Canadian Albert Wallace was a prisoner of war at Stallag Luft III, the location of The Great Escape. He remembers lying awake anxiously in bed the night of the escape, hearing the sound of a gunshot and the commotion that followed.
In Wallace’s story there’s no Steve McQueen, and this was not a Hollywood set.
“I laid awake in my bunk in the camp,” said Wallace, whose Second World War experiences will be featured in War Story, a documentary series that premiered on History channel Nov. 8. “I don’t think I slept that night waiting to hear what was going to happen.”
Eventually he heard a rifle shot. A German guard on foot patrol walked into the forest to go to the washroom. The prisoner hidden in the woods got mixed up and pulled the rope for the man waiting in the tunnel. The guard heard the noise, flung his rifle, and fired one shot.
“That was the beginning of the end of the escape,” Wallace said. Seventy-three of the 76 escapees were caught and 50 were executed.
Wallace, who wasn’t an escapee, is 92 now and considers himself lucky to be alive. The Richmond Hill, Ont. resident plays golf, goes to his cottage often and volunteers every week.
Flashback 70 years to 1943 and Wallace is on a plane with seven men, dropping bombs over the Rhine River Valley in Germany. This wasn’t a lucky day.
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After dropping the bombs they realized that they had a hangout – when some bombs don’t get released – so the pilot opened the bomb doors to release them when they got hit by anti-aircraft fire.
They lost two of their four engines and had a large hole in one wing. “Bailout boys,” Wallace recalls the pilot telling the crew. So Wallace did, grabbing his parachute and jumping out. The pilot kept the plane flying long enough for the others to jump out, but didn’t survive, Wallace said.
Wallace parachuted down 12,000 feet in near-total darkness. Eventually he hit the ground, rolled over and picked up his parachute when he heard two farmers standing at their barn.
“They come dashing over to me, and for me it was over. I wasn’t about to fight with farmers,” he said.
“They took me into their kitchen through barn. One left to get phone and half an hour later two Germans in a motorbike turned up.”
They took him to a police station where he was reunited with a member of his crew. They were told to get into a truck which had two plain wooden coffins in the back.
“We didn’t know it at time but two bodies were our pilot and wireless op,” Wallace said. “Harry and I had to carry the coffins when we got to the mortuary.”
Eventually Wallace arrived at Stallag Luft III at the end of May 1943. All of the prisoners of war lived in huts, and the camp was surrounded by 9-foot high double-barbed wire, with guard towers every 60-70 metres. There was no abuse at the camp and Red Cross parcels were allowed in.
Wallace lived in Block 104, the escape room, for two months shortly after he arrived.
“The tunnel was an amazing feat,” Wallace said. He played a small role in the tunnel’s building as the penguin, “the guys that dispersed some of the sand” that was being dug out.
Wallace had a rope or pyjama cord around his neck, with the end of each piece of chord connecting to each pant leg, which contained a bag of sand each.
“You walked peculiar with two bags of sand,” Wallace said. “When you got to where you had to dispose, you pulled little triggers and it spewed out the sand.” Then he’d mix the sand into the ground with his feet.
Then the day finally came for the select group of prisoners to escape. The man in charge of the escape, the “Big X,” set the date two weeks ahead. The forgery department was tasked with making all the necessary documents for the escapees.
“You couldn’t have predicted the problems,” Wallace said.
When the guard spotted what was happening, he fired a shot and the grand plans began to fall apart.
“The German guardhouse outside camp came to life, came pouring in,” said Wallace, as guards and officers were everywhere, machine guns, rifles and pistols in hand.
They were furious, Wallace said. The Germans had no idea how many had escaped until they went around the next morning checking every prisoner against their identification.
“When they saw it was 76 men,” Wallace said, “their roof had really fallen in.”
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