be successful. There were only about six hundred airmen involved in the actual digging of the tunnels. The remaining POWs were not even aware that the tunnels were being dug. We do not know how it was that Uncle Bill became involved in the tunneling.
As the POWs had suspected, the Germans did suspect that a tunnel was being dug, and they managed to find one of the three tunnels. That left the POWs to continue work on the other two tunnels, and it took about a year before one of them was completed in March, 1944. The POW’s wanted to wait until the weather warmed up a little before they attempted the escape, but they became worried that the Germans suspected that there might be another tunnel. So on the night of March 24, 1944, eighty airmen were able to escape through the tunnel and get outside the fence. Uncle Bill was the 62nd prisoner who got out. But as fate would have it, just as the last few prisoners emerged from the tunnel, a German guard caught them and sounded the alarm. So eighty prisoners got out of the tunnel, but only seventy six got away. Of that number, only three were able to get back behind Allied lines – the other seventy three were recaptured.
March of 1944 was unusually cold and the escapees did not have much in the way of clothing. Uncle Bill became hypothermic and was unable to keep on moving, so the other airmen that he was running with had to leave him behind. The Germans found him three days after the escape, and he did not try to put up any resistance when they caught him.
Hitler was livid when he was told that there had been an escape from Stalag Luft III, and he issued the Sagan Order which decreed that all of the escapees who were recaptured were to be shot. For some reason Air Marshal Hermann Goering protested the order, so it was amended to say that more than half of the escapees were to be shot. The Gestapo determined that the phrase “more than half” meant fifty, so Area Commander Arthur Nebe was given the job of deciding who would live and who would die. It is not known exactly how he made his choices, but it appears that he chose to execute those who did not have a family and were a little older (although none of the escapees were actually very old). Uncle Bill was only twenty three, so his relatively young age probably saved his life. Also, he thought that perhaps two other factors had saved him – he did not put up any resistance when he was captured, and, unlike some of those who were recaptured, he did not speak any German.
After WWII, Uncle Bill was shipped home to Canada where he got married and raised a family. He died in 2000 at the age of 80 years.
Those of us who have come after Uncle Bill’s generation have been able to live a life filled with freedom and opportunity, in large part due to the sacrifices that Uncle Bill and all the other veterans of WWI and WWII made. On Remembrance Day, let us pause to remember what they did for all of us.
