Great Escape

The Great Escape An e-book Based on the

TV programme In the series Nova on PBS ( At the end of the programme script, you will find the accounts of some great escapes in the history.)

The real Great Escape didn't feature Steve McQueen racing through the Third Reich on a motorcycle like in the 1963 movie, but the big breakout was still thrilling in every way. This program sheds new light on the audacious escape of 76 Allied airmen from a Nazi POW camp during World War II. Sixty years after the event, NOVA follows a team of archeologists as they search the site of Stalag Luft III for new evidence of the clandestine operation, which involved 600 prisoners digging three highly sophisticated tunnels, code-named Tom, Dick, and Harry. Each tunnel was made with railways, electric lights, and underground air pumps—all under the noses of German guards. The detainees were planning to spring 200 men via Harry on the moonless night of March 24, 1944. Unfortunately, a guard spotted the 77th man as he exited the tunnel beyond the perimeter fence, but 76 managed to get away, fanning out in all directions and forcing the German army to commit tens of thousands of troops to an intensive manhunt. In the ensuing search through the camp to shut down all tunnels, the guards never found Dick. But archeologists did, and NOVA films them uncovering the cleverly concealed entrance, hidden at the bottom of a washroom sump behind a concrete trapdoor that is still in place. "Yes, I remember going down there about 60 years ago," reminisces Jimmy James, a former RAF pilot who is one of several Great Escape veterans to visit the excavation. Incredibly, the tunnels were 30 feet deep—the height of a three-story house—a measure taken to evade German listening devices planted in the ground to detect tunneling activity. Another challenge was the nearly pure sand through which tunnelers had to dig; the airmen used wooden supports to keep the passages from collapsing. Wood was in short supply at the camp and had to be scrounged from bed slats and by cannibalizing the barracks. "Those poor barracks: I wondered why they didn't fall down, because all the bracing in the attics was practically taken out," recalls Charles Huppert, a U.S. airman from Indiana. Getting rid of sand also presented a problem, which was solved by "penguins"—prisoners equipped with special trouser bags filled with sand that could be discreetly scattered as the men waddled around the camp. Tunnelers were equally creative in utilizing empty milk cans to construct tools and ductwork for the ventilation system. (For more on the tunnel. To prepare for life on the lam, teams made insignias for escape clothes and forged elaborate identity papers, evidence of which turns up in the excavation of tunnel Dick. Future escapees were also organized into small groups, each headed by a fluent speaker of German. Although Stalag Luft III was located in eastern Germany, in what is now Poland, hundreds of miles from friendly territory, three men managed to cross most of Europe and make it to freedom. As for the 73 who were recaptured, 23 were returned to German camps, and tragically, 50 were summarily shot in violation of the Geneva Convention as Hitler's revenge against those who dared to break out of his "escape proof" prison.

Great Escape The Three That Got Away by Alan Burgess

Editor's Note: On the night of March 24-25, 1944, 76 Allied prisoners of Stalag Luft III, a German prison camp in Sagan, 100 miles southeast of Berlin, escaped through a tunnel named "Harry." Within days most were recaptured. An outraged Hitler had 50 of them shot, an appalling abrogation of the Geneva Convention, to which Germany was a signatory. Twenty-three were reincarcerated. Only three made it all the way to freedom— a Dutchman and two Norwegians, all flyers with the British Royal Air Force. Here's their remarkable story, which begins at the Sagan railway station. For locations of relevant towns, consult our map. Alone to Breslau Flight Lieutenant Bram van der Stok had managed to get out of Holland when the Nazis invaded, and had flown with the RAF during those first months of the war. Because of his zeal for escaping, his intelligence, his familiarity with the countryside, and his gift for languages, the Escape Committee [formed by prisoners at Stalag Luft III] had rated his chances of making a home run very highly, and he was among the first 20 through the tunnel. He was traveling alone. Cautiously he made his way through the woods, and almost bumped into a dark figure. It was a German civilian who said sharply, "What are you doing in these woods at this time of night?" Bram van der Stok had rehearsed his reply to that question. "I'm a Dutch worker. I'm afraid the police might arrest me for being out-of-doors during an air raid. Do you speak Dutch? I'm a bit scared." The German did not speak Dutch, but Bram van der Stok's cover was perfect; the civilian took him under his wing. "I know the way to the station. You stick with me and you'll be all right." At the station he left Bram to his own devices, and the first thing Bram discovered was that the heavy raid on Berlin had delayed his train by three hours. Bram wished someone

could have told the chief of Bomber Command what trouble he was causing his fellow air force men. He then observed one of the German censors at the camp. He knew her slightly by sight; he hoped to God she didn't know him. But she was suspicious of one of the men on the platform, whom Bram recognized as Thomas Kirby-Green [a British pilot who was later recaptured at Hodonin in Czechoslovakia and shot on March 29]. If the police picked him up they would be alerted at once. He hardly dared look around—the station was full of Stalag Luft III escapers. He saw eight fellow escapers from Sagan, but not even by the flutter of an eyebrow did he offer a sign of recognition. And—oh, hell—she was telling an officer of the German military police to go accost Kirby-Green, and demand to see his papers. Then he became conscious that the bright female eyes were fixed on him. Bram van der Stok moved closer, not farther away. The only way to counter suspicion was to face it. One thing the Escape Committee had not taken into consideration was a female Sherlock Holmes sitting in the Sagan station. Her question was abrupt. "You are traveling tonight?" At least he was comfortable with his German. "Yes, I'm Dutch—you can probably tell from my accent." "You know the trains are running late?" "Yes, I understand that is so." Bram gave a quick glance at Kirby-Green. He was putting his papers away. The military policeman was satisfied. Thank God for that. "There are many strangers around these days," said Bram equably. That seemed to satisfy her. She had done her duty as a good German woman. The train for Breslau arrived at 3:30 a.m. Bram van der Stok traveled second-class. He saw eight fellow escapers from Sagan, among them Roger Bushell and Bernard Scheidhauer, but not even by the flutter of an eyebrow did he offer a sign of recognition. They chugged into Breslau station at 5:00 a.m. There was no bustle of security, no groups of Gestapo or military police with hard watchful eyes. The tunnel hadn't been discovered ... yet!

Safely to Stettin

Sergeant Peter Bergsland was Norwegian. When the Germans invaded his country he fled to England. There he joined the RAF, was shot down, and duly arrived at Stalag Luft III. Sergeant Bergsland and his partner, fellow countryman Lieutenant Jens Müller, also with the RAF, decided to team up for the Sagan escape. They headed for Stettin, where Swedish ships regularly docked and departed. Both spoke perfect Swedish. They came out of the tunnel as Numbers 43 and 44, and Müller was surprised at the ease of passage through Harry. His report to Intelligence explained what had happened: "It took me three minutes to get through the tunnel. Above ground I crawled along holding the rope for several feet: it was tied to a tree. Sergeant Bergsland joined me; we arranged our clothes and walked to the Sagan railway station. "Bergsland was wearing a civilian suit he had made for himself from a Royal Marine uniform, with an RAF overcoat slightly altered with brown leather sewn over the buttons. A black RAF tie, no hat. He carried a small suitcase which had been sent from Norway. In it were Norwegian toothpaste and soap, sandwiches, and 163 reichsmarks given to him by the Escape Committee. "We caught the 2:04 train to Frankfurt an der Oder. Our papers stated that we were Norwegian electricians from the Arbeitslager [labor camp] in Frankfurt working in the vicinity of Sagan. For the journey from Frankfurt to Stettin we had other papers ordering us to change our place of work from Frankfurt to Stettin, and to report to the Bürgermeister of Stettin." They were now inside the docks, and they had to get out. The journey was uneventful. They traveled in a thirdclass carriage full of civilians and looked like any ordinary travelers. They arrived at Frankfurt at 6:00 in the morning, and caught a connecting train to Küstrin at 8:00 a.m. They had a beer in the station cafe, and while they were sipping, the first inspection took place. A wandering German Feldwebel [sergeant] of the military police approached them. He looked at the cheerful, fresh-faced young men who spoke excellent German with a Norwegian accent, gave their papers a cursory examination, touched his cap, and departed. Bergsland and Müller clinked mugs, smiled, and drank up. They caught the 10:00 a.m. train from Küstrin to Stettin and arrived at lunchtime.

