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Stalag
Luft III: The Wooden Horse
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| Sketch
of Stalag Lüft III by Alex Cassie. Imperial War Museum. |
The site
of The Wooden Horse and The Great Escape, Stalag Luft III
was a bleak, inhospitable camp built inside the northern edge
of a sandy pine forest that stretched for more than 20 miles.
Located near Sagan in eastern Germany, it was over 600km from
Switzerland and nearly 300km from the Baltic ports that led
to neutral Sweden, making escape very difficult.
Stalag
Luft III was supposedly the most secure purpose-built camp
for Allied POWs incorporating dozens of new security methods
to make it ‘escape proof.’ These measures included:
- Barrack
blocks built on pillars, with a three inch gap between each
- A ten
foot high double fence which was topped with razor wire,
and a seven foot space between each fence which was also
layered with huge
coils of more razor wire and seismographs which detected
underground noises.
- Goon
boxes (Guard Towers) situated at regular intervals along
the perimeter fence permanently manned by guards with machine
guns and spotlights.
- A low
trip wire 30 feet inside the compound that prisoners were
forbidden to cross without permission.
Nevertheless
the new camp did little to dampen the spirits of determined
escapers. A highly organised Escape Committee known as the
‘X’ Organisation was set up to oversee escape attempts
under the command of Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, or ‘Big
X.’
The
Wooden Horse
The huts in Stalag Luft III had been deliberately built between
50 and 100 metres from the camp’s perimeter wire. The
challenge for prisoners was digging this long distance before
a tunnel was discovered.
In the
early summer of 1943, Flight Lieutenant Eric Williams came
up with a plan to start a tunnel much closer to the wire.
A wooden vaulting horse was carried out every day to the same
spot only around 30 metres from the wire. While other prisoners
exercised, he and two accomplices, Michael Codner and Oliver
Philpot, would dig from a trap door hidden underneath it.
After 114 days of work, the three men finally escaped on 29
October. All reached Sweden and were repatriated back to Britain.
They were the only men to make successful home runs from the
East Compound.
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