remained in the tub even though she could hear in the distance the throbbing hum made by German bombers. Then she heard bombs explode. The hum became louder, but Irene was not getting out of that tub.
Suddenly, one of her apartment mates, Helen Baker, rushed into the bathroom. “You’ve got to get out because it’s on its way here, and it sounds as though we’re right in the pathway,” she said as she grabbed Irene’s hair and pulled her out of the tub. The two women crawled under a grand piano.
A bomb struck the neighbourhood about a block away. The explosion shattered every window in the apartment unit. Broken glass fell into the bathtub.
While the two women were still under the piano, an air raid warden opened the door of the apartment and shone a flashlight. “Everything all right in here?” he asked.
Yes, everything was all right. Helen had made sure of that.
Finally, in March 1944, the tunnellers had nearly finished Harry. On March 24, two hundred men quietly assembled in hut 104. They entered in small groups so that the guards would not be suspicious.
During the evening the tunnellers chipped away at the soil near the surface. They were shocked when they removed the last bit of earth and looked out. The exit shaft was several metres short of the trees.
Despite the lack of cover for the men leaving the tunnel, the escape went ahead. The prisoners improvised a method that would enable an escaper to leave the exit shaft without a guard seeing him. A man who had just come through the tunnel would hide in the woods then tug a rope to let the prisoner in the shaft know when he could safely come out.
Late in the evening, the prisoners started going down the shaft under room 23, and getting onto trolleys for the 108-metre journey through the tunnel. The men didn’t get through as swiftly as expected. Some were not familiar with the tunnel, others could not move quickly because they wore bulky clothes for the cold weather and carried packages of food. Parts of the roof collapsed a few times. The sand had to be removed before more prisoners could go through the tunnel.
Around midnight, Allied air crews inadvertently created a problem for the escapers. An air raid on Berlin prompted the camp to switch off the electricity to ensure a total black out. The lights in the tunnel went out, further delaying the movement of men.
Ogilvie went through the tunnel just before dawn. He was number seventy-six. He climbed up the shaft and then slithered over the snow to the trees where he joined Flight Lieutenant Lawrence Reavell-Carter. They were waiting for ten men to form a group that would skirt the camp before they split into groups of two. Flight Lieutenant Roy Langlois was lying on the ground near the exit, pulling the rope to signal when men could leave the tunnel.
Flight Lieutenant Michael Shand was the next man out. When he was halfway to the woods, a guard patrolling outside the prison fence walked to the tunnel exit and saw someone in the snow.
He fired a shot and started shouting. Reavell-Carter told Ogilvie he thought the guard had seen them, so he stood up. “Kamerade,” he shouted, and then, speaking in German, told the guard not to shoot. The guard advised Reavell-Carter to put his hands up and walk toward him.
As Reavell-Carter surrendered, Ogilvie remained still. The guard had not seen him. Ogilvie crawled away. When he had gone about fifty metres he stood up and ran. Shand was running as well. Ogilvie heard rifle shots fired in their direction. He ran faster. The two men separated and went in different directions. They were the last prisoners to flee into the woods.
Ogilvie planned to go to Yugoslavia, where he hoped to join the anti-German partisans. To go around the camp, Ogilvie first ran in a westward direction, then turned south. He ran for several hours. He came across a road and ran along it, going through a small town. Tired, he started walking. A German cyclist rode by him, speaking angrily. He continued pedalling quickly toward the town.
Ogilvie feared the cyclist would inform police of his presence. He went back into the woods and hid in the underbrush. He felt safe there. For the first time since July 4, 1941, he was on his own. He was free.
When the men in hut 104 heard the rifle shot they suspected that a guard had discovered the tunnel. Someone in the tunnel shouted words that confirmed their suspicion: “It’s finished. It’s over.”
Flight Lieutenant King, one of the prisoners who took the electrical wire, had been waiting to go down the tunnel. King realized that he was not going to have a chance to escape.
The men in hut 104 responded quickly. They ate the food they were going to carry, and they tried to destroy all the documents and equipment they had assembled, such as compasses. They did not want the guards to confiscate these items.
The guards entered hut 104 and ordered all the men to go outside onto the snow-covered campground. The guards carried machine guns. King feared they were going to shoot him and his fellow prisoners.
The men were forced to strip and were searched. Then, with photos kept on file, guards checked the identity of every resident of the compound to see who was missing. After standing for several hours, the prisoners went back to their huts.
Guided by a compass, Ogilvie set off again in the evening. He walked through snow, slush, and swamps. He stumbled into trees. By morning he was cold, wet, and exhausted. He came across a farm, but after hearing dogs bark he quickly returned to the woods.
By noon, Ogilvie came to a major highway. When he saw it, he realized he had not gone as far as he would have liked. He remembered the escape committee telling him he should reach the highway on his first night. He crossed the highway and re-entered the woods, where he hid in the underbrush.
Ogilvie started walking again in the evening. Snow fell, which made his trek more difficult. After a few hours, he came to a road. In order to travel more quickly, he walked along it. Half an hour later, two members of the German Home Guard saw him as he crossed a bridge near the town of Halbau. The guards took him to a police station on the highway that he had previously crossed. On the way, Ogilvie reached into his pocket, tore up his maps and identification papers, then dropped the pieces.
After an hour, police took him by car to an inn at Halbau. A German in civilian clothes briefly interrogated him. Two hours later, three other officers who had escaped from Stalag Luft III were also brought to the inn and interrogated.
At about 9:00 a.m., two policemen drove the four men to Sagan, but not back to Stalag Luft III. They went to the town’s police station where they were stripped, searched, and put in a cell with about twenty other men who had escaped through the tunnel.
In the cell, Ogilvie learned a massive number of Germans had been diverted from their regular duties to recapture the escapers. This included civilians, the home guard, and police departments. Ogilvie and his fellow officers knew they had succeeded in hindering the German war effort.
German troops soon put the men in trucks and drove overnight to a building with stone walls in Gorlitz, near the Czechoslovakian border. It was a Gestapo prison. Ogilvie was put in a cell with two other escapees.
In a few days, the Gestapo took the men to their headquarters for questioning. The interrogator wanted to know how Ogilvie escaped, who had ordered him to escape, where
