Читать книгу Amazing Airmen - Ian Darling - Страница 11

In September 1940, thousands of German troops assembled in France to invade the south coast of England. Hitler’s invasion plan was called Operation Sea Lion. The Germans lined up hundreds of river barges and other boats to take the troops across the English Channel. No invading force had come so close to England’s shores since the Spanish Armada sailed into the English Channel in 1588.

Before Hitler could launch the invasion, Germany needed to control the skies over the Channel. The Luftwaffe had to defeat the RAF so that British aircraft could not attack the invading force.

The British people were grim and tense. The war had reduced the country’s food supply, forcing the government to issue ration coupons for items such as bacon, butter, and sugar. Windows had to be completely covered at night to prevent any light from showing — light that could provide navigational assistance to German pilots. Great Britain was dark, literally and emotionally.

Though weaker than Germany, Britain was not defenceless. It could rely on Canada and other Commonwealth countries for assistance. It could call upon the Royal Navy’s powerful armada to protect its shores. It had also strengthened its land forces in the south of England — the Home Office even released posters of German troops so the British people could easily identify enemy soldiers on their beaches, fields, and streets. Britain also had courageous men in the Royal Air Force, such as Keith Ogilvie, who by this time was a pilot officer ready to participate in the Battle of Britain.

Ogilvie belonged to the RAF’s 609 Squadron, which was based at Middle Wallop, about one hundred kilometres southwest of London. The squadron flew the Spitfire, a single-seater fighter aircraft.

On September 7, 1940, the squadron was sent to attack several hundred German bombers and fighters flying toward London. From a distance, the planes looked like a cloud of hornets. Ogilvie felt excited. He was too busy getting his guns ready to feel frightened.

The Spitfires climbed above the bombers and positioned themselves so that the sun was behind them, becoming nearly invisible to German air crew. Ogilvie flew through the bombers, firing at one that had already been hit. The bomber started to go down, but Ogilvie lost sight of it because he was in the midst of the German formation. Trying to get out before a gunner fired at him he dove straight down, but he was too late. One of the gunners put a hole in the tail of his plane.

Ogilvie got away from the bombers and flew back up, getting ready to attack again. Just as he was about to swoop down, a Messerschmitt 109 — a German fighter — drifted in front of him. Then a second one appeared. The 109s were protecting the bombers, but the pilots didn’t appear to see Ogilvie’s Spitfire.

He fired, hitting the second one. It dove and turned over. He moved closer and fired again. Smoke and fire streamed from the 109. By then Ogilvie was out of ammunition, but he could claim to have destroyed the 109. Despite the hole in his Spitfire’s tail, he flew back to Middle Wallop.

Ogilvie flew again on September 15. His squadron was ordered into the air at 11:19 a.m. A controller told the pilots to look for bombers heading for Northolt, a few kilometres northwest of London. The sky was mainly clear with a few clouds.

Shortly after noon, 609 Squadron spotted about thirty German bombers over London flying at about 18,000 feet (5,400 metres). Fighter aircraft escorted them. The Spitfires tried to attack, but the attack failed because the German fighters fired cannon shells at them.

Ogilvie dove down and came up the side of the bombers. He saw some German fighters flying over him and felt thankful they hadn’t come down to attack him. Then, in front of him he saw a lone aircraft that had become separated from the main formation, perhaps because it was already damaged. It was a Dornier 17, a thin, light bomber.

The Dornier released several bombs that were heading toward Buckingham Palace. Ogilvie fired at the bomber’s port (left) side. The gunner on the Dornier fired at him. Ogilvie fired again. This time, the gunner didn’t fire back. Ogilvie fired a third time. As he flew by, he could see a fire inside the Dornier’s cockpit. Two members of the crew bailed out. The Dornier started to spin slowly. The tail snapped off, then the wings. The bomber was disintegrating.

