What Really Happened On The Night Of The Great Escape

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Link: What really happened on the night of The Great Escape

 

Decades of research and extensive interviews with some 150 survivors shed new light on the wartime story that gripped the world. By Charles Rollings, (edited by Joe Shute)

 

...11:30 hours

 

There had been a slight fall of snow during the night, but by morning roll-call the sky is clear and the sun high over the pine trees to the north-east. The X Organisation department chiefs meet in a room in Block 110.

 

The tension is palpable with the men crammed into the small room, sitting round the table or squeezed side by side on the double-bunk. Leading the conversation is Escape Committee chairman, ‘Big X’, Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, a Spitfire pilot shot down in May 1940. He is flanked by Wing Commander Harry Day, who as the Senior British Officer in the early camps set up the ‘X Organisation’ and had himself already made four escape attempts, and Robert Ker-Ramsay, the chief tunnel engineer. They avoid looking at each other – staring at the floor, at the ceiling, into the middle distance, anywhere but each other...

 

A cutaway of tunnel Harry, by Ley Kenyon:

 

http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/great-escape/media/w_tunnel_harry_cutaway_w-mr.jpg