When 200 prisoners tunneled out—and triggered a continent-wide hunt

The Tunnel That Took a Year

On the night of March 24, 1944, 76 Allied airmen crawled through a tunnel beneath the wire of Stalag Luft III, a German POW camp near Sagan in what is now Poland. The tunnel, code-named "Harry," stretched 336 feet from Hut 104 to a snowy pine forest beyond the perimeter. For over a year, 600 prisoners had worked in shifts to excavate 200 tons of yellow sand, hiding it in their trousers to scatter during exercise periods. Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, a South African-born RAF officer with a pronounced stammer and ice-cold resolve, masterminded the operation. He assembled forgers who produced 4,000 documents—travel permits, identity cards, worker passes—using ink made from crushed vitamin tablets and boot polish. Tailors stitched civilian clothes from dyed blankets and uniforms. The tunnel itself was shored with bed slats from 4,000 bunks, forcing every prisoner in the camp to sleep on sagging wire frames. Engineers installed electric lights tapped from camp circuits, and a ventilation system built from powdered milk tins pushed fresh air to the diggers 30 feet below ground. By March, Bushell had a list of 200 men ready to go.

The Night the Wire Was Breached

The escape began at 10:30 p.m. on a moonless Friday. The first man through was Flight Lieutenant Johnny Bull, who emerged into the forest to discover a catastrophic error: the tunnel exit fell 15 feet short of the tree line, in full view of a guard tower. The original survey had been conducted in summer; winter snow had compressed the measurements. Bull and the next escapee, Squadron Leader Henry Lamond, crouched in the open and devised a signal system—two tugs on a rope meant the coast was clear. The line moved at glacial pace. At 1 a.m., an air raid over Berlin blacked out the camp's lights, plunging the tunnel into darkness for an hour. By 4:55 a.m., only 76 of the planned 200 men had crawled through when a German guard stumbled upon the exit and fired a warning shot. The 77th man, still halfway through the tunnel, scrambled back. Within minutes, guards surrounded Hut 104. Bushell and his companion, Lieutenant Bernard Scheidhauer, had already caught a train toward Saarbrücken by the time the alarm sounded.

The Manhunt and the Murders

The Gestapo launched the largest manhunt in German wartime history, mobilizing 70,000 troops, police, and Hitler Youth across a zone stretching from the Baltic to Czechoslovakia. Within two weeks, 73 of the 76 escapees were recaptured. Only three made home runs: two Norwegian pilots, Jens Müller and Per Bergsland, reached Sweden by stowing away on a freighter from Stettin; a Dutch pilot, Bram van der Stok, bluffed his way through occupied Holland and into Spain. Hitler convened a rage-filled meeting on March 26 and ordered all recaptured officers shot. Göring and Himmler negotiated him down to 50—still a flagrant war crime under the Geneva Convention, which protected POWs from execution. The Gestapo selected victims and staged roadside "escapes," shooting men in the back and cremating their bodies. Roger Bushell was killed on March 29 near Saarbrücken, along with Scheidhauer. Their ashes were returned to Stalag Luft III in urns. The camp senior British officer, Group Captain Herbert Massey, was told the men had been "shot while resisting arrest." No one believed it.

Why the Story Still Echoes

After the war, the Royal Air Force formed the Special Investigation Branch to track down the killers. Over four years, investigators identified 21 Gestapo and Kripo officers involved in the murders; 13 were executed, and the rest received long prison sentences. The 1963 film *The Great Escape*, starring Steve McQueen, turned the story into a cultural touchstone, though it took dramatic liberties—no Americans actually escaped, and the famous motorcycle chase never happened. Today, a memorial stands at the site of the tunnel exit near Żagań, Poland, listing the names of the 50 executed officers. The escape itself achieved none of its tactical objectives—no one reached England, no intelligence was gathered—but it tied up German resources for weeks and demonstrated a defiance that rattled the Reich. Roger Bushell's final words to his fellow prisoners before entering the tunnel were recorded by survivors: "This is it, chaps. We're really going to piss off the Nazis." He succeeded beyond measure.