Re: 60th Anniversary of Great Escape Commemorated

Date: March 26, 2004

"Survivors of Nazi POW camp mark 60th anniversary of WWII 'Great Escape'

Zagan, Poland-AP -- It's been six decades since Bertram "Jimmy" James and 75 other Allied airmen broke out of a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp. But the 89-year-old James remembers it as if it were yesterday.

He was back in Poland this week and walked along a trail that now marks the path of one of the tunnels dug in the escape attempt. James says he found it a "very strange feeling" to think that 60 years ago he was 30-feet underground. The story of the escape was told in the classic movie, "The Great Escape," starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough.

James was among hundreds at a ceremony Wednesday marking the anniversary of the escape attempt, and remembering the 50 men Adolph Hitler ordered executed after they were recaptured.

Only three of the escapees made it to freedom.

©2004 Associated Press"

AND

"Former airman's 50 comrades were shot

Over time, memories fade - but not for former prisoner of war Andrew Coveyduck who will never forget how 50 of his comrades were murdered by the Germans following a failed escape bid 60 years ago today.

The incident was the inspiration for hit war film The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen.

Without warning, on the afternoon of March 25, 1944, that Mr Coveyduck, then an RAF observer, and thousands of other British and Allied servicemen were ordered by their German captors to stand on parade in the compound of German PoW camp Stalag Luft VI.

The voice of a single German officer stunned and silenced the assembled servicemen as he declared: "Fifty of your friends have been killed after they were caught trying to escape."

The night before, 76 Allied PoWs had escaped from the officers' compound of the Stalag Luft III aircrew camp via a 340-foot tunnel, dug by hand from its start, 30 feet below one of the huts, to a spot beyond the perimeter fence.

The men had forged passports, maps, dummy weapons, tailored German uniforms and civilian clothes.

Of the 73 who were recaptured, only 23 were spared. Just three escapers managed to reach England.

Embarrassed by the heroic escape bid, Adolf Hitler - in contravention of the Geneva Convention - ordered the Gestapo to execute the 50 men to deter any future escape attempts.

To cover up the murders, they were taken in small groups, at different times, to various wooded locations and shot. The rest were returned to prisons and concentration camps.

"It was a stunt to persuade us from carrying out the same activity," said Mr Coveyduck, now aged 84 and living in Horrabridge. "We were told quite simply that if any of us were caught trying to escape we would be shot and killed like our comrades."

Mr Coveyduck - then in his early twenties - had spent 18 months in Stalag Luft III, near Sagan in Poland, but was not among the escapers. On that very night he had been transferred to Stalag Luft VI, near the former Prussian-Lithuanian border.

"We didn't know anything about the escape until we were dragged out on parade in our new camp," he said. "Escape plans were being hatched in every camp, but unless you were directly involved you wouldn't know."

When he was told what had happened, he felt sick.

"When someone asked how many were wounded, the answer was simply, 'None; they're all dead'," he said.

"To say that it came as a shock is an understatement. We felt terrible.

"It caused a lot of anger in the camp. Obviously expecting trouble, the Germans brought in extra guards.

"We were distraught. So many of us had tried to escape before but had failed: this was a massive operation that ended very tragically."

Mr Coveyduck was just 20 years old and serving with 44 Sqdn, part of 5 Group Bomber Command, when on July 28, 1940, his twin-engined Hampden bomber struck a barrage balloon cable following a raid on an oil refinery in Hamburg and spun out of control.

The pilot was killed but the rest baled out. Within 12 hours, however, Sgt Coveyduck was captured.

So began his career as a PoW - one which was to last the remainder of the war. In his four years and nine months behind the wire, he was shifted around five different camps across Germany: first to Dulag Luft, the Luftwaffe's aircrew interrogation camp, then to Stalag Luft I, Stalag Luft III, Stalag Luft VI and finally Stalag Luft 357 near Hanover, from which he was set free by British troops in April 1945."