Posted on 01/14/2005 5:03:16 PM PST by SandRat
Forget Steve McQueen breaking out of the German prison camp astride that motorcycle in "The Great Escape."
Never happened.
"It was fabricated by Hollywood," says Davy Jones.
He should know.
Jones, 91, helped dig three tunnels intended as escape routes for Allied airmen held at Stalag Luft III, a remote, top-security camp built in German-occupied Poland.
On the night of March 24-25, 1944, 76 prisoners - none American - escaped. Only three made it to freedom: a Dutchman and two Norwegians.
Most of the escapees were recaptured. Fifty were shot
"We felt despair," says Jones, who became one of the camp's earliest American prisoners in late 1942 after his plane was shot down over North Africa.
Though the camp would swell to 3,000 by war's end, at first it was mainly occupied by Royal Air Force pilots.
"Some had been there since 1939," says Jones, who grew up in Tucson and got his wings in what was then the Army Air Corps in 1938.
After Pearl Harbor, Jones became one of Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle's Raiders, helping to carry out a daring bombing raid over Tokyo in the spring of '42.
Less than a year later, he became a prisoner of war in a camp where many fixated on freedom.
"People were always trying to escape," says Jones. "They had an escape committee. If you and your friend decided to try and sneak out, you had to clear it with the committee.
"Unless you had a real clear plan, could speak the language and had the proper papers, forget it."
In early 1943, British prisoner Roger Bushell came up with a plan to dig three tunnels simultaneously, with the thought that if one was discovered, two spares would remain.
Dubbed "Tom," "Dick" and "Harry," the tunnels would be dug at least 30 feet down, then 300 feet long, past the camp and into the forest.
"Tom" started in the corner of a prison hut corridor, "Harry" began under a stove, and "Dick" started in a washroom, beneath a drain cover.
Jones worked on all three.
"You were down 39 feet, on your belly and elbows. You couldn't turn around."
Scooping out the sand with a spoon or his hands, he passed it on a cart to other men, who filled socks with the sand and hid them in their pants legs.
The men then walked around the camp, letting the sand dribble out, mainly in the garden.
Wood to shore up the sandy tunnels came mainly from bed boards. "We took out just enough so they wouldn't collapse," says Jones.
But then "Tom" was discovered by the jubilant Germans, who had no idea two other tunnels lay beneath them.
The prisoners redoubled their efforts on "Harry," with "Dick" being used to store sand.
In the fall of '43, Jones and the other American fliers were moved to a new unit of the prison camp, where they could no longer access the tunnels - or be part of the ill-fated escape.
"When the first guy got out, they realized they were 20 feet short of the trees," says Jones.
Even so, 76 escaped before the German guards caught on.
Within two weeks, most were rounded up. Those who escaped execution were sent back to camp. Though dispirited, the prisoners, says Jones, "knew the tide was turning."
At the end of January 1945, they were marched in the snow for several days, then herded into boxcars and sent to another camp near Munich.
Gen. George Patton's forces liberated them on April 29.
In 2003, Jones and a few other prisoners returned to Stalag Luft III for an episode of PBS' "Nova." There, archaeologists hoped to find "Dick," the last remaining tunnel.
That they did - but this time they did it with backhoes.
That was a fascinating episode.
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