To Sweden through a brothel

"We walked around the town, visited a cinema and a beer hall, and after dusk went to an address given to us by the Escape Committee. "It was a French brothel bearing the inscription 'Nur fur Ausländers—Deutschen verboten' ['Only for foreigners— Germans forbidden']. We knocked on the door. As we did so a Pole who was standing on the street approached us and asked us if we had any black-market wares for sale. We asked him if he knew any Swedish sailors. He fetched one out of the brothel. We made our identity known, talking in Swedish, and he told us that his ship was leaving that night and to meet us at 20:00 hours outside the brothel." The Swede was as good as his word, and was waiting for them when they returned. He led them to the docks, and told them to duck under a chain while he reported to the Control Office. He would then go aboard, wait for an all clear, and then whistle them to come aboard. They waited in vain. No signal was given. Seamen cast off the ropes and they watched the ship set sail down the channel. They could hazard a guess that he probably tried to enlist help to get them aboard, and was probably told by his friends that one was likely to end up in a Nazi concentration camp if caught. They were now inside the docks, and they had to get out. The best meeting place in town was obviously the brothel, if they could get through. They decided to take a chance; the officer at Control hardly bothered to glance at their papers. But disappointingly the brothel was a no-nonsense establishment, and closed its doors at 2:00 a.m. The area itself, however, was certainly populated by seamen; and they looked like seamen. Small cafes were open; small, sordid hotels did business. They had a meal and paid for a room in one of the hotels. They had taken part in one of the most momentous escapes in history; they'd taken their chances and gotten away with it. They were already asleep as their heads fell towards the pillows, and did not wake until four o'clock the following afternoon. Müller looked across at Bergsland and grinned. "Another visit to 17 Klein Oder Strasse, I think." They arrived at the brothel at six, and met two more Swedish sailors coming out through the door. They were affable when the two Norwegians explained their difficulties. "Ja," they said. "You come, catch the tram with us and we go back to our docks. Four miles out near Parnitz." By that time it was 8:30 and getting dark. The Swedish sailors slouched up to the German soldier on guard, showing their papers, the two Norwegians close behind. The guard was helpful. "All part of the same crew?" he inquired, and they nodded vigorously. He stood aside to let them pass, not even asking them for papers.

Safely on deck, the Swedes slapped them on the back, and said, "Not bad, eh? Now we've got to hide you because the ship doesn't sail until seven tomorrow morning, and there's bound to be a German search before we sail." When they reached Sweden they shook hands and gave a whoop for joy. Two out of 76 had reached freedom. Their hiding place was the anchor locker holding the great coiled chain. In one corner was a pile of netting and sacks. The sailors heaved it aside and formed a sort of inner nest. "Now you can sleep. But don't be snoring when the Germans arrive tomorrow morning. Usually they don't have dogs. Dogs don't like climbing up and down thin steel companion ladders." Hours later Bergsland and Müller heard the Germans tramping towards them; the hatch was thrown open and closed again; the search was perfunctory. The feet stamped away. Half an hour later the propellers began to thrash water and they felt the ship begin to move. Their two friends came down with food and drink, and the smell of sea coming in through the hawseholes in the bow was like an elixir of freedom. When they reached Sweden they shook hands and gave a whoop for joy, for it was a small victory for them. Then they went to find the British consulate. Two out of 76 had reached freedom. All the way to Gibraltar Bram van der Stok sat on a bench in the Breslau railway station and pretended to doze. He believed that "he travels fastest who travels alone." He was wearing civilian clothes— at least they looked like that, although they were in fact an Australian air force overcoat and a converted naval jacket and trousers, RAF shoes, and a beret. He bought a second-class ticket to Alkmaar, boarded the train, and at 10:00 a.m. arrived in Dresden, where he had a long layover. He dozed in two cinemas until 8:00 p.m., then went back to the station to catch a train to the Dutch border at Bentheim. He realized that the tunnel had been discovered, and the hunt was on, because his papers were carefully scrutinized on four occasions. At the frontier post his papers were examined again, but now it was easier. His Dutch was, naturally, perfect, and his papers were in order. He traveled by train to Oldenzaal, then on to Utrecht. Here the Escape Committee had given him the address of an underground resistance worker. The man welcomed him, gave him fake identity papers and ration cards, and kept him safe in his home for three days. But there was no victory yet. Holland was part of Germany's conquered Europe; informers and spies were everywhere. Bram van der Stok still had to move fast. He traveled by bicycle to another safe house in Belgium, where he was given Belgian identity papers, then on by train through Brussels and Paris. More false papers and south again to Toulouse, and now he was installed in the Maquis resistance chain [the French resistance]. He met up with two American lieutenants, two RAF pilots, a French officer, a

Russian, and a French girl who acted as a guide. Together they crossed the Pyrenees and arrived in Lérida. The Spanish were neutral, but not necessarily friendly. The British consul took them over in Lérida, and Bram van der Stok arrived in Gibraltar on July 8. His escape journey had taken almost three and a half months. He was back in England within a few days, the third to make a home run.

Great Escape The script of the TV programme PBS Airdate: November 16, 2004 NARRATOR: On a cold night in March, 1944, captured Allied airmen broke out from a secret tunnel from a prison camp the Nazis thought was escape-proof. Their breakout was immortalized in The Great Escape, a famous movie, starring Steve McQueen. The group of airmen had spent months digging three tunnels to freedom. A few of the men are alive today to tell the tale. DAVY JONES (Former Prisoner, Stalag Luft III): If you're claustrophobic, you're in deep trouble; you're in Stygian darkness and 30 feet of sand. And that's when you kind of wondered sometimes, "What in the hell am I doing here?" JACK LYON (Former Prisoner, Stalag Luft III): The atmosphere was fraught with...We knew that the Germans were certain that there was a tunnel, and the gamble was who would get there first, the Germans or us? The Germans to find it, or us to get out? NARRATOR: As a cat and mouse game, it was deadly serious, with the Nazis determined to make escape impossible. Sixty years later, archaeologists have located the remains of the camp, and are trying to recover some of the ingenious devices made by the P.O.W.s. PETER DOYLE (Battlefield Archaeologist): Somebody's made that to escape from this camp. And it's there, it's hidden. And we're the only people to have seen this since 1945. NARRATOR: Where prisoners once used bare hands, archaeologists will use backhoes to hunt for a secret escape tunnel the Germans never found. With veterans who worked on the tunnels watching, the excavation will reveal the incredible exploits of the prisoners. CHARLES HUPPERT (Former Prisoner, Stalag Luft III): I never felt in my lifetime I'd ever get to see something like this. DAVY JONES: I never did, either.

LARRY BABITS (Battlefield Archaeologist): For them to do that with 30 feet of sand above them, you come away with a lot of respect for those guys. NARRATOR: Up next on NOVA, a classic tale of courage and ingenuity, the real Great Escape. Major funding for NOVA is provided by the Park Foundation, dedicated to education and quality television. Science: it's given us the framework to help make wireless communications clear. Sprint is proud to support NOVA. We see one small step on Mars. Microsoft is proud to sponsor NOVA for celebrating the potential in us all. And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS stations from viewers like you. Thank you. NARRATOR: Beneath the trees of this forest, tangled in the roots, lie the clues to a dark past. This was the site of Stalag Luft III, one of the most notorious prisoner of war camps run by the Nazis. At the height of the Second World War, these woods echoed with the sound of young Allied airmen who had been shot down over enemy territory. They came from Holland and Poland, Canada and Scandinavia, Britain and the United States. They shared a common goal, to escape at any cost. And what they planned here was the boldest mass escape of all, the "Great Escape." The story begins in 1942, when the Allied bombing offensive over Nazi-occupied territories was intensifying. The aircrews flying these missions knew their chances of being shot down were high. If they survived bailing out, they were usually caught. One of these flyers was a highly decorated bomber pilot from Arizona, Davy Jones. DAVY JONES: I was in North Africa, in Tunisia, and I was hit by flak, pretty well tore the airplane up. But all the crew were able to evacuate the airplane, if they weren't thrown out. And within 20 minutes, as we walked north, a squad of German infantrymen appeared, and the classic words, "for you, the war is over." NARRATOR: Davy Jones, along with the rest of his crew, was transported to Germany to become a prisoner of war. JONATHAN VANCE (University of Western Ontario): The Germans had hundreds of thousands of Allied prisoners of war to deal with, many more than they ever expected. And they were hoping that they could put them all in massive camps and just leave them be. Unfortunately for the Germans, these airmen were not willing to sit by quietly, and so they became a rather serious escape problem. So around about 1942, the Germans

