"The Great Escape" by Paul Brickhill Quiz

Answer: Jimmy Buckley

Buckley was nominated "Big X" by "Wings" Day when they were imprisoned at Barth. It was the beginning of the "X Organization". Later sent to Schubin (in Poland), Buckley and a Danish soldier escaped and got to Denmark. They started out from the Zealand coast in a boat, but never made it. No one really knows what happened to them, but the Dane's body was found in the sea weeks later, and they never found Buckley.

When the "X Organization" started up again in Stalag Luft III, Roger took over as "Big X".

Answer: Stalag Luft III

The prisoners sarcastically referred to it as "Goering's Luxury Camp". It was up near the Polish border and a long way from friendly territory.

Answer: Sagan

Sagan had a population of about 25,000 in Silesia, then known as "Germany's Dust Bowl." The one good thing about it was that the railroad station was only a mile from the camp. An escaping prisoner had a good chance to jump on a train if his escape wasn't noticed immediately.

Answer: Rubberneck

"Rubberneck" got his nickname because he had a long, thin neck. He was considered dangerous by the prisoners, as he was very stiff and rank-conscious. He always suspected them of digging tunnels, and was always hanging around trying to catch the prisoners at any "illegal" activities. (Such as digging, forging papers, etc!)

Answer: goon-boxes

I'll quote Paul Brickhill--"They were called goon-boxes because every prisoner of the Third Reich referred to the Germans as Goons."

Answer: the North compound

The East compound is where Eric Williams and his two friends escaped in October of 1943. This escape is described in Eric Williams' book "The Wooden Horse". This is another excellent book about escape from Stalag Luft III.

Answer: ferrets

The guards were dressed in overalls and carried flashlights and steel probes. If they suspected a tunnel, they would hammer the probes into the ground hoping to hit the roof boards of tunnel shoring. "Tom", "Dick" and "Harry" were too deep for the "ferrets" to find by probe.

Answer: Johnny Dodge

Major Johnny Dodge was an American. His grandfather, John Bigelow, was the U.S. Minister to France under Abraham Lincoln. He was always trying to escape, and in 1944, he finally made it when was freed by the German Foreign Office to take Hitler's surrender terms to Winston Churchill. (He was a relative by marriage to Churchill.)

Answer: "Piglet" Lamond

He was called "Piglet" because he was so small. He came up with the idea of tunnelling in front and pushing the dirt behind to fill up the tunnel. He stuck pointed sticks up through the surface for breathing holes. He was really lucky, because no one had ever tried this method before, and it was only a theory that he could get enough air to stay alive.

It obviously worked, because he and two others escaped and were caught in a boat on the Oder River when the boat was reported missing.

Answer: Johnny Travis

Travis had been a mining engineer until he was trapped for three days in a gold mine from a rock fall. He was very claustrophobic, but he would take his turn at digging the tunnels. Buckley was the one who started him making escape equipment. He made lamps, shovels for the diggers, and helped to make the air pumps used in the tunnels.

Answer: Tim Walenn

Tim had a team of forgers who eventually turned out around 400 forged papers. He would personally check each document, and scrap any that he didn't consider perfect. People liked to work with him, though, because he was always so courteous to everyone.

Answer: Jerry Sage

Jerry Sage was a paratroop major who was caught in North Africa after he had been walking behind German lines for two weeks sniping at people with a tommy-gun. He would have men having an unarmed combat drill or volley-ball games with a group of men standing around cheering, and sand would be shuffled into the compound by their feet.

He also had sand smuggled over to the latrines and dumped. The diversionists were so successful, the guards never noticed a thing!

Answer: Al Hake

Al Hake had his "factory" in hut 103. He made the compass casings out of broken gramophone records, with a gramophone needle in the center for a pivot. The direction needle was a sewing needle that had been rubbed against a magnet. The compass tops were made from glass from broken windows. According to Paul Brickhill, if there weren't any broken windows, Al broke one himself! He had an inscription carved in the compasses that read "Made in Stalag Luft III".

He eventually turned out about 250 compasses.

Answer: Des Plunkett

Des collected his map information from newly arrived prisoners and "tamed" Germans. His maps showed the best escape routes down through Czechoslovakia to Switzerland and France, and through the Baltic Sea to Sweden.