Two heavy bombs from the Dornier hit Buckingham Palace. The following day the Times of London reported that one fell on the palace buildings and the other fell on a lawn. In addition, several small incendiary bombs fell on the palace grounds. These bombs started small fires that the palace staff and police extinguished.

Neither of the two heavy bombs exploded, the Times said. The one that struck the palace went through a private room used by Queen Elizabeth, who later became known as the Queen Mother. Neither the Queen, King George VI, nor their two children, Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, were at the palace at the time.

The Times also reported that witnesses saw the bomber break into pieces. The wings fluttered in one direction; the fuselage dropped straight down.

This was the third time in a week that German aircraft had bombed the palace. The previous Friday, the King and Queen had been at the palace when six bombs dropped onto it. One exploded about thirty metres from the King.

Wreckage from the Dornier came down in different parts of central London. A large section of the fuselage landed outside Victoria Station, scraping the thick walls of the train station.

The Daily Mirror reported that Londoners who were on Wilton Road near the station raced from the area as the bomber fell. It was the first bomber to come down in central London. The wreckage destroyed a jewellery store and damaged the station restaurant, trapping fifty women in the basement. The women had sought shelter there during the air raid. They didn’t panic. Many had been knitting and, despite the intrusion of the bomber, they kept knitting. Their main concern, the newspaper reported, was that their lunch might be spoiled. Within a few minutes, some men rescued the women by prying open a door. “God bless our lads,” one woman said as she came out, referring to the men in the RAF.

Another part of the Dornier landed outside a pub not far from Victoria Station, much to the joy of the pub’s patrons.

The Dornier’s pilot was Flying Officer Robert Zehbe. He bailed out of his aircraft and landed near the Oval, the cricket stadium in south London. Police took him to a hospital, but he died the next day. Two other members of his crew bailed out and survived. Two died on board.

After he had attacked the Dornier, Ogilvie flew back to his base, but he didn’t stay there very long. His squadron flew again during the afternoon. At the end of the day, Ogilvie wrote that 609 Squadron had destroyed four Dorniers, probably destroyed another four, and had damaged several others.

Ogilvie had a successful, exhilarating day. He could prove he had fired at the Dornier because a camera synchronized with his Spitfire’s eight machine guns recorded the attack. However, his exhilaration was tempered when he learned that one of his fellow flyers, Pilot Officer Geoff Gaunt, had been shot down. Gaunt was Ogilvie’s roommate.

Although neither the King nor the Queen saw the battle above their palace on September 15, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands did.

Queen Wilhelmina left the Netherlands on a British destroyer on May 13, 1940, a few days after German troops invaded her country. While in England she became a symbol of Dutch resistance to Nazi Germany.

Wilhelmina watched the battle from her London home. The fighter aircraft that shot down the German bomber impressed her. She asked one of her aides to write to the British Air Ministry to congratulate the pilot and his squadron. The ministry forwarded the queen’s note to 609 Squadron, which gave it to Ogilvie.

The squadron’s diary mentions the confusing nature of the battle over London that day, stating, “Who shot what seemed to be rather vague.” Considering the number of fighter pilots in the air, several could have attacked the Dornier bomber before Ogilvie.

One such pilot was Sergeant Ray Holmes, who flew a Hurricane with 504 Squadron. Holmes had been firing at several bombers when he approached one from behind. He thought the bomber was heading for Buckingham Palace. He pushed the firing button. Nothing happened; Holmes was out of ammunition. He made an instant decision to ram the bomber. He let a wing of his Hurricane hit the Dornier’s tail fin. Part of the tail broke off.

The collision also damaged Holmes’ plane. He bailed out, landed on a roof, slid off it, and ended up in a garbage bin. But Holmes was safe, and he returned to his base at Hendon in the northern part of London.

That very morning, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had taken over from Chamberlain, went to the headquarters of No. 11 Fighter Group in Uxbridge, a town just west of London. He wanted to see how the RAF fought German bombers that crossed the Channel. No. 11 Group covered southeast England.