decided, well, maybe we should take all of these troublemakers and put them in one place. NARRATOR: The Germans created a top security camp, called Stalag Luft III. Built near the town of Sagan, in German-occupied Poland, the camp's location was ideal. Any escapees would have to travel hundreds of miles to reach freedom. It was designed to be the Nazi's most escape-proof prison. Huts were raised off the ground, so that the guards could spot any tunneling activity. And the perimeter fence was built far away from the buildings, so tunnels would have to be even longer. Most escapes failed, but one would make Stalag Luft III famous forever. Today, the scattered remains of the camp have been found in this forest. Beneath the ground, archaeologists hope to discover traces of a tunnel dug for the mass breakout. It's the first time Stalag Luft III has been excavated, and the goal is to recover material evidence of the battle of wits that lead to the Great Escape. PETER DOYLE: There's absolutely no doubt that we've simply come across from there. LARRY BABITS: So now we're here. PETER DOYLE: This one to this one. Okay. And so this... NARRATOR: Peter Doyle and Larry Babits, the team leaders, are using aerial photographs and maps left behind by the prisoners. They've located the remains of a hut, beneath which, they believe, lies a secret tunnel. PETER DOYLE: We've got the shaft down. We know, we know we've got this chamber right beneath the building, and we know that all we've got is a very small tunnel. NARRATOR: The tunnel is thought to be 30 feet down, so it's going to be hard to find. They will need to dig a massive hole. Peter and Larry hope that the dig will bring them closer to understanding what motivated the men of Stalag Luft III to tunnel their way to freedom. LARRY BABITS: The psychology of being a prisoner is you're more interested in the stuff that's outside, right? Getting out. And we're trying to get in, in a manner of speaking. Not, not just into the camp and find things, but get into the mind of the people who were here, because archaeologists are really looking at what people were doing. NARRATOR: Most P.O.W.s were obsessed with finding the best way out. One of them was Charles Huppert, a pilot from Indiana, who still thinks about escape.

CHARLES HUPPERT: The first thing I always look at, even today, when I go in a room, I stop at the door, I go in and look if there is any other exits. You never know what's going to happen. NARRATOR: In fact, escape attempts were the obligation of every Allied officer. JIMMY JAMES (Former Prisoner, Stalag Luft III): You were not out of the war. You were still fighting for your country, you were in uniform. And although you weren't in the firing line, it was still your duty to carry the war on as best you could. NARRATOR: Individual escapes were an irritation to the Germans, but a mass breakout could tie up thousands of troops. In January, 1943, former skiing champion, Roger Bushell, began plotting the ultimate escape. The plan was to dig three tunnels simultaneously, code-named "Tom," "Dick," and "Harry." If one were discovered, there would still be two in reserve. The tunnels would need to be dug over 300 feet long, to pass under the perimeter wire and into the forest 20 feet beyond it. This would allow 200 people to escape on a single night. Hiding such a massive operation from the watchful eyes of the German guards would not be easy. The prisoners devised early warning signals to alert each other whenever guards approached. British bombardier Alan Bryett was one of those signalers. ALAN BRYETT (Former Prisoner, Stalag Luft III): On Monday, the sign would be that you would start playing with your left-hand shoelace, and the following day it would you'd be playing with your ear, as though you'd got something wrong with your ear. And the third day, it might be you're overtaken with coughing, you know? All quite simple, common things—they were quite surreptitious. I mean, it was done very, very cleverly, and never let us down, never let us down. NARRATOR: Playing cat and mouse with the German guards became a way of life for prisoners like Walter Morison. WALTER MORISON (Former Prisoner, Stalag Luft III): It was a game, a sport. It was more like a sort of traditional English field sport in its way. It was played by the rules, both sides understood them. NARRATOR: Because of the Geneva Convention, escaped prisoners were not overly concerned about getting caught. JONATHAN VANCE: Under the Geneva Convention, which was the international agreement which covered the treatment of P.O.W.s, there was simply a short prison sentence stipulated if you escaped and were recaptured. Typically, you would have 10 days in solitary confinement. The prisoners and the guards, they were, obviously, on opposite sides, and they were doing whatever they could to frustrate each other, but I think there was a, a considerable degree of respect between the two sides.

NARRATOR: Prisoners often fraternized with their guards, who were from the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe. One even appeared in a play. But the jolly interplay between both sides would not last forever. What began as a game became deadly serious. In the spring of '43, the prisoners started work on their tunnels. To avoid being seen underneath the huts, they cut through the building supports and made clever disguises for the tunnel entrances. "Tom" went from the dark corner of a hut corridor; "Harry" began under a stove. A tiled base was lifted to one side, revealing the top of a tunnel shaft. "Dick" started in a washroom beneath the drain cover. Hiding the tunnel entrance in a sump where dirty water collected was a master stroke. The Germans never did find "Dick." But perhaps the archaeologists will have more luck. PETER DOYLE: The thing that started it right here, I think are again trying to get the terracotta pipes... NARRATOR: In the remains of the washroom where they think "Dick" began, they've uncovered what looks like a drainage sump. They want to find clues that confirm this is no ordinary washroom drain. The water at the bottom of the sump was a brilliant disguise for the tunnel entrance. It made the trap door to Dick almost invisible. The prisoners made their own movable concrete slab, which slid out when they needed to climb down the tunnel shaft. Just a few inches below the surface, the archaeologists discover something that makes their heart skip a beat. LARRY BABITS: But what is it? I mean, it's... PETER DOYLE: It's got a rounded...It's actually got rounded edges to it. Just lift it. Just tip that out. Oh, no, look at that. LARRY BABITS: This is so... PETER DOYLE: It's that wide, so it's the width of the sump. LARRY BABITS: This was the door in the sump. PETER DOYLE: It's got to be, hasn't it? NARRATOR: Immediately, Larry and Peter grasp the significance of what is no ordinary concrete slab. LARRY BABITS: This is the door. This is the door! PETER DOYLE: That is amazing. So this... LARRY BABITS: Wow.

PETER DOYLE: This proves it's here, doesn't it? There's no doubt. LARRY BABITS: Wow. NARRATOR: Once the prisoners had created the trapdoors, they were ready to start digging the tunnels, but there was a major problem to overcome. The experience of guarding Allied troublemakers had taught the German guards to be vigilant. They even buried microphones around the perimeter of the camp to detect digging. This forced the prisoners to dig a vertical shaft, 38 feet down before tunneling out toward freedom deep enough to be out of range of the microphones. This was no job for claustrophobics. Ken Rees was one of the first to be recruited. KEN REES (Former Prisoner, Stalag Luft III): The room I went into was a room of keen escapers and people who had quite experience on tunnels. And Johnny Bull, who became a great mate of mine, invited me onto his digging team. So I was lucky enough to get in on the ground floor, as it were. I think they thought, because I was a Welshman, I must be good at mining or something. NARRATOR: In the early days of Stalag Luft III, there was only a handful of captured American pilots. Among them was Davy Jones, who became a tunneler on "Dick." DAVY JONES: We considered ourselves the elite, if you will, of the group. And it turned out there were really only three Yanks, three of us who, who worked underground. And so we were, rightfully, proud of that fact. NARRATOR: As the archaeologists dig deeper, another problem emerges that was all too familiar to the tunnelers on the Great Escape. Below the tree roots and top soil, there was nothing but sand. The Germans deliberately located Stalag Luft III in this area of sandy soil. Any bright golden sand on the surface would be a telltale sign of tunneling activity. Diggers had to change their clothes every time they went underground. DAVY JONES: Well, they had some long johns, and they were clammy, wet, sandy, grubby: terrible. That's one of the worst parts of the whole experience of digging was getting into those. You strip off and get in the goddamn long johns and go to work. You went in, and then they sealed you in, because they'd only take sand out at certain times. You'd go in the hole, and in the early days we'd stay there all day. That was sort of the routine. NARRATOR: It was so cramped, there was not even enough room to turn around, so diggers worked in teams of two.

