Amazing Airmen. Ian Darling
to the woods, a guard patrolling outside the prison fence walked to the tunnel exit and saw someone in the snow.
He fired a shot and started shouting. Reavell-Carter told Ogilvie he thought the guard had seen them, so he stood up. “Kamerade,” he shouted, and then, speaking in German, told the guard not to shoot. The guard advised Reavell-Carter to put his hands up and walk toward him.
As Reavell-Carter surrendered, Ogilvie remained still. The guard had not seen him. Ogilvie crawled away. When he had gone about fifty metres he stood up and ran. Shand was running as well. Ogilvie heard rifle shots fired in their direction. He ran faster. The two men separated and went in different directions. They were the last prisoners to flee into the woods.
Ogilvie planned to go to Yugoslavia, where he hoped to join the anti-German partisans. To go around the camp, Ogilvie first ran in a westward direction, then turned south. He ran for several hours. He came across a road and ran along it, going through a small town. Tired, he started walking. A German cyclist rode by him, speaking angrily. He continued pedalling quickly toward the town.
Ogilvie feared the cyclist would inform police of his presence. He went back into the woods and hid in the underbrush. He felt safe there. For the first time since July 4, 1941, he was on his own. He was free.
When the men in hut 104 heard the rifle shot they suspected that a guard had discovered the tunnel. Someone in the tunnel shouted words that confirmed their suspicion: “It’s finished. It’s over.”
Flight Lieutenant King, one of the prisoners who took the electrical wire, had been waiting to go down the tunnel. King realized that he was not going to have a chance to escape.
The men in hut 104 responded quickly. They ate the food they were going to carry, and they tried to destroy all the documents and equipment they had assembled, such as compasses. They did not want the guards to confiscate these items.
The guards entered hut 104 and ordered all the men to go outside onto the snow-covered campground. The guards carried machine guns. King feared they were going to shoot him and his fellow prisoners.
The men were forced to strip and were searched. Then, with photos kept on file, guards checked the identity of every resident of the compound to see who was missing. After standing for several hours, the prisoners went back to their huts.
Guided by a compass, Ogilvie set off again in the evening. He walked through snow, slush, and swamps. He stumbled into trees. By morning he was cold, wet, and exhausted. He came across a farm, but after hearing dogs bark he quickly returned to the woods.
By noon, Ogilvie came to a major highway. When he saw it, he realized he had not gone as far as he would have liked. He remembered the escape committee telling him he should reach the highway on his first night. He crossed the highway and re-entered the woods, where he hid in the underbrush.
Ogilvie started walking again in the evening. Snow fell, which made his trek more difficult. After a few hours, he came to a road. In order to travel more quickly, he walked along it. Half an hour later, two members of the German Home Guard saw him as he crossed a bridge near the town of Halbau. The guards took him to a police station on the highway that he had previously crossed. On the way, Ogilvie reached into his pocket, tore up his maps and identification papers, then dropped the pieces.
After an hour, police took him by car to an inn at Halbau. A German in civilian clothes briefly interrogated him. Two hours later, three other officers who had escaped from Stalag Luft III were also brought to the inn and interrogated.
At about 9:00 a.m., two policemen drove the four men to Sagan, but not back to Stalag Luft III. They went to the town’s police station where they were stripped, searched, and put in a cell with about twenty other men who had escaped through the tunnel.
In the cell, Ogilvie learned a massive number of Germans had been diverted from their regular duties to recapture the escapers. This included civilians, the home guard, and police departments. Ogilvie and his fellow officers knew they had succeeded in hindering the German war effort.
German troops soon put the men in trucks and drove overnight to a building with stone walls in Gorlitz, near the Czechoslovakian border. It was a Gestapo prison. Ogilvie was put in a cell with two other escapees.
In a few days, the Gestapo took the men to their headquarters for questioning. The interrogator wanted to know how Ogilvie escaped, who had ordered him to escape, where he was going, whether he had any friends in Czechoslovakia, and how the tunnel was constructed.
The interrogation session lasted about an hour, but Ogilvie did not answer the questions. He gave his name, rank, and RAF number: 42872. He also said he was a career officer, and that he had a duty to try to escape. Unlike some of the officers who escaped, Ogilvie was wearing his military uniform, not civilian clothes. This may have given credibility to his comments. After the interrogation, he went back to the prison cell.
On April 4, a corporal and some guards from the Luftwaffe came for Ogilvie and three other escaped prisoners, Flight Lieutenant Paul Royle, Flight Lieutenant Alfred Thompson, and Flight Lieutenant Albert Armstrong. After being with the Gestapo, Ogilvie was pleased to see Luftwaffe guards again. The guards took the four men to a railway station.
The Germans at the station showed curiosity but not animosity when the four prisoners walked into the waiting room; however, the crowd became quiet when Gestapo officers entered the station. The officers wanted the Luftwaffe guards to produce their identification papers. The guards showed the appropriate papers and they, along with the prisoners, boarded a train back to the prison camp. At Stalag Luft III, Ogilvie was put in a solitary confinement cell.
While there, Ogilvie learned that the Gestapo had shot fifty of his fellow escapees, including Squadron Leader Bushell, who had planned the escape. Ogilvie was shocked. He could hardly believe the Germans would execute prisoners.
Only three of the seventy-six — two Norwegians and a Dutchman — succeeded in getting back to England.
In London on May 23, Anthony Eden, Britain’s foreign secretary, told the House of Commons that the government was investigating a news report from Sweden that German guards massacred prisoners of war at Stalag Luft III.
A month later, Eden said the Gestapo had murdered the prisoners. He noted that they had been killed in small groups, not during a mass escape. The foreign secretary pledged that after the war the British government would bring every German involved in the crime to justice.
While Eden promised retribution, the Air Ministry sent a secret message to the prisoners by radio, telling them to stop trying to escape. The ministry wanted the men to remain in their camps until the Allies could liberate them.
The Germans forcefully encouraged the prisoners to stay in their camps. They put up posters that said police and guards would shoot prisoners who escaped.
With the Russians moving toward Germany from the east, the German government became desperate. It wanted to keep the Allied prisoners away from the Russians. On a cold winter night in January 1945, the guards at Stalag Luft III ordered about 10,000 prisoners to leave the camp.
As the parcel officer, Ogilvie handed out Red Cross packages at the entrance to the north compound as the men departed. The prisoners took what they could carry in knapsacks or pull on sleds.
As he walked through the snow on the long march to Bremen in northwest Germany, Ogilvie often felt like giving up. A friend from the camp, Samuel Pepys, infused Ogilvie with the will to take one more step on his blistered feet and then another. In turn, Ogilvie inspired Pepys to continue walking.
The