In his book about the Second World War, Their Finest Hour, Churchill describes what he saw that day. The group’s operations room was a small theatre, fifty feet (fifteen metres) underground. Churchill looked down on a large map of the south of England. About twenty men and women moved discs on the map that represented planes in the air. Information about the flight paths of German aircraft flowed from radar units and the Observer Corps. The observers were trained to look for enemy aircraft and to report what they saw. On one wall in the room a blackboard listed all the squadrons in No. 11 Group. Lights flashed on it to show the state that the squadrons were in. A red light meant the squadron was fighting the enemy.

When Churchill first entered the room, he didn’t know whether he would see any raids plotted on the map. But during the morning, the plotters moved the discs a lot. The Luftwaffe was sending wave after wave of bombers. The lights showed that the RAF pilots were airborne — Pilot Officer Keith Ogilvie was one of them.

Churchill turned to Air Vice Marshal Keith Park, who directed the fighters, and asked, “What other reserves have we?” Park provided a straightforward answer: “There are none.” The RAF had put every available fighter into the sky.

Churchill found his experience at No. 11 Fighter Group’s operations room to be exhausting. He returned to his home and slept. When he woke up, he asked about the day’s battles. His secretary told him the RAF had shot down 183 German planes compared to a loss of forty.

Two days later, on September 17, Hitler postponed Operation Sea Lion indefinitely. The fighting was far from over, but the Royal Air Force had succeeded in defending Britain.

In the days and months that followed, RAF fighters continued to patrol the skies, watching for German bombers and fighters.

On September 24, 609 Squadron flew to intercept a raid headed for Southampton. The pilots spotted anti-aircraft fire over the Isle of Wight in the English Channel and flew toward the island. Ogilvie saw about a dozen Dornier 17s. He attacked one at about 20,000 feet (6,000 metres) and set its port engine on fire. The Dornier dove straight down. Ogilvie waited for it to crash into the Channel. Much to his surprise and embarrassment, the bomber levelled off and flew away.

Ogilvie raced after it. As he approached the Dornier, it shot oil from a flame-thrower in its tail, but it failed to ignite and coated his windshield instead. The oil prevented Ogilvie from seeing the bomber well enough to fire at it. He almost rammed it, but instead ended up firing at the Dornier until he ran out of ammunition and had to return to Middle Wallop. He suspected the Dornier also returned to its base across the Channel.

Around noon the next day, the squadron flew near Bristol in southwest England. It confronted a large formation of German Dornier and Heinkel bombers, escorted by Messerschmitt fighters. Ogilvie fired at a Dornier and knew that he hit it when glycol, a liquid coolant, streamed from its two engines.

Suddenly, Ogilvie heard a loud noise. A Messerschmitt 109 had fired at him, putting a hole in his starboard (right) wing. He then saw the 109 close behind him; it fired again. Bullets hit various parts of Ogilvie’s Spitfire. One went through his tail, one hit his radio, and another hit his port wing.

Despite the damage, Ogilvie flew away from the fighter and pursued the German bombers. He lost sight of the Dornier he had previously attacked, but found another one, which he fired at. Smoke spewed from an engine, but he couldn’t shoot it down because he ran out of ammunition and had to return to his base. When he landed, his Spitfire almost turned over because the wheel on his port side no longer functioned properly. The bullet that hit his wing had punctured a tire that retracted into the wing when the Spitfire was airborne.

On September 26, the squadron flew again at 4:00 p.m. It attacked a force of sixty German bombers and a dozen fighters over Christchurch, not far from Bournemouth. Ogilvie confronted a Messerschmitt 109 and fired at it, but it dove away. He then found a Heinkel bomber, got close to its tail and fired. He could see yellow flashes as the bullets hit the bomber. The gunner fired back. Several bullets bounced off the Spitfire’s wings. One went through the main spar that supports the wings, but Ogilvie kept flying. He had to end the attack when he was out of ammunition again. Discouraged, he flew back to his base.