KEN REES: The main digger, he'd go forward, and you'd go up the tunnel to him, backwards, so that you were feet to feet. You were facing down the tunnel and he was facing forward. NARRATOR: Although the soft sand was easy to dig, there was always the danger of collapse. Tunnels had to be shored up using wooden boards. DAVY JONES: Put a board in, and put one side and then the other. And then you put the top board into a notch. And then you pack the sand on all three sides, and that would be one frame. And you'd repeat that. NARRATOR: As the tunnels grew longer, the prisoners made a personal sacrifice to find enough timber. ALAN BRYETT: Each bunk bed had, originally, 20 bed boards on it, and the taking of bed boards was continuous. Just before the escape, if my memory serves me right, we was down to something like eight bed boards each, which, I will tell you, is damned uncomfortable, actually, to sleep on. CHARLES HUPPERT: We got our wood wherever we could. We would get it out of the barracks. And those poor barracks, I wondered why they didn't fall down, because all the bracing in the attics were practically taken out. NARRATOR: The two-foot bed boards dictated the dimensions of the tunnels, one board high and one board wide. Even with the wooden shoring, tunnelers were always at risk of being buried alive. KEN REES: I was only involved in one fall. My head was covered, but my number two pulled me out fairly quickly. Could be a bit worrying, you know, because you were down, what, 30-feet down. No one knew from the German side where you were, what you were doing, and so if there'd ever been any nasty fall, you realized that you'd just about had it. DAVY JONES: That's when you kind of wondered sometimes, "What in the hell am I doing here?" You're in Stygian darkness in 30 feet of sand. And if you're claustrophobic, you're in deep trouble. NARRATOR: As the hole gets deeper and wider, the archaeologists are starting to appreciate how treacherous and unpredictable sand can be. LARRY BABITS: Sand is dangerous. And what we're facing now is something that the tunnelers, when they did the Great Escape, had to face. It's the same problem on a larger scale that the tunnelers had. How do you keep all this sand with the tremendous weight above it from coming down?

NARRATOR: Today, disposing of the sand is easy, trucks cart it all away. But when the tunnels were dug, sand disposal had to be carried out in secret. One slip up and the entire operation would be exposed. Prisoners came up with a novel solution, trousers bags made from socks, from which sand could be discreetly scattered. The sand sprinklers became known as penguins. ALAN BRYETT: Now, to be a penguin was this: you went across to where the tunnel was and filled up your socks with sand. But if you had too much sand put into your sock, then you waddled, and it was called being a penguin. And then, of course, the guards saw you were a penguin, and said that chap's up to no good and would search you. And therefore, the secret was that the people putting the sand in didn't put too much in. Having done that, you then walked around the camp. The prisoners were encouraged to cultivate their own little garden, and if I was a penguin, I would go up and talk to him, because while he was raking over his little plot of land, I was admiring his tomatoes, but he was, actually, in fact, raking in the sand...little dodges like that. But sand was a terrible problem. NARRATOR: And the sand remains a problem, as the backhoe struggles to shift it. But on the surface above, the archaeologists think they have uncovered proof that the concrete slab they found is "Dick's" trap door. PETER DOYLE: This, I think, is a significant find, very significant find, because what we've got on the slab are a couple of quite deep holes, slots, and those slots must really be to let in the slab into the side of the sump. And so this, most likely, is going to be a tool for letting in that slab. And it fits absolutely perfectly. LARRY BABITS: Look at the upper side. We've got an abrasion that runs right here at the top, and it's abraded there. PETER DOYLE: Yeah, as you can see, we're going to have to pull it out, like that... LARRY BABITS: Yeah. PETER DOYLE: ...which then is going to wear this thing back down, isn't it? And then like this. NARRATOR: Lifting hooks would have been essential to haul up the trapdoor from its tight fitting slot in the washroom drain. The German guards carried out surprise searches, so the prisoners had to be able to close the tunnel entrance quickly. ALAN BRYETT: The tunnel was only open for about 10 minutes, rather like when racing cars go into a pit stop, and the thing stops, and everyone does his job like that very, very quickly. And it could be done, opened and closed, in about 10 minutes. It had

to be done quickly, because the Germans were wandering around, not...maybe only one or two Germans, but wandering around in every hut all the time, so you had to be slick. NARRATOR: As the tunnels grew longer, the stakes became higher than ever. The prisoners were increasingly concerned about keeping their operations secret. They had amassed a huge amount of escape equipment, scavenged or stolen from all over the camp. The Germans later drew up an astonishing list of things that had disappeared. 4,000 bed boards, 34 chairs, 52 tables, 90 double-tier bunk beds, and 1,700 blankets to muffle underground sounds. But the most useful escape item was the powdered milk can, sent to prisoners by the Red Cross. They were known as Klim, milk spelled backwards. Over 1,400 were used. Charles Huppert became an expert in turning tin cans into tools. CHARLES HUPPERT: We used Klim tins for everything that we made, because you could cut the ends out, and have a large piece of tin to work with. You can straighten that out flat, and make a...join them together in a locked joint, such as this, and take your wooden mallet and hammer them down. Then you take your backside of a knife and bear down on that, with a lot of pressure on both sides of that crimp, so that the tin will not separate, in order to make the tools that are used in the tunnels: the digging tools, the funnels, and the lamps to give light. NARRATOR: The archaeologists have found an object that could have been made from one of Charles Huppert's cans. LARRY BABITS: What is it? It's metal. PETER DOYLE: That's...what? It's some kind of handle. LARRY BABITS: Yeah. No, don't pull that out. PETER DOYLE: Does the wire go all the way around it? LARRY BABITS: Well, look how thick the corrosion is here. PETER DOYLE: Yeah, all the way around from there. And it's pinched in. LARRY BABITS: But this isn't really corroded. PETER DOYLE: Just take that off. LARRY BABITS: It's kind of flimsy for a ladle. I wouldn't think of it as being... PETER DOYLE: Yeah, you wouldn't be able to shift sand with that. LARRY BABITS: You know, you couldn't really use it for a scoop.

PETER DOYLE: What's that black? LARRY BABITS: Wait, where? PETER DOYLE: That's got to be a lamp, hasn't it? LARRY BABITS: And there's a wick. NARRATOR: These lamps burned mutton fat, skimmed off the greasy soup served up in the camp kitchen. With candles in short supply, it was a brilliant innovation. CHARLES HUPPERT: Then we install a wick. We usually found someone that had worn out a pair of pajamas that had a cord made out of cotton, and then we would drop that in there. NARRATOR: But the longer the tunnels became, the less oxygen there was at the end. The mutton fat lamps were going out, and the tunnelers were suffocating. So the prisoners devised a way to pump fresh air into the tunnels. Walter Morison helped with the design. WALTER MORISON: The air pump is a fascinating device. And it needed quite an array of materials. There are two sides of beds, two ends of beds, four ice hockey sticks, four ping-pong bats, two kit bags with nine coat hooks...empty powdered-milk tins. NARRATOR: It was designed to pump air on both the forwards and backwards strokes, preserving the energy of the pumper. These photos were taken later by German guards. Fresh air was sucked into the air pump along a line of Klim tins going down the shaft. It was piped under the floor of the tunnel through another row of tins. Shortly after the air pump was installed, the task of moving sand up and down the tunnel was also transformed by an amazing feat of engineering: underground railways, complete with a change over station, where diggers could switch trains to reach the second half of the tunnel. Between April and September, 1943, the prisoners used the railway to move at least 130 tons of sand. But, however ingenious their inventions, the prisoners could not make everything themselves. Some items had to be acquired from the German guards by blackmail. JONATHAN VANCE: The prisoners had access to something that the guards didn't, and that was Red Cross food: chocolate, coffee, soap, tea, raisins, sugar, things like this. A lot of these things had not been available in Germany in the civilian economy for years, so it turned out that most guards were willing to do almost anything to get themselves a couple of bars of soap or a package of coffee, even to the point of smuggling in a camera, or

