Aviation Cultures Mark VII – Flying High: Aviation in Popular Culture 20–21 July 2023: ‘I wanted wings.’ Donald Duck, Pilot Officer Prune, and a motorbike: the popular culture of Stalag Luft III.

In July 2023, I zoomed into the Aviation Cultures Mark VII – Flying High: Aviation in Popular Culture conference.

 

My paper was: ‘I wanted wings.’ Donald Duck, Pilot Officer Prune, and a motorbike: the popular culture of Stalag Luft III.

The talk varied a little from the abstract (as they often do - well in my case anyway) but it gives you a fair idea of what I cover:

Captivity was an alien state. Stalag Luft III’s airmen prisoners of war (POWs) needed to accept their newly ‘wingless’ state, make sense of incarceration, and learn to cope with it. Donald Duck was one icon of popular culture which helped them do this. Although an American army draftee, Donald desperately wanted to fly. Following a series of misadventures, he had his chance but, after falling from an aeroplane, the hapless bird became, like the POWs themselves, a downed airman. Trapped behind bars in wartime logbook illustrations, wearing wings insignia and displaying the artist’s own POW number, Donald represented the fallen airmen. ‘I Wanted Wings!’, he wailed.

This paper highlights the significant place of popular culture in Stalag Luft III’s wartime history and post-war memory. It discusses how the airmen POWs appropriated Donald Duck and other cartoon icons such as Bugs Bunny and their very own Pilot Officer Percy Prune to make sense of their experience by reframing capture and captivity as a humorous interlude. But the airmen did not just embrace existing popular culture. They created their own as they negotiated life behind barbed wire. Ultimately, aided by Hollywood and Steve McQueen’s motorbike, they entered it.

Here's the link if you're interested in listening in:

https://echo360.net.au/media/ee5291dc-9070-4974-9b2f-8a744d8d10da/public

 

Podcast interview: Kriegies: the Australian Airmen of Stalag Luft III

My interview with Matthew Dahlitz, President of the AMAHA Inc http://www.australianmilitaryaviation.com.au/ is live! 

Forty-odd minutes discussion about my latest book, Kriegies: the Australian Airmen of Stalag Luft III. 

I had a blast: a good interviewer and a subject dear to my heart. What a combination! 

We've already had our first views and comment: 'Great interview on a fascinating topic'. Why not tune in and see/listen for yourself.

https://raafdocumentary.com/kriegies-australian-airmