Stalag Luft III. - Almost a great escape: a found story

Almost a Great Escape

Also by Tyler Trafford

The Mtis Girl

Alexanders Way

The Story of Blue Eye

Copyright 2013 by Tyler Trafford.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). To contact Access Copyright, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call 1-800-893-5777.

Edited by John Sweet.

Cover and page design by Chris Tompkins.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Trafford, Tyler, 1949

Almost a great escape [electronic resource]: a found story / Tyler Trafford.

Electronic monograph issued in PDF format.

ISBN 978-0-86492-763-7

1. Trafford, Alice Correspondence. 2. Mller, Jens Correspondence. 3. Trafford, Tyler, 1949- Family. 4. Stalag Luft III. 5. Prisoner-of-war escapes Poland agan. 6. World War, 1939-1945 Prisoners and prisons, German. 7. Mothers and sons. 8. Authors, Canadian (English) 20th century Biography. I. Title.

PS8589.R335Z53 2013 C813.54 C2012-906317-7

Goose Lane Editions acknowledges the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF), and the Government of New Brunswick through the Department of Tourism, Heritage, and Culture.

Goose Lane Editions

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Fredericton, New Brunswick

CANADA E3B 5X4

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For Judy, Sharnee, and Nicolas

Please Alice remember that Ill come back...

Jens Mller.

ONE GOOD THING

My mothers name was Alice Tyler. The story of her One Good Thing begins at her funeral in April 2004 and ends 60 years earlier, in March 1944, when 76 World War II airmen break out of Stalag Luft III, the Nazi prison camp in Sagen, Poland. The Great Escape made into a Steve McQueen film: 73 recaptured, 50 executed. Only 3 made it home.

In 1961, when I was 12, Alice knew something was going to happen to us that I wouldnt understand. Instead of trying to explain it, she gave me one of her favourite books: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. I still have the book. It is a first edition, printed in 1952. It could be valuable today to collectors because Hemingway won a Pulitzer Prize with it except our dog chewed a corner. Its a small book, only 140 pages. I still read it whenever I feel small in a big world. I have read it hundreds of times.

The plot is simple. An old Cuban fisherman named Santiago fishes alone, far out on the Gulf Stream where nobody else dares to go. There he hooks the biggest marlin he has ever seen: 18 feet long.

For two days and nights the fish tows Santiagos small skiff toward the floating horizon. The line rips through the calluses of Santiagos already scarred hands. His admiration for the fishs courage and endurance becomes love. The fish is the most noble experience of his life.

Waiting for his return is Manolin, the boy the old man has been teaching to fish.

On the third day, Santiago is able to pull the marlin close. He drives his harpoon into its heart. He still loves it after it is dead. Blood swirls into the current. The marlin is too long to load onto his skiff, so he ties it to the side. Then sharks attack. Santiago uses the last of his strength defending the marlin.

He sails through the night and into the harbour. All the sharks have left him is a skeleton.

In the morning Manolin finds Santiago asleep in his shack. He sees his teachers ripped hands and begins to cry. On his way to buy coffee for the old man he sees the remains of the marlin in the harbour. He begins to cry again.

Alice told me I must be like Santiago and catch a truly big fish The One Good Thing in my life. Never give up. Nothing else matters. Not even the sharks that come afterwards.

She liked that expression, One Good Thing. We all have one, she would say. When life shows up with a package and your name is on it. Take it. Dont hesitate. The opportunity will never come again.

She told me this in so many ways that I knew it had a significance to her wrapped around something she kept hidden.

I often wanted to ask her what the One Good Thing in her life had been. But how can a boy ask his mother what it is she wont talk about?

After I read the book again, I asked her what would have happened to Santiago if his fish had gotten away.

She kissed me on the forehead. A fisherman like Santiago keeps his truly big fish in his heart, whether he brings it to the shore or not. What or who we love never gets away. We fight the sharks forever to remember that love. Maybe one day youll write a book with that ending.

I was Manolin. My mother was Santiago. For twelve years she had been teaching me to be just like her.

Then I was alone.

MY GOODBYE MOTHER

Alice gave me her name, Tyler. My older brother got my fathers name, Ted (Teddy).

Alice taught me everything she considered important. She taught me how to care, how to laugh, and how to live my own life.

She taught me to read from New Yorkers and novels. She taught me to ride a horse, swim, ski, and ignore people who said a boy couldnt decide for himself.

Because we were more like friends than mother/son, it wasnt hard for me to see she kept something hidden that she would never talk about. Maybe she thought I would eventually figure it out for myself. Figuring things out for myself was an important part of being with Alice.

People often said Alice was blue eyed blonde slim beautiful. I always said she was strong. She had the strongest soft hands of any person I would ever know. You couldnt break her grip. She always held me safe.

When I was six, I came home from my first day of school and told her I didnt think I would learn anything there. She didnt argue. A month later she introduced me to Mrs. Bilton, a grade three teacher who was willing to try me in her class. Mrs. Bilton divided her class into animal groups and pasted bluebirds, squirrels, and robins on their scribblers. She rewarded students with gold stars and pinned the best pages on the walls. I tore the bluebird off my scribbler and pulled my gold stars from the wall. The last time Alice ever came to my school was to persuade Mrs. Bilton that I would do fine as a group of one. She wanted me to be able to figure things out for myself. Mrs. Bilton said I was already doing that and I didnt have to be a bluebird.

If the snow was good, Alice took me out of school to go skiing. If the grass was green, we went riding. We considered report cards unimportant.

Alice protected me from my father. And paid for it. He was a charming, loveless aristocrat and a good liar who liked to reach over and rap my knuckles with a soup spoon whenever I spilled food or wasnt sitting up straight. He said he was teaching me British manners. I had to take the rap then, or the belt later. He expected gold stars from a lad of my possibilities. Alice changed the subject when she could.

My father was not my mothers One Good Thing. I couldnt imagine he had one, and I wished my mother would tell me what hers was.

Maybe she had missed her One Good Thing. Maybe she had waited too long. Maybe she had made a mistake. If that were true, I had figured out who the mistake was.

I may have been only a lad as my father used to call me in his British way but I was old enough to see he didnt like how close Alice and I were, the way we laughed at the same jokes, and how we disappeared into the mountains leaving him at home with the children and the nanny. He worked late those days. I was too young to know what that really meant.