The following day, just before noon, the squadron was called upon to attack German bombers and fighters heading for Bristol. Ogilvie flew behind Pilot Officer Mick Miller. A Messerschmitt 110 fired its cannons at Miller. Immediately afterwards, Miller’s Spitfire collided with the German fighter. There was a terrific explosion, a sheet of flames arose and then a column of black smoke. Ogilvie saw the wing of the Spitfire flutter to Earth. Miller was dead.

Ogilvie pulled up, saw a Messerschmitt 109, and pushed the button to fire. Another sheet of flames arose, and the 109 descended to the earth.

When they weren’t attacking enemy planes, the pilots often spent time improving their skills, but even practise flying could be dangerous, as well as embarrassing. On December 2, Ogilvie was leading some pilots in his squadron when he became so preoccupied watching them that he forgot to watch where he was landing. His Spitfire overshot the runway, slid on the wet grass and went through a hedge. Ogilvie was not hurt, but the plane was almost a writeoff.

Not all of Ogilvie’s days were hectic. As 1940 came to an end, he spent time fighting more mundane battles against the cold, wet English winter. By this time, 609 Squadron had moved from Middle Wallop to the RAF base at Warmwell, which was closer to the Channel. Ogilvie’s accommodation at his new base didn’t help much with keeping him warm: He lived in a tent.

Toward the end of January 1941, Ogilvie realized he had had only one good flying day during the entire, overcast month. He sometimes wondered if he should have joined the French Foreign Legion. Ogilvie and his squadron mates had a clear strategy for defeating the miserable weather: They went to nightclubs. Occasionally, their escapades became what Ogilvie called “riotous.” The squadron, however, managed to survive.

In February, the squadron moved to the RAF base at Biggin Hill, on the south side of London. The move pleased Ogilvie. He regarded the base as the number one fighter station in Britain.

One day in March, the squadron patrolled above the Channel again. Ogilvie flew with Pilot Officer Jan Zurakowski and Pilot Officer Zbigniev Olenski. The controller warned them to watch for enemy fighters. For a while, Ogilvie didn’t see anything, but he suddenly heard something; it was Zurakowski. “Ogie! Ogie!” Zurakowski shouted into his radio. Ogilvie reacted quickly. He looked in his mirror and saw the nose of a Messerschmitt 109 behind him. He flew off, but not before the German fighter put three machine gun bullets in his port wing. One punctured the tire contained in the wing. Despite the puncture, Ogilvie landed his Spitfire safely. He felt lucky.

He also felt lucky that evening when Vivien Leigh, the actress who played Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, attended a party at the Biggin Hill base. He was thrilled to have a chance to dance with her.

During an afternoon in April, the squadron flew over Dungeness in southeast England. Four Messerschmitt 109s flew above Ogilvie and swiftly swooped down. Ogilvie fired at one and it broke away. As he fired at a second, another aircraft dove at him from the sun.

Ogilvie raised the nose of his Spitfire and fired a short burst of bullets. They all missed, which was fortunate because the aircraft was a Spitfire flown by Pilot Officer Sydney Hill, a member of 609 Squadron. Fortunately, after they landed both pilots saw the humour in what had happened.

At about noon on July 4, 1941, Ogilvie and his squadron left Biggin Hill and flew into a blue sky. They were escorting Blenheim bombers on a flight to the Lille area in France. The fighters flew ahead, behind, and on both sides of the bombers. Ogilvie was thrilled to be part of what he regarded as an “imposing spectacle.” Far below him he could see the white streaks in the Channel made by the RAF’s Air Sea Rescue launches. The bombers and their escorts flew into anti-aircraft fire when they reached Dunkirk in France, and again when they were over St. Omer, which is farther inland.

Off in the distance, Messerschmitt 109s were climbing high. They positioned themselves to attack the bombers on their way home.