loaning their identity papers so they could be forged, or bringing in pieces of a typewriter, this sort of thing. NARRATOR: Several months into the digging, an audacious theft completely changed life underground. Two sharp-eyed prisoners stole some wire from German workmen, and installed lighting in the tunnel, tapping into the camp's electrical supply. LARRY BABITS: Now move your hand out for a second. NARRATOR: Digging around the drain, the archaeologists may have found evidence of this primitive wiring. LARRY BABITS: What kind of metal does that appear to be? Is it copper? PETER DOYLE: No, no, it's tin of some kind. But it hasn't, it hasn't decayed. It's not steel or anything. It's not iron or steel. LARRY BABITS: But is it regular? What's the sheathing like? Is it a regular looking one? PETER DOYLE: Sheathing does not...it looks home made. We've dug down through the bottom of the concrete floor. Now this is a washroom, you're not going to have an electrical cable under a washroom, it just doesn't make any sense, so the bottom line is that if we've got electrical cable here, it's either been put in after the war, or it was electrical cable that was put in by the escapers. I mean, those are the only two possibilities, really. NARRATOR: The prisoners strung bulbs along the entire length of "Tom," "Dick," and "Harry." Riding through the tunnels had become a spectacular experience. But as the big night of the escape drew near, the German guards were becoming increasingly suspicious. And the prisoners had a new worry; they were running out of places to dump sand. They decided to focus their efforts on tunnels "Tom" and "Harry," and refill most of "Dick" with sand from the other two. But tunnel "Dick" would still play a vital role in the buildup to the escape. By now, there were over 600 prisoners involved in this clandestine operation. Special forgery teams worked on ensuring a safe passage across Germany after the escape. While tailors made home made insignia for escape clothes, artists forged elaborate identity papers. With hundreds of passes and disguises coming off the camp production line, a secure location to hide them was vital.

"Dick," with its secret entrance, was the perfect hiding place, so it was turned into a storage room.

And near the entrance, the archaeologists uncover an amazing artifact that may have been kept there. PETER DOYLE: It's a stamp. It's got a Wehrmacht symbol on it. LARRY BABITS: And...yes...is it the same rubber stuff that we were just looking at? PETER DOYLE: Yeah, that is, that is amazing. Look, Larry. LARRY BABITS: This is unbelievable. Look at that. You can even see the feathering on the ends of the eagle's wings. PETER DOYLE: That's the Ausweis, isn't it? To get me out? LARRY BABITS: Yeah, this is a stamp that you'd put over a guy's picture... PETER DOYLE: Yeah. LARRY BABITS: ...on an Ausweis. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought we'd see a forger's stamp. I mean, everybody talks about them, and things like that, but I just never, never would have thought that we'd come up with one. NARRATOR: This stamp is a forgery, the first to be recovered from one of the tunnels. It was painstakingly carved from the only available source of rubber. ALAN BRYETT: I had my flying boots with me, and I remember a chap coming round and taking my boots away. When I got them back, the rubber heels had been taken off, and there were wooden heels there, because the rubber heel was used to make rubber stamps which you could then cut a Swastika out, or various other German emblems to put stamps on passes. NARRATOR: Just as this tantalizing find is uncovered, Davy Jones, Jimmy James and Charles Huppert return to Stalag Luft III, for the first time, to see the tunnel they worked on 60 years ago. JIMMY JAMES: Are you down to the level of "Dick" now, more or less? PETER DOYLE: Yes, we're right down at the level of "Dick." That's the bottom of "Dick." DAVY JONES: You're in the tunnel itself, hopefully. NARRATOR: After two days of excavating, the backhoes have dug down to 30 feet. The engineers have inserted a steel frame to protect the archaeologists as they work. Delicately scraping through the sand, they begin to uncover the remains of tunnel "Dick."

PETER DOYLE: Well, what we've got is the tunnel itself, 30 feet down. And the exciting thing is, you've got these timbers, brownish material, and the timbers showing the edge of the wall, you see a very nice straight line now. And then over in the corner there, we're starting to pick out rust; it's bits of tin that have been taken into the tunnel. So we're actually seeing here the escape tunnel as it was being constructed. LARRY BABITS: And you can see, right as you go along here, they put boards in there from the beds. NARRATOR: Although the roof of the tunnel has collapsed, the outline of the decomposed bed boards can still be seen. LARRY BABITS: I have a question about that. DAVY JONES: Okay. LARRY BABITS: How did you fit in this? DAVY JONES: Well, you can get as far as your elbows, and then you reached up to dig, and then you put the board up, and then you packed the sand around it, to hold it in place. LARRY BABITS: But, sir, you're 90-some years old, and your shoulders are too broad to fit in here now. NARRATOR: The archaeologists have also found original Klim tins, which supplied air to the diggers. Amazingly, they are still in place on the floor of the collapsed tunnel. PETER DOYLE: Do you remember these tins? CHARLES HUPPERT: Oh, sure. Must be a Klim tin. DAVY JONES: Oh, I don't think there's any doubt about that. PETER DOYLE: How many do you think you used? CHARLES HUPPERT: Quite a bunch of them. PETER DOYLE: Too many? CHARLES HUPPERT: Yeah. But we had more of those than anything else, so... Who would have thought that? JIMMY JAMES: Yes, I remember going down there about 60 years ago. Yes, straight down like that.

PETER DOYLE: Can you remember...is this familiar to you, gentlemen? DAVY JONES: I can't believe that. Do you think that...was that there? PETER DOYLE: That was there. DAVY JONES: You found it in the dirt? Come on. PETER DOYLE: Yeah. Can you remember how it was put in? DAVY JONES: You slid down the side. PETER DOYLE: ...because we found this hook that fits into the slab. DAVY JONES: Son of a bitch. LARRY BABITS: You guys can stand right there and know that in 1944 you stood right there. DAVY JONES: That's exactly right. PETER DOYLE: Incredible. How long did it take you to get from the top to the bottom? JIMMY JAMES: Well, it depends how fast you went, but... CHARLES HUPPERT: It depends how fast you were, or how fast you went. NARRATOR: As the tunnels advanced, so did the Allied war effort. The tide was beginning to turn. Up in the skies over Europe, the full might of the United States Air Force was now raining bombs over Hitler's Germany. But the daylight missions proved costly for U.S. bomber squadrons, and thousands of airmen were captured by the Germans. There were so many new P.O.W.s arriving at Stalag Luft III, that the Germans announced plans to build a new compound just for Americans. Worried that American prisoners would miss out on the Great Escape, the diggers doubled their efforts on tunnel "Tom." The increased activity aroused the guards' suspicion. One day, a surprise search revealed what the guards were looking for, the entrance to tunnel "Tom." The Germans, convinced they had foiled a massive escape, took a number of photographs to celebrate their good fortune. They had no idea there were two other tunnels left. Shortly afterward, the American flyers were all transferred to their new compound.

