The Great Escape: The True Story of the Daring WWII Prison Break

The Central Narrative

The true story of the Great Escape is a masterclass in organization, ingenuity, and perseverance. The operation was conceived and led by Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, a South African-born Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot who was captured in 1940. Known as “Big X,” Bushell was a charismatic and ruthless organizer. He envisioned an escape of unprecedented scale—not of two or three men, but of over 200. His objective was clear: “The only reason that God allowed us this extra ration of life is so we can make life hell for the Hun… we will divert the maximum number of troops and equipment from the front line.”

Under Bushell’s command, an “X Organisation” was formed, structuring the entire camp’s escape activities into a covert, highly efficient enterprise. This organization had departments for every conceivable need. There was tunneling, of course, but also security (“stooges” who watched the German guards), forgery (creating hundreds of authentic-looking identity papers and travel permits), tailoring (altering military uniforms into passable civilian clothes), and intelligence (gathering information from new prisoners and bribing friendly guards). The real-life stories of POWs in these departments are remarkable. Canadian Flight Lieutenant Wally Floody, a mining engineer in civilian life, was the master tunnel designer. Fleet Air Arm pilot Al Hake supplied the wood for shoring up the tunnels, scrounged from bed boards and other structures around the camp. American pilot and “scrounger” extraordinaire Lieutenant Bob Stanford acquired crucial tools and materials through a mix of bribery and theft.

The core of the plan involved digging three separate tunnels, codenamed “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry.” This redundancy was crucial; if one was discovered, work could continue on the others. The tunnels were engineering marvels. Dug 30 feet beneath the surface to evade the seismic microphones, they were narrow, just two feet square, and shored up with thousands of wooden boards. A tiny railway system was built to haul sand out of the tunnel, and a brilliant ventilation system, engineered by Flight Lieutenant Bob Nelson, was constructed using Klim powdered milk tins to pump fresh air to the diggers. The sandy soil, while a challenge to shore up, had one advantage: its pale yellow color was easily distinguishable from the grey topsoil of the compound. Dispersing an estimated 100 tons of sand was a major logistical challenge, solved by “penguins”—prisoners who filled small pouches hidden inside their trousers and discreetly scattered the sand around the camp grounds.

In the end, “Tom” was discovered by the Germans and dynamited. Work on “Dick” was halted and its entrance used for storage. All efforts were focused on “Harry.” By March 1944, “Harry” was complete, stretching over 330 feet from under a stove in Hut 104 to the relative safety of the woods beyond the camp’s perimeter fence.

The Night of the Escape

On the freezing, moonless night of March 24, 1944, the escape began. Two hundred men, equipped with forged papers, civilian clothes, and escape rations, lined up. But problems arose immediately. The tunnel exit was found to be short of the tree line, emerging in open view of a sentry tower. This slowed the exit process to a crawl. An Allied air raid caused a power cut in the camp, plunging the tunnel into darkness and halting the vital air pumps. Despite these setbacks, men began to emerge. By 5 a.m., with the sky lightening, the 77th man was spotted by a guard. The alarm was raised. Of the 200 men scheduled to escape, 76 had made it out.

A massive manhunt was immediately launched. The Gestapo and Kripo (criminal police) took control, and an alert was issued across the Third Reich. The escape achieved Bushell’s primary objective: it caused absolute chaos. Thousands of German police, soldiers, and civil servants were pulled from other duties to hunt for the fugitives. However, for the escapers, the odds were grim. They were in a hostile country, hundreds of miles from neutral territory, with limited knowledge of the language and terrain. In the end, only three men made it to complete freedom: Norwegians Per Bergsland and Jens Müller, who reached neutral Sweden by ship, and Dutchman Bram van der Stok, who traveled through occupied Europe to Spain. The other 73 were recaptured within days.

The aftermath was brutal. Enraged by the embarrassment the escape had caused, Adolf Hitler personally ordered that more than half of the recaptured men be executed. In a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions, Gestapo agents took 50 of the recaptured officers to remote locations in small groups and murdered them. The victims came from a dozen different countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Poland, Australia, South Africa, and Norway. This act, known as the “Sagan Murders,” transformed a story of daring into one of cold-blooded atrocity.