The Blenheims reached the target, dropped their bombs, and headed home. German anti-aircraft guns fired at them, but were ineffective. Suddenly, about fifteen Messerschmitt 109s swooped down. Ogilvie turned to attack them. One of the 109s fired at his Spitfire, hitting it. There was a terrific noise. Ogilvie was thrown against the dashboard and blood sprayed all over the cockpit. Ogilvie felt sick. His port aileron came off. He jettisoned his canopy so that he could bail out and turned the oxygen on full to stay awake. He couldn’t believe what had happened. No one warned him. He wondered if his radio had stopped working.

Ogilvie decided to fly back to the Channel. He wanted to bail out over it and hope that a rescue boat would save him. His Spitfire, however, no longer flew smoothly. To continue flying, he had to push the control column to the right.

Suddenly everything was quiet; Ogilvie had apparently become unconscious. Through a haze he could see the propeller sticking straight up and smoke spewed from the engine. He had to get out. He let go of the control column and the Spitfire immediately flipped over, flinging him out. Ogilvie groped for his ripcord and pulled it. Then everything went black.

Back in England, a friend of Ogilvie’s, Irene Lockwood, was waiting for him. She was a Canadian from Regina who worked with the British Ministry of Information in London. Her job was to censor letters that the men in the services sent to Canada, to make sure that they contained no information that could help the enemy.

Irene, who had met Ogilvie at a nightclub the previous year, had a date with him that night. She had two tickets to the opening of the American Eagle Club, a social club in London for Americans serving with the British armed forces. Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, the famous actors, were expected to attend. Irene treasured the tickets. She had used all her clothing coupons, as well as coupons provided by relatives, to buy a suitable outfit. She was furious when Ogilvie did not meet her.

The next morning, Squadron Leader Michael Robinson phoned her. “I’m sorry to give you the news, but Keith was shot down in flames,” he said. No one saw a parachute. Robinson said Ogilvie had little chance of surviving.

Irene remembered her angry reaction when Ogilvie did not appear the previous night. She felt guilty. She wrote a letter to Ogilvie’s parents, Charles and Margaret, expressing her sorrow.

Ogilvie’s parents received a telegram on July 5 from the British Air Ministry informing them that their son was missing as a result of air operations on July 4, 1941.

Ogilvie’s parachute had opened properly, even though the other pilots in 609 Squadron had not seen it. He had landed in a field.

When he regained consciousness, he was surrounded by French citizens. They tried to help him escape, but he couldn’t move. He had been hit twice in his left arm, which was broken, and once in his shoulder. He had also lost a lot of blood.

Soon, an ambulance and German soldiers arrived. One of them spoke to Ogilvie and expressed the words he would rather not have heard: “For you, the war is over.”

The German soldiers first took Ogilvie to a hospital in Lille, and later to a hospital in Brussels, Belgium. Ogilvie spent seven months lying on a bed with his left arm in a cast that was raised above him. Maggots got into the cast, but the German doctors told him that the maggots would not harm his arm. They were right; the maggots removed dead and infected tissue, and cleaned the wound by consuming bacteria.

When Ogilvie had recovered, he went to a prison camp at Spangenberg, near Kassel, in central Germany. From there he went to Stalag Luft III, a camp run by the Luftwaffe for Allied Air Force officers. It was located at Sagan, 160 kilometres southeast of Berlin. Ogilvie lived in the camp’s north compound.

Stalag Luft III was better than most prison camps and certainly better than German concentration camps. Providing they followed the rules, the prisoners at Stalag Luft III could expect to live through the war and then go home.

After he learned that his son was missing, Charles Ogilvie went for long walks beside the Rideau Canal, which was near his home at 43 Patterson Avenue in Ottawa. He would come back insisting his son was alive.

On August 27, the Air Ministry sent the Ogilvies a telegram that confirmed what Charles Ogilvie believed. The ministry said the Red Cross had informed them that Ogilvie was alive, although a badly wounded prisoner of war. The Ogilvies then wrote to Irene Lockwood in England to convey this information to her.