ALAN BRYETT: I didn't like it because of all the work that I had done was for naught. And...but there was nothing you could do about it, so you have to accept it. NARRATOR: With the Germans on high alert, the prisoners left behind were desperate to finish tunnel "Harry." British flyer Jack Lyon, responsible for tunnel security, received a tip off that the Germans knew the digging had not stopped. JACK LYON: The atmosphere was fraught...We knew that the Germans were certain that there was a tunnel, and the gamble was who would get there first, the Germans or us? The Germans to find it, or us to get out? NARRATOR: By the middle of March, 1944, tunnel "Harry" was finished. The prisoners were raring to go, but had to wait over a week for the first moonless night. At last, on Friday, March 24, the fateful moment arrived. One by one, the nervous escapers showed up at the hut. There was a strict pecking order, beginning with the men who were thought to have the best chance of eluding capture. Further down the list were men like Alan Bryett, who had gotten their place by lottery. ALAN BRYETT: They wanted, on that night, for as many people to get out as possible. I might only get five or 10, 15 miles, but if I could get up and hide up in a barn or lay in a haystack or something like that, it would confuse the Germans as to just how many had got out, while the real escapers, who went by the train, were really making their proper escapes. NARRATOR: At 10:30 p.m., at the top of the vertical shaft, digger Johnny Bull cut through the last inches of soil, and breathed in the fresh air. Finally, after 11 months of hard work, the Great Escape was underway. Johnny Bull was the first man to taste freedom. But there was a snag. The tunnel was slightly short. It had cleared the perimeter fence but had not reached the woods. Anyone emerging from the hole could be spotted by the German guards patrolling the fence every few minutes. For a moment, the plan seemed doomed. Then word came back to use a rope as a signaling device. From the cover of the woods, two tugs meant the coast was clear. Back at the hut, the next batch of escapees was sent down into the tunnel. Each man took roughly 10 minutes to make his way to the exit shaft. Everything seemed to go according to plan, but on the stroke of midnight, disaster struck. JACK LYON: There was an air raid, not an unusual occurrence, but of all the things the RAF did, it was...I thought well, that was a bit...they would pick tonight.

ALAN BRYETT: All the searchlights went out, the lights went out in the hut, and the lights which had been rigged up in the tunnel from the hut went out as well. And so between 12 o'clock and one o'clock, virtually no-one got out. NARRATOR: Eventually, the air raid ended and the lights went back on. Now the escape could continue. By 2:00 a.m., only 38 prisoners had made it through the tunnel. Number 39 was Jimmy James. JIMMY JAMES: Of course, it was a very exciting moment escaping by this enormous tunnel, which about 600 of us worked on for a year. I was pulled up to the exit, and looked up, 30 feet up the shaft, and the stars were up above. NARRATOR: But with all the delays, progress was much slower than anticipated. Fewer than a dozen men per hour were making it through the tunnel. At 5:00 a.m., after a mixup with the rope signal, the 77th man emerging from the tunnel was spotted by a guard. Ken Rees, who was next in line to escape, heard it all from the bottom of the exit shaft. KEN REES: I heard the shot and realized straightaway what had happened. So I backed up very quickly. By this time, the trolleys were forgotten, as it were, so we were left. It was just a case of crawling back. At the time—it sounds silly, I suppose, now—I was afraid that perhaps a German would come down the tunnel and shoot up the tunnel. And I didn't feel I wanted another bullet at that end. NARRATOR: Ken Rees was the last man to make it back, the last man in tunnel "Harry." Back in the hut, the men were frantically hiding the evidence. The guards were on their way, and no one wanted to be caught with fake passes and other contraband. ALAN BRYETT: We started a number of bonfires, and in the hut there were small bonfires going on, with chaps burning up maps and diagrams and money and documents. It was only a matter of two or three minutes, but by the time the Germans got in, a lot of it was charred. I have never seen men so annoyed. They were absolutely livid, livid. It was quite obvious that it was a big escape, and the Germans discovered, to their horror, that 76 people had disappeared, and then all hell was let loose. NARRATOR: Everyone caught was put in solitary confinement, including Ken Rees. KEN REES: We were bitterly disappointed, after all the work. Foolishly enough, we thought, you know, "This is our chance to get home." ALAN BRYETT: I think the reaction of most of us caught was, "We got so close to freedom. We weren't going to get back home, but so close to a few days out in the open, and we've lost it."

NARRATOR: Wearing civilian clothing, many of the 76 men who had made it out were on their way to local railway stations, hoping to catch trains across Europe. Each escape party was led by a fluent German speaker, who would do all the talking if they needed to buy tickets or show their identity cards. Jimmy James was heading for the village of Tschiebsdorf, with a group of 12 other escapees. JIMMY JAMES: There's the railway line. This must be the old, part of the old platform. I don't know. NARRATOR: Remarkably, no one recognized Jimmy's party as escaped prisoners, and they were able to buy 12 train tickets. In short order, they were en route for Czechoslovakia. Meanwhile, the Germans had mounted a massive search. JONATHAN VANCE: Every auxiliary soldier, every auxiliary policeman, was mobilized in the camp area. So probably, within 24 hours of the tunnel being discovered, there were perhaps 60 or 70,000 extra troops who had been brought on board and were around the camp, beating through the forests, looking in the bushes, trying to find these 76 airmen. NARRATOR: But the escaped prisoners, traveling by train, were already long gone, fanning out across German territory. Jimmy James' party made it as far as the Czech border, where they were arrested and thrown into cells. Jimmy was separated from his group, and handed over to the S.S., who drove him to a different camp. JIMMY JAMES: The S.S. officer told me to get out. He said, "Ha ha. Hello, James. This is a nice place. You will not escape from here." And I came face to face with our senior British officer on the escape, and I said, "Hello, sir, where are we? In Colditz?" He said, "No." He said, "This is Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The only way out of here is up the chimney." NARRATOR: Against incredible odds, Jimmy managed to tunnel out of the concentration camp. He was recaptured after 14 days on the run and remained a prisoner until the end of the war. Just three of the Great Escapers reached freedom, Norwegians Per Bergsland and Jens Muller, stowed away on a freighter to Sweden, while Dutchman Bob van der Stok traveled by train and foot to Gibraltar. Everyone else was rounded up by the Germans within two weeks.

They assumed they'd be reunited with their friends back at Stalag Luft III, since the Geneva Convention forbids harming escaped prisoners, but a terrible war crime was about to be committed. DAVY JONES: It was several days before we found out about casualties. We didn't realize then that people had been killed. Then we started to find out. ALAN BRYETT: We got the news because the Gestapo men came across and said that so many of the prisoners who escaped from Stalag Luft III have been recaptured, they have tried another escape and have been shot and killed. And a senior British officer said, "How many have been injured in this second escape?" And the answer was, "None." KEN REES: The Germans themselves said that they were shot while trying to re-escape, et cetera, but, of course, this was rubbish. NARRATOR: The Great Escape had incensed Hitler, who insisted all the recaptured prisoners be executed to set an example. His generals persuaded him to reduce the number to 50. The airmen were handed over to the Gestapo, driven to remote locations and shot. JACK LYON: It shocked us at the time, not so much the loss of life, but how it occurred. If those chaps had actually been mown down by a guard under machine gun as they ran, we possibly would accept it. But to line them up against a wall and just give the old, you know, the Genickschuss, I mean, that's, that was something different. That's not, that's not playing it by the rules. KEN REES: I was devastated, because, in my room, Johnny Bull, who I'd been with the whole time, who'd started me with the tunneling, and I was on his team, he was one of the 50 who was shot. And then when I was back in my bunk, I would look across to his bunk and think, God, you know, he, he had been shot down, and the babe... had a baby born afterwards, that he had not seen. And it...I just couldn't get over the fact that he was never going to go home, never going to see his wife again, and child. NARRATOR: After the war, most of the Gestapo agents responsible for these murders were hunted down to face war crimes tribunals. The Luftwaffe colonel at Stalag Luft III was so appalled by the action of the Gestapo that he allowed the prisoners to build a memorial to the 50 outside the camp. DAVY JONES: We were outraged, and, of course, saddened. And some people we knew quite well, like my roommate. JIMMY JAMES: Coming back and actually looking at it, you look at those names, and think you knew them all. And you think, well, "Why isn't my name up there as well?" It was just luck, fortune of war.

