The Great Escape 71 years today. Read this excellent piece of work – it is everything you need to know!

71 years ago today was the beginning of the Great Escape. Below is an excellent article by Rob Davis, Telford, Shropshire from the UK. This is one of the most in-depth articles that you really do need to read and share – a great monument to the 50 PoW’s that were murdered.
Prisoners Of War

Allied aircrew who were shot down and survived during World War II were incarcerated after interrogation in Air Force Prisoner of War camps run by the Luftwaffe, called Stalag Luft, short for Stammlager Luft or Permanent Camps for Airmen.  Stalag Luft III was situated in Sagan, 100 miles south-east of Berlin, now called Zagan, in Silesia. At the time of the escape it was part of Germany, but is now in Poland. It was opened in Spring 1942 with the first prisoners arriving in April of that year, and was just one of a network of Air Force only PoW camps.  The Germans treated captured Fleet Air Arm aircrew as Air Force and put them all together.  There is no obvious reason for the occasional presence of a non-airman in the camps, although one possibility is that the captors would be able to spot “important” non-Air Force uniformed prisoners more readily. RAF personnel captured whilst serving in the Air/Sea Rescue branch are also known to have been kept as PoWs at Air Force camps, including at Stalag Luft III, being treated as if they were downed aircrew. Two main compounds were established, ‘East’ and ‘North’. Despite starting out as an officers-only camp, it was not referred to as Oflag (Offizier Lager) like some other officer-only camps.  The Luftwaffe seemed to have their own nomenclature, and later camp expansions added the ‘Centre’ compound for NCOs. As the number of American airmen prisoners gradually increased, the ‘South’ compound was added to house them.
A large contingent of PoWs sent to Sagan at the end of April 1943 had come from the camp at Schubin. It was at Sagan, that the famous “Wooden Horse” escape occurred on the night of October 29/30, 1943. Three PoWs (Oliver Philpot, Eric Williams and R Michael Codner) having concealed themselves in a vaulting horse, had spent months digging a tunnel through which they escaped and eventually reached England via neutral Sweden.

David Harris adds [January 2013] : “Michael Codner who escaped in the “Wooden Horse” escape left one son, Peter a barrister with whom I worked until he was disabled by a stroke. When last I spoke to him a couple of years ago he was living in Devizes, Wilts. Peter had a reputation as one of th most aggressive barristers in England and was well known to the Court of Appeal. He is a bit of a West Country legend among lawyers and had enormous energy and imagination becoming well known for taking difficult cases that no one else would even touch and winning as if by magic. He said people who knew his father said he was very much like him and he considered himself, and I think justifiably so, that he had a bit of an “escapologist” in him, getting out of difficult legal situations. He never met his father who was shot in the Malaysian uprising when Peter was 3 years old.”

http://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/84234.html


Plenty to read on the link for those interested.