The prison camp permitted Ogilvie to write letters to family and friends. He corresponded with Irene. She answered his letters, but she never imagined that she would have a permanent relationship with him.

Ogilvie served as the parcel officer for the north compound. With guards watching, he opened both Red Cross parcels and packages that the prisoners received from home. The guards wanted to make sure nothing got into the camp that the prisoners could use for subversive purposes. Ogilvie had the opposite goal. He wanted, for example, to help his fellow prisoners smuggle radio parts into the camp.

Barbed wire and machine guns kept Ogilvie and his fellow prisoners inside the camp, but wire and guns didn’t stop the men from dreaming. They wanted to be on the other side of the wire.

In early 1943, Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, a prisoner who had been a lawyer before the war, started planning a mass escape through a tunnel. The prime goal was to disrupt the German war effort by forcing thousands of Germans to hunt for the escaped prisoners. The plan was code-named Operation 200 because the target was to get two hundred men out of the camp. Bushell headed the escape committee and became known as “Big X.”

The prisoners started digging three tunnels, named Tom, Dick, and Harry. When the guards discovered Tom, the prisoners used Dick for storage and concentrated on Harry, which started under a stove in room 23 of hut 104. Harry went in a northerly direction toward pine trees, which were supposed to provide cover for the men as they emerged.

Bushell and the escape committee planned every aspect of the escape, from a system to stop the security guards — known to the prisoners as ferrets — from discovering the tunnel to the production of identification papers the men would need once they were free.

Ogilvie helped the escape committee by obtaining identification papers that a guard carried in his wallet. One day, Ogilvie noticed an older guard’s wallet was partly out of his back pocket. Ogilvie removed it. He gave the wallet to another prisoner who took it to a hut in which “forgers” produced identification papers. The forgers photographed the guard’s papers and gave the wallet back to Ogilvie.

Then, pointing to the wallet, Ogilvie asked the guard if it was his. Indeed it was. Ogilvie said he found it on the floor. The guard was exceedingly grateful. He said if he lost his wallet he would be sent to the eastern front to fight the Russians. From then on, the old guard couldn’t do enough to please Ogilvie and his fellow prisoners.

The material that the prisoners used to construct the tunnel came from a variety of sources. Bed boards became the tunnel’s walls, and tin cans that had originally contained powdered milk became part of the ventilation system.

An electric wire came from an unexpected source. An electrician working on the roof of the compound’s cook house left a coil of wire on the ground. Flying Officer Gordon King from Winnipeg and another prisoner, Flying Officer Ted White from Midland, Ontario, saw it and grabbed it. They hid the coil inside their long winter coats and took it to a hut.

“Man! Could we ever use that!” said Flight Lieutenant Joe Noble, who was gathering supplies. And they did. The wire helped light the tunnel.

Flight Lieutenant Tom Lane from Austin, Manitoba, was one of the prisoners who helped provide security. As a “goon watcher,” he signalled to other prisoners if a guard was approaching hut 104. (Lane’s own ordeal is described in Chapter 17, “Eagles at War.”)

Lane also had more risky assignments. On several occasions he stood in the hallway of hut 104 while a guard drank coffee or smoked a cigarette in one of the rooms of the hut. Lane’s job was to assault the guard if he came out of the room when he might see something that would make him suspicious, but he was to make the assault appear accidental. Better that the Germans reprimanded a prisoner for his conduct than that a guard should discover the tunnel. Lane never had to demonstrate his pugilistic ability, but he was ready to confront the guards if necessary.

While the prisoners tunnelled, Irene Lockwood left the Ministry of Information to join the photographic section of the RCAF at the force’s headquarters in London. Starting as a leading aircraftwoman and later becoming a sergeant, she performed various tasks in the photo department, including making prints of airmen who received medals or died. The department would then send the photos to the hometown newspapers of the airmen.

One evening, Irene was enjoying a warm bath in her apartment building, the Challoner Mansions, in the Kensington area of London. This was a wartime luxury, which she had paid for by putting money in a water meter. Irene had no intention of leaving that bathtub for any reason.