NARRATOR: From the memorial, the veterans return to get one final look at the tunnel. Even with the support frame, it has become too dangerous to dig on any further. The archaeologists decide to call off the excavation and refill the hole. PETER DOYLE: You've got to treat these things with respect. These things can collapse any time, crush the timbers and collapse on the men, and it would be incredibly difficult to get anybody that was digging a tunnel out of here. LARRY BABITS: Tunnels are scary things, and when you do them in sand they can be really scary. I was scared out here, working in the open with the sky over me, and for them to do that with 30 feet of sand above them, you come away with a lot of respect for those guys. NARRATOR: For archaeologists and veterans alike, this dig has reminded everyone of the incredible achievement of the Great Escape. CHARLES HUPPERT: I never thought in my lifetime I'd ever get to see something like this. DAVY JONES: I pooh-poohed the thing until yesterday. I didn't believe it until I saw it. NARRATOR: Sixty years after the most famous escape in history, the remains of the last tunnel would be buried forever. Major funding for NOVA is provided by the Park Foundation, dedicated to education and quality television. We see you reaching for the stars. Microsoft is proud to sponsor NOVA for celebrating the potential in us all. Science: it's given us the framework to help make wireless communications clear. Sprint is proud to support NOVA. And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by contributions to your PBS stations from viewers like you. Thank you.

History's Great Escapes

Great Escape homepage The daring and ingenious escape at the Stalag Luft III prison camp had a long pedigree, and memorable getaways certainly did not end with it. Throughout history, prisoners of all sorts have gone to unheard-of lengths to free themselves from confinement, whether it be house arrest in Tibet or a life sentence in Alcatraz. Most have failed, but a significant minority has tasted freedom through patience, skill, and in many cases sheer dumb luck. Here, relive some of the greatest jailbreaks of all time.—Lexi Krock

Mary, Queen of Scots (Scotland) When Mary, Queen of Scots arrived in Scotland in 1561 from France, where she had been raised in exile, she expected eventually to assume the throne that was her birthright. But in 1567, during a rebellion of Scottish nobles, she was imprisoned in remote Lochleven Castle. Though Mary begged in letters to Queen Elizabeth and the Queen of France for help in getting free, she was unable to interest anyone in her cause. Before long, she began plotting her escape. In her first attempt in March 1568, Mary disguised herself as a laundress and tried to escape from the castle by boat. But when the boatmen she attempted to hire noticed her pristine hands and beautiful face, her identity was revealed and her plan foiled (though remarkably, she did manage to return to her cell without the castle's guards learning of her ploy). Determined to succeed, Mary fled the prison again on May 2, 1568. With the help of an orphan she befriended at the castle, she was able to get out of the castle, across by boat to the mainland, and successfully away on a horse stolen from her captors' stables. Tower of London (England) The Tower of London has served as a royal palace, arsenal, royal mint, menagerie, and public records office. But its best-known role, which lasted for 850 years, was as a dark, dank, and bone-numbingly cold political prison. Dozens of accused spies, traitors, and prisoners of war imprisoned therein made bids for freedom over the centuries, and a lucky and wily few succeeded. In 1597, a Jesuit priest named John Gerard made a hair-raising escape. After hacking away at the stones around the door to his cell, Gerard sneaked past the guards in the corridors one night and reached a high wall overlooking the moat. Down below, a boat he

had arranged through a sympathetic prison warden waited in the darkness. The boatmen tossed him a rope, which Gerard tied to a nearby cannon. When he received a signal that his accomplices had tied off the other end of the rope across the moat, Gerard slid down the rope to freedom. He was never recaptured. The Earl of Nithsdale, who was jailed in the Tower in 1715 for his role in the Jacobite Rebellion, made a less physically demanding exit. During a visit by his wife and her three ladies-in-waiting, Nithsdale donned the clothes of one of the ladies-in-waiting, a Mrs. Mills, and simply walked out with the other three. (Mrs. Mills, now wearing another set of clothes she had brought with her, left separately before the alarm was raised.) Safely away from the Tower, Nithsdale bribed a boatman to carry him and his wife out of the country; they eventually settled in Rome. The final escape in the Tower of London's reign as a prison revealed security so lax it is perhaps best that the Tower soon thereafter became a British national monument and museum. A British soldier taken into custody during World War I for writing phony checks became bored one night, even though he was allowed as many visitors to his cell as he wanted. Leaving his unlocked cell, he made his way past the guards by nonchalantly strolling past them wrapped in an overcoat. They took him to be just another visitor, and he headed out for some nighttime fun in central London. Curiously, he returned to the Tower later that night and attempted to reimprison himself.

Giacomo Casanova (Italy) In 1755, Giacomo Casanova was sentenced to five years in Venice's famously forbidding prison, "the Leads," for repeatedly committing adultery. A determined escape artist in both marriage and prison, Casanova began plotting his exit not long after he arrived at the Leads, which was named for the lead that coated its walls and roof. As he later put it, "It has always been my opinion that when a man sets himself determinedly to do something and thinks of nought but his design, he must succeed despite all the difficulties in his path...." Casanova found an iron rod in the prison yard and fashioned it into a digging tool. For several months, he secretly worked on a tunnel that would take him out of his cell. His hopes were dashed, however, when he was suddenly forced to move to another cell. Realizing the guards would carefully watch him in his new cell, Casanova gave his iron tool, which he had managed to retain, to the prisoner in the next cell, a monk named Balbi, and begged him to dig one tunnel joining their cells and another between the monk's cell and the outside. Balbi agreed, and when he had completed the tunnels, both prisoners crawled out of Balbi's cell and managed to escape from the Leads using the iron tool to force open doors and gates in their way. Once they arrived in central Venice, Balbi and Casanova split up. The police searched for them everywhere to no avail.

Henry "Box" Brown (North Carolina) Escape stories abound about runaway slaves, many of whom used the Underground Railroad to reach the freedom of the North. Less common are stories about slaves who successfully escaped on their own. One of the most audacious escapes was that of Henry Brown, who was born as a slave in 1816. After his owner suddenly sold Brown's wife and children to a new owner in another state, Brown made an agonizing solo escape to freedom on March 19, 1849. Brown had a sympathetic carpenter build a box three feet long and two feet wide. After writing "right side up with care" on the outside of the box, two friends mailed the box, with Brown squeezed inside of it, from North Carolina to the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia. The journey lasted over 27 hours. Brown had water and ventilation holes, but for several hours, despite the box's label, he remained upside down. He made it, however, and later became an active member in Philadelphia's abolitionist community.

William F. Cody (Colorado) Popularly known as Buffalo Bill, William F. Cody was a buffalo hunter, U.S. Army Scout, and Indian fighter who helped create the myth of the Wild West with his traveling variety show, the melodramatic "Wild West Congress of Rough Riders of the World." Known for his accurate marksmanship, courage, endurance, and brutal fights with Indians, Cody made one of the most fearless escapes in American history. In the early 1860s, Indians captured Cody near Fort Larned, Colorado. Knowing that his captors' supply of meat was low, Cody convinced them to let him lead them to a nearby herd of cattle he knew of. Though a large group surrounded him as they traveled, Cody, who was allowed to ride in front, eventually broke free and urged his mule into a brisk canter. For six miles, the Indians pursued Cody, who never had more than a half-mile lead. Though the Indians shot arrows at him and tried to knock him off his mule, Cody prevailed, eventually slipping unnoticed into a Fort Larned bar and escaping.

The Great Escape (Germany) Nazi authorities took great pains to guard against the escape of their prisoners during World War II at both their horrifying civilian concentration camps and at prisons for captured members of the Allied forces. At one of the largest prisons for Allied airmen, Stalag Luft III, the Germans planted seismographs in the ground every 33 feet so that they could detect the sounds of tunneling. They also raised the prison huts off the ground on stilts so that they could observe suspicious digging activity and built a huge trench around the entire prison to form yet another barrier between the

prisoners and freedom. Despite all these measures, Stalag Luft III saw one of the biggest mass escapes of all time. The Germans set the stage for a massive getaway when they chose to put nearly 10,000 strong, militarily trained men in Stalag Luft III together. Free to move about the prison, these men had nothing better to do than put their collective brainpower and might towards an escape plan. Among the inmates in 1944 were scores of talented miners, carpenters, engineers, even physicists and geologists, all of whom were willing to help execute an escape. The Escape Committee was run by a South African airman named Roger Bushell, who devised a plan in 1943 to dig three tunnels, "Tom," "Dick," and "Harry." Fully 30 feet deep, each tunnel would lie beyond the reach of the listening devices (see Inside Tunnel "Harry"). As they dug, the prisoners removed tunnel dirt by trolley, concealed it in the legs of their pants, and later dumped it inconspicuously around the prison grounds. Groups of prisoners took turns guarding the tunnels from the watchful eyes of the Germans and covering for "missing" prisoners when they were underground. On the 24th of March, 1944, 76 men were able to escape through Harry. Unfortunately, only three of them reached safety (see The Three That Got Away). Fifteen were captured and returned to the prison. Eight were sent to a concentration camp (though they ultimately survived the war). The remaining 50, Bushell among them, were rounded up and shot on orders from Hitler himself, who was embarrassed and infuriated by the mass escape. Hoping to deter any further prison breaks, Hitler ordered the ashes of the 50 murdered men scattered at Stalag Luft III by other prisoners.

