Simon Pearson - The Great Escaper: The Life and Death of Roger Bushell

Copyright Simon Pearson 2013

First Skyhorse edition, 2021.

Afterword Copyright Simon Pearson 2021

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Hodder & Stoughton, a Hachette UK company.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or .

Skyhorse and Skyhorse Publishing are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Daniel Brount

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-4896-5

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-4897-2

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to the memories of Squadron Leader Roger Joyce Bushell and Lady Georgiana Mary Curzon; the pilots of 601 and 92 squadrons, RAF; the heroes of the Czech resistance, particularly Blaena Zeithammelov, her father Otto and her brother Otokar; and the men of many nations who waged war on Nazi Germany from within the prisoner of war camps, notably the officers from the North Compound, Stalag Luft III.

Contents

Prologue

I n the late afternoon of Saturday, 29 September 2012, I sat amid the remains of a wooden hut in the forests of Western Poland that was once the prison of a man whod come to fascinate me an unorthodox warrior who spent his life breaking rules.

Seventy years ago, this place was a prisoner-of-war camp Stalag Luft III about two miles from the German town of Sagan, which is known today by its Polish name of aga.

The pines have reclaimed much of the North Compound. Only the foundation blocks made of red brick and the concrete floors of wash-rooms remain of the prison huts once inhabited by the Allied airmen who are central to this story.

Shafts of sunlight flickered through the pines; a breeze ebbed and flowed. I was alone and, for a moment, felt overwhelmed.

As I sat on one of the foundation blocks, my thoughts were interrupted by the bark of a dog and the sight of a man running towards me. Wearing the uniform of a Russian soldier from the Second World War, he was followed by a group of about twenty children.

Youre the Englishman whos writing a book, he said. Im from the museum.

I told him I was trying to find out about the life of Roger Bushell.

Big X! he answered with a broad smile. The head of the escape committee! He lived here... you can celebrate this story, he said. This was a POW camp, not a concentration camp. There are no monuments made of bodies here. This was run by the Luftwaffe, not the SS. There was honour in this place.

The children listened. Many of them said Hello; some of them shook my hand. Eventually, the Pole in Russian battledress bade me farewell. The children had to get back to the museum for a re-enactment, he said.

Once again, I was left alone in the forest. Roger Bushell, the leader of the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III in 1944, remained an enigma to me.

Almost exactly fifty years ago, I sat with my father, a former airman, in a cinema in the English Midlands and watched a film that gave a dramatic account of events in the forest south of Sagan. As with so many boys of my generation, the Hollywood epic left an indelible mark. A year or so later, I found Paul Brickhills book of the same name among my Christmas presents.

Perhaps it was not surprising that in a house where bookshelves were lined with the biographies of airmen, and bombers and fighters made from Airfix kits hung from ceilings, I should be interested in this story, but my curiosity about events at Stalag Luft III remained with me and, if anything, became more intense.

My hobby became a quest. When the Kings Cup flying competition was held at Tollerton aerodrome near Nottingham, where my father flew at weekends, I met former RAF pilots who had known Bushell. My father took me to Biggin Hill, the fighter base where Bushell had been based at the start of the war. I read many books, but none of them told me much more than Brickhill had done.

In one of the war stories most cherished by the British, the man at the centre of events was largely forgotten. While the main characters in two of Brickhills most popular books Wing Commander Guy Gibson, who led the Dambusters, and Douglas Bader, the disabled fighter ace became national icons, Roger Bushell, the hero of a third, faded away. Brickhill was an Australian journalist who had himself been a prisoner in the North Compound. He sketched the outline of an intriguing man but the image was frustratingly short on detail.

Bushell did not make the transition from paperback to celluloid in the same manner as Gibson or Bader did in British-made films. Hollywood chose composite characters for The Great Escape rather than real people and Roger Bushell played by Richard Attenborough in the film became Roger Bartlett. He appeared in cameo roles in dozens of books, but no one told the story of his life. Why was this? Who was Roger Bushell?

Years later, while working at The Times, I came across a memorial notice in the archive, which marked the anniversary of Bushells birth and celebrated his life. It quoted Rupert Brooke: He leaves a white unbroken glory, a gathered radiance, a width, a shining peace, under the night. It was signed Georgie.

At that moment, I realised there was a love story to be told as well as a war story. A friend at The Times, the author Ben Macintyre, told me to stop dabbling: the time had come to write the book.

Within a few hours, I had written to the Imperial War Museum, outlining what I wanted to do and asking whether the staff could help. In one of those remarkable twists of fate that can define the outcome of any endeavour, the museums reply thrust open the door to the story of Roger Bushells life. His family was, at that moment, corresponding with the museum, with the intention of donating his archive. The museum would be happy to pass on a letter from me...

Over the years, the Bushell family had been approached by several people who wanted to make films or write books about Roger, but little emerged until 2010 when his niece, the South African film director and anti-Apartheid campaigner Lindy Wilson, made a documentary. She gave her film the title, For Which I am Prepared To Die, echoing the words of a speech by Nelson Mandela.

I met Lindy Wilson in November 2011, when she presented her uncles archive to the Imperial War Museum. For the family, this was a major decision. To give Rogers archive to the Imperial War Museum is an acknowledgement of who he was and that he didnt just belong to us, she said, but also to the country for which he died.