An air raid siren started wailing. Irene 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 he was going, whether he had any friends in Czechoslovakia, and how the tunnel was constructed.

The interrogation session lasted about an hour, but Ogilvie did not answer the questions. He gave his name, rank, and RAF number: 42872. He also said he was a career officer, and that he had a duty to try to escape. Unlike some of the officers who escaped, Ogilvie was wearing his military uniform, not civilian clothes. This may have given credibility to his comments. After the interrogation, he went back to the prison cell.

On April 4, a corporal and some guards from the Luftwaffe came for Ogilvie and three other escaped prisoners, Flight Lieutenant Paul Royle, Flight Lieutenant Alfred Thompson, and Flight Lieutenant Albert Armstrong. After being with the Gestapo, Ogilvie was pleased to see Luftwaffe guards again. The guards took the four men to a railway station.

The Germans at the station showed curiosity but not animosity when the four prisoners walked into the waiting room; however, the crowd became quiet when Gestapo officers entered the station. The officers wanted the Luftwaffe guards to produce their identification papers. The guards showed the appropriate papers and they, along with the prisoners, boarded a train back to the prison camp. At Stalag Luft III, Ogilvie was put in a solitary confinement cell.

While there, Ogilvie learned that the Gestapo had shot fifty of his fellow escapees, including Squadron Leader Bushell, who had planned the escape. Ogilvie was shocked. He could hardly believe the Germans would execute prisoners.

Only three of the seventy-six — two Norwegians and a Dutchman — succeeded in getting back to England.

In London on May 23, Anthony Eden, Britain’s foreign secretary, told the House of Commons that the government was investigating a news report from Sweden that German guards massacred prisoners of war at Stalag Luft III.

A month later, Eden said the Gestapo had murdered the prisoners. He noted that they had been killed in small groups, not during a mass escape. The foreign secretary pledged that after the war the British government would bring every German involved in the crime to justice.

While Eden promised retribution, the Air Ministry sent a secret message to the prisoners by radio, telling them to stop trying to escape. The ministry wanted the men to remain in their camps until the Allies could liberate them.

The Germans forcefully encouraged the prisoners to stay in their camps. They put up posters that said police and guards would shoot prisoners who escaped.

With the Russians moving toward Germany from the east, the German government became desperate. It wanted to keep the Allied prisoners away from the Russians. On a cold winter night in January 1945, the guards at Stalag Luft III ordered about 10,000 prisoners to leave the camp.

As the parcel officer, Ogilvie handed out Red Cross packages at the entrance to the north compound as the men departed. The prisoners took what they could carry in knapsacks or pull on sleds.

As he walked through the snow on the long march to Bremen in northwest Germany, Ogilvie often felt like giving up. A friend from the camp, Samuel Pepys, infused Ogilvie with the will to take one more step on his blistered feet and then another. In turn, Ogilvie inspired Pepys to continue walking.

The prisoners marched day after day, week after week. For several months the men had only rudimentary accommodation, such as barns.

Spring came. On May 2, 1945, a British armoured unit liberated Ogilvie and the prisoners who were with him. For Keith Ogilvie, the war was over. Six days later, the war was over for everyone in Europe.

In Their Finest Hour, Churchill says the figure given to him of 183 German planes shot down on September 15, 1940, was inflated. After the war he learned that the real number was fifty-six, less than a third of the original estimate. Nevertheless, this toll was too high for the Luftwaffe, which concluded that it could not defeat the RAF at that time.

When the Allied troops moved into Germany, Irene’s position at the RCAF enabled her to see what had occurred in that country during the war. She printed photos taken by RCAF photographers at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, in northwest Germany. The photos showed cremation ovens and piles of bodies thrown into pits.

After he returned to England, Ogilvie recuperated in a hospital in Gloucester. He wrote to Irene and suggested they get together. When he called her office in London, her supervisor told him she was on vacation beside Lake Windermere, in the Lake District in northwest England. The supervisor also gave him her address.