Dalai Lama XIV (Tibet) When they gained control of China in 1949, the Communists under Mao Tse Tung vowed to erase religion in China and regain economic and political power of the country's so-called "autonomous regions." Tibet, with its rich natural resources and friendly, pious inhabitants, became an immediate target. In 1959, as Communist armies stormed the Tibetan capital of Lhasa, the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual and political leader, decided he had to try to escape from his homeland in hopes that he could lead his people from a safer perch in exile. While huge crowds of Tibetans swarmed around the Dalai Lama's summer palace in an attempt to protect him from advancing troops, the Dalai Lama disguised himself in work clothes and crept unnoticed through the crowds and out of the city. "For the first time I was truly afraid," he wrote later, "for if I was caught all would be lost." When he reached the Kyichu River outside the city, he boarded a waiting boat and took it safely across. Eventually, the Dalai Lama, his brother, and a few loyal servants crossed through the Himalayas over the 16,000-foot Che La Pass and into the safety of India, where he has lived ever since.

Alcatraz (California) When Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay opened its doors as a state prison in 1934, becoming home to the most violent criminals in the United States, its guards and overseers were confident that it was escape-proof. Alcatraz lay more than a mile from the mainland, in the midst of chilly waters surging with currents. The prison bristled with electric wires, fences, bars, and gun towers, and it had hidden microphones designed to detect even the faintest ping of a tunnel under construction. Despite these obstacles, Alcatraz was the setting for several daring escapes, one of which, in 1962, remains one of the most notorious prison breaks in history. Frank Morris and the brothers Clarence and John Anglin spent six months chipping away at the concrete around the air shafts in their cells, trying to create enough space to climb inside and wiggle their way through Alcatraz's mazelike ventilation system and out to freedom. Using a range of makeshift digging implements, including nail clippers, spoons, and a drill made from a fan, the three men bore through concrete and cut through steel bars. Each night they hid their progress by filling in the missing chunks of wall with a paste made from wet newspaper. On June 11, they snuck through the ventilation system and out of the prison, then set themselves adrift on a raft made out of barrels, mesh wire, and old raincoats. The next morning, after finding dummies in the men's beds, Alcatraz guards searched in vain for the inmates in the waters around the prison. No trace of the men was ever found, and many assume they drowned in San Francisco Bay.

Berlin Wall (Germany) During the 26 years when the Berlin Wall separated East and West Berlin, and in the years since it tumbled in 1989, the wall has been a symbol of the ruthless determination of Communist leaders to keep their people behind the Iron Curtain. The wall also symbolized the passionate desire of many people to free themselves from a repressive system. Risking life and limb, hundreds of people were able to escape over the years through concrete, steel, and barbed wire, and past land mines, guard dogs, and sentries armed with automatic rifles and under strict orders to shoot to kill. One of the cleverest forms of escape, used numerous times with success, involved passing through one of the Wall's many checkpoints hidden inside a car. Couriers with a legal right to pass through ferried countless refugees into West Berlin this way. Horst

Breistoffer, a somewhat professional organizer of escapes, was a master of this method. Knowing that the East German guards carefully examined large cars and trucks for stowaways as they drove through the checkpoints, Breistoffer bought a miniscule car, a 1964 Italian Isetta, hoping the guards would forgo searching it. After spending more than two months modifying its structure to make room for an escapee, Breistoffer safely shuttled nine people over the border curled up in the space once taken up by the battery and heating system. (While transporting the tenth, he was caught.) Tunneling beneath the Wall was another popular means of escape. Tunnel builders included professional gangs, which charged refugees extortionate rates to use them, and idealistic students, who hoped to help large groups of people cross the border at once. In 1964, Wolfgang Fuchs built one of the most important tunnels, which enabled more than 100 East Germans to reach the West. Fuchs spent seven months digging and orchestrating the 140-yard tunnel, which ran from a bathroom in the East to a basement in the West. A similarly successful tunnel began in an East Berlin graveyard. "Mourners" brought flowers to a grave and then disappeared underground. This escape route worked well until Communist officers discovered a baby carriage left by the "grave" and sealed the tunnel. One of the most daring escapes involved two East German families, who worked together to create a homemade hot-air balloon. For months, Peter Strelzyk and Guenter Wetzel collaborated in their basements on a flamethrower and gas burner powerful enough to propel them out of Communist East Berlin using a 65-foot-wide, 75-foot-high balloon their wives stitched together from curtains, bedsheets, and random scraps. On the night of September 15, 1979, the Strelzyks and the Wetzels launched their contraption. They had just enough fuel to make it over the wall and land, whereupon they ran to freedom.

Billy Hayes (Turkey) In 1970, Turkish authorities sentenced Billy Hayes, a 22-year-old American caught trying to carry four pounds of hashish out of Turkey, to serve 30 years for smuggling, and threw him into a notoriously brutal prison in Istanbul called Sagmalicar. After over a year of beatings and a steady loss of hope, Hayes was transferred to a prison on an island in the Sea of Marmara, where he was allowed to spend his days unloading cargo from ships. Six months of plotting and waiting yielded an escape plan for Hayes, whose story later became the subject of a book and subsequent movie entitled Midnight Express. Hayes snuck out of the prison, stole a rowboat, and made it to shore. Hoping to reach Greece, Hayes dyed his blond hair black and began travelling towards the border. Barefoot, exhausted, and lacking a passport, he swam across a river and walked for miles. When he finally came upon an armed soldier, he thought that he had lost his bid for freedom, but the soldier yelled at him in Greek. Hayes eventually made it back to the U.S.

A Prisoner's Sketchbook

Several months before the Great Escape, the senior British officer in the Stalag Luft III camp asked fellow prisoner and artist Ley Kenyon to create a visual document of "Harry," the tunnel used the night of March 24, 1944, to make the break. Kenyon obliged, rendering six drawings inside Harry's cramped quarters. The drawings were sealed in a watertight container fabricated from old milk tins and stored in "Dick," an abandoned escape tunnel. When the advancing Russians neared the camp in January 1945, the Germans hastily evacuated the prisoners, who just managed to flood Dick in hopes of deterring a search if the Germans discovered the tunnel. They never did, and when the Russians seized control of the camp, a British officer who had been too ill to evacuate earlier with the other prisoners recovered the drawings and brought them to England; they now reside in the Royal Air Force Museum in London. In this slide show, view these hard-won sketches, along with five others Kenyon made either before or after the famous getaway. To launch the slide show, click on the image at left.—Peter Tyson

Electric lighting. A railroad. An air ventilation system. Against incredible odds, the Allied airmen imprisoned at the Nazi POW camp Stalag Luft III secretly engineered these and other technological marvels 30 feet underground in the three escape tunnels they named "Tom," "Dick," and "Harry." They used only tools that they could manufacture themselves out of tin cans, and they scavenged building materials at great risk. When they were done, the airmen carried out one of the greatest mass escapes of all time. Through this interactive map, drawn after the war by one of the POWs, Ley Kenyon, explore the remarkable story of Harry, the 300-foot tunnel that 76 men snuck through during their infamous getaway on the night of March 24-25, 1944. To launch the interactive, click on the image at left