Roger Bushell in 1944.
Roger Joyce Bushell (30 August 1910 – 29 March 1944) was a South African-born British military aviator. He masterminded the "Great Escape" from Stalag Luft III in 1944, but was one of the 50 escapees to be recaptured and subsequently murdered by the Gestapo.
Biography[]
Bushell was born in Springs, Transvaal, South Africa, on 30 August 1910 to English parents, Benjamin Daniel and Dorothy Wingate Bushell (née White). His father, a mining engineer, had emigrated to the country from Britain and he used his wealth to ensure that Roger received a first-class education. He was first schooled in Johannesburg, then aged 14 went to Wellington College in Berkshire, England. In 1929, Bushell then went to Pembroke College, Cambridge, to study law.
One of Bushell's passions and talents was skiing: in the early 1930s, he was declared the fastest Briton in the male downhill category. After the war he had a black run named after him in St. Moritz, Switzerland, in memory of his efforts to organize the Swiss-Anglo ski meetings. He additionally won the slalom event of the annual Oxford-Cambridge ski race in 1931.
Despite his sporting prospects, one of Bushell's primary wishes was to fly. In 1932 he joined No. 601 Squadron Auxiliary Air Force (AAF), which was often referred to as "The Millionaires' Mob" because of the number of wealthy young men who paid their way solely to learn how to fly during training days (often on weekends). He was commissioned on 10 August 1932 and promoted to flying officer on 10 February 1934, and flight lieutenant on 20 July 1936.
World War II[]
Bushell was given command of No. 92 Squadron in October 1939. His promotion to squadron leader was confirmed on 1 January 1940. During the squadron's first engagement with enemy aircraft on 23 May 1940, while on a patrol near Calais, to assist with the Dunkirk evacuation, he was credited with damaging two Messerschmitt Bf 110 fighter aircraft of ZG 26 before being shot down himself, probably by future ace Oberleutnant Günther Specht. He crash-landed his Spitfire on German-occupied ground and was captured before he had a chance to hide.
Bushell became a prisoner of war and was sent to the Dulag Luft transit camp near Frankfurt with all the other captured aircrew.
On arrival at Stalag Luft, he was made part of the permanent British staff under the senior British officer Wing Commander Harry Day. The permanent staff's duty was to help newly captured Allied aircrew to adjust to life as a prisoner of war.
In the spring of 1943, Bushell masterminded a plot for a major escape from the camp. Being held in the north compound where British airmen were housed, Bushell as commander of the escape committee channeled the escape effort into probing for weaknesses and looking for opportunities. Falling back on his legal background to represent his scheme, Bushell called a meeting of the escape committee in the camp and not only shocked those present with its scope, but injected into every man a passionate and driven determination to put every energy into the escape.
The simultaneous digging of these tunnels would become an advantage if any one of them were discovered by the Germans because the guards would scarcely imagine that another two could be well underway. The most radical aspect of the plan was not merely the scale of the construction, but also the sheer number of men that Bushell intended to pass through these tunnels. Previous attempts had involved the escape of anything up to a dozen or twenty men, but Bushell was proposing to get over 200 out, all of whom would be wearing civilian clothes and possessing a complete range of forged papers and escape equipment. It was an unprecedented undertaking and would require unparalleled organization. As the mastermind of the Great Escape, Bushell inherited the codename of "Big X". The tunnel "Tom" began in a darkened corner of a hall in one of the buildings. "Harry"'s entrance was hidden under a stove. The entrance to "Dick" had a concealed entrance in a drainage sump. More than 600 prisoners were involved in their construction.
Tom was discovered in August 1943 when nearing completion. Bushell also organized another mass breakout, which occurred on 12 June 1943. This became known as the Delousing Break, when 26 officers escaped by leaving the camp under escort with two fake guards (POWs disguised as guards) supposedly to go to the showers for delousing in the neighboring compound. All but two were later recaptured and returned to the camp, with the remaining two officers being sent to Oflag IV-C at Colditz for attempting to steal an aircraft.
After the discovery of Tom, construction on Harry was halted, but it resumed in January 1944. On the evening of 24 March, after months of preparation, 200 officers prepared to escape. But things did not go as planned, with only 76 officers managing to get clear of the camp.
Bushell and his partner Andy MacDonald, among the first few to leave the tunnel, successfully boarded a train at Sagan railway station. They were caught the next day at Saarbrücken railway station, waiting for a train to Alsace.
On March 29, under the pretext of being driven back to a prison camp, the car carrying Bushell and MacDonald stopped for a rest break at the side of the autobahn near Ramstein, Germany (just outside today's Ramstein Air Base). It was during this stop that they were murdered by members of the Gestapo, including Emil Steinach, helped by others. This was a breach of the Geneva Convention and thus constituted a war crime. The perpetrators were later tried and executed by the Allies. Fifty of the 76 escapees were killed in the Stalag Luft III murders on the personal orders of Adolf Hitler.
Bushell is buried at the Poznan Old Garrison Cemetery (Coll. grave 9. A.) in Poznań, Poland.