Ogilvie went to the lake, and found her room. Wearing his full uniform, he knocked on her door. Irene Lockwood was not only stunned that he had found her, but she was delighted to see that he looked so well and had recovered from his ordeals as a prisoner of war.

Ogilvie applied to transfer from the RAF to the Royal Canadian Air Force. This time, the RCAF accepted his application, even though he still did not have a university degree. It could hardly deny that he had gained a considerable amount of experience.

Before he left England, Ogilvie filed a report with MI9, the British intelligence service, about his escape from Stalag Luft III. It described how he got out of the tunnel and watched the German guard walk toward the exit shaft. It also described his experience with the Gestapo in the Gorlitz prison.

He sailed for Canada in July 1945, on the ocean liner Stratheden. Back in Canada, Ogilvie worked with the RCAF’s welcoming committee that met members of the air force returning from England on ships that docked at Montreal, Halifax, and New York.

Irene sailed home to Canada on the Queen Elizabeth on February 15, 1946. She had a cold, rough voyage.

Five days later, when the ship docked in New York, she heard her name on the public address system: “Will Irene Lockwood please report to the purser’s office.”

She feared something was wrong. Perhaps a member of her family was ill or had died. When she got to the purser’s office, she was amazed. Keith Ogilvie stood before her. As a member of the welcoming committee, he knew when Irene would return and he arranged to go to New York to welcome her.

Most passengers on the ship were not allowed to go ashore, but Irene left the ship with her special escort. They both enjoyed seeing New York, particularly a show by comedian Danny Kaye. Irene then took a train to Montreal.

Within a few months of returning to Canada, Irene became engaged to Ogilvie. They got married that summer.

Ogilvie, the career officer, remained in the air force and became a squadron leader. He retired in 1963.

As Anthony Eden had promised, the British government sought the Germans who murdered the fifty officers. After the war, the Royal Air Force investigated the deaths and laid charges against Gestapo agents. In his book The Longest Tunnel, Alan Burgess sums up the results of the investigation: twenty-one members of the Gestapo were executed, eleven committed suicide, seventeen received long prison terms, and a few were acquitted. Six had been killed in air raids at the end of the war.

In 2000, the British archives released a previously classified document that showed that the decision to execute the fifty escapers was made at the highest level; Adolf Hitler had participated in the decision. He had hoped that executing the prisoners would set an example that would discourage other prisoners from escaping.

In 1963, the mass escape at Stalag Luft III was turned into the movie, The Great Escape. Ogilvie enjoyed the film as a Hollywood production, but he thought many scenes did not portray what really happened. No one, for example, escaped on a motorcycle like Captain Hilts, the character portrayed by American actor Steve McQueen.

Although the characters are composites of real prisoners, one scene resembles the incident in which Ogilvie removed a guard’s wallet. In the movie, Flight Lieutenant Hendley, played by James Garner, takes a wallet from Werner, a guard. Werner later tells Hendley that he has lost his wallet, and fears he could be sent to the Russian front. Hendley offers to find the wallet but only if Werner gives him a camera.

The stone wall of Victoria Station that the Dornier bomber scraped remains chipped to this day. The chipping is visible about a metre above the ground, at the entrance of what is now a pub called The Iron Duke.

After the war, Ray Holmes, the pilot whose Hurricane struck the Dornier bomber, resumed his career in journalism in Liverpool. He died in 2005.

Ogilvie never claimed to be the only pilot who fired at the Dornier. He thought as many as six other pilots may have attacked it. However, as the years flew by, Ogilvie’s encounter with the German bomber near Buckingham Palace became legendary. One magazine story contained a photo of the palace with the words “Saved by a Canadian” — a claim Ogilvie never made. An article in the Ottawa Citizen on May 28, 1998, quotes Tony Little, a friend of Ogilvie’s, as saying Ogilvie gave up trying to clarify what he really did.