Answer: 123

"Tom" was started from hut 123, in a dark corner of the concrete floor by a chimney. The trap expert, Minskewitz, created a concrete slab reinforced with barbed wire about two feet square in a wooden mold. He chipped out the concrete around the tunnel trap, and replaced it with his slab.

When the slab was in position, the cracks were lined with cement paste and dusted with dirt. The cracks were almost invisible.

Answer: 122

"Dick's" trap was very ingenious. In the middle of 122's washroom was an iron grating about 18 inches square where water overflow ran into a well about three feet deep. There was a pipe to carry off the water, but there was always about a foot of water in the well below the pipe. Minskewitz chiseled away one side of the well, fit in a concrete slab, sealed the cracks with soap and sand, replaced the grate and ran water down the well to the edge of the run-off pipe.

The "ferrets" could never have found that trap once it was in place.

The diggers could get the trap off and on in just a few minutes.

Answer: 104

For "Harry's" trap, "Crump" Ker-Ramsay removed the stove from the square of tiles. He pulled the tiles up and glued them onto a wooden frame. He hinged this as a trap door, and the shaft was dug underneath. When they closed the trap, the stove was replaced back on the tiles.

They always kept the stove very hot to discourage the "ferrets" from probing too close around the trap. This was the tunnel they eventually finished and escaped from.

Answer: he was lame

Massey injured his foot in World War I, again in the 1930s in Palestine, and again when he bailed out of his plane over the Ruhr. He was eventually returned to England in a group of prisoners who had been badly wounded when they were shot down.

Answer: Dean and Dawson

It was called "Dean and Dawson" after the British travel agency.

Answer: boss of the stooges who guarded the forgers

Paul's words: "Of my own part in the show-little enough to say. I am a sort of Boswell, not a hero. I was a cog in the machine, boss of a gang of 'stooges' guarding the forgers, who had to work in an exposed position by windows to get enough light. Walenn, the chief forger and I invented the 'cloak and dagger' stooging system that gave them warning."

Answer: he was claustrophobic

Roger Bushell figured about 220 people might be able to get through the tunnel. He and the escape committee picked 70 names from those who had put in the most work and those who had the most chance of getting home. (Especially those who could speak German.) They then drew another 130 names from a hat, and Roger approved another 20 names of people he felt deserved the chance and hadn't been picked. Paul was selected to go, but was later banned on the grounds of claustrophobia.

Answer: 76

They were supposed to open the tunnel exit around nine o'clock, but the roof boards were jammed, and it took them almost an hour to get them loose and the exit opened. They also ran into problems with the trolleys, as they were derailed frequently. There was an air raid that caused problems, a couple of sand falls that blocked the tunnel and had to be cleared.

But worst of all, "Harry" was too short. It was ten feet short of the woods, so they had to tie a rope to the shaft ladder. A controller hidden in the woods would tug on the rope to let the next one out of the tunnel know when it was safe to crawl out.

The tunnel was opened up around 10:30 pm, and was discovered around 5:00 am when a sentry patrolling the wire saw a prisoner lying in the snow.

Answer: 3

Rocky Rockland and Jens Muller went by train to Stettin. There they met some Swedish sailors who hid them on their ship. They landed in Sweden and were flown to England a few days later by the R.A.F. Bob Van Der Stok traveled alone by train to Holland, then to Paris, then to Toulouse.

There he sold his watch for 10,000 francs and paid a guide to take him into the Pyrenees mountains and to Spain. The British Consul in Madrid sent him on to Gibraltar where he was flown back to England.

Answer: True

Hitler was very angry about the escape. He said it would take as many as 70,000 police and too many working hours to recapture the escapees. Goering protested on the grounds of "practical politics". He said that it would obviously be murder, and that reprisals might be taken on German prisoners in Allied hands. Hitler agreed, and ordered that "more than half" were to be shot. General Nebe is the one who picked the 50 victims.

His secretary, Mertens, remembered him looking at one record card of a prisoner and saying, "He is for it", and at another, saying, "He is so young, no". (But age had nothing to do with it.The majority of the victims were in their twenties!) The victims' cards were marked with red crosses and sent on to Gestapo headquarters.

Answer: cremated them

The urns of the 50 were returned to Stalag Luft III. Engraved on the urns was the locality where the death had taken place. The Kommandant allowed a working party of prisoners go to a near-by cemetery and build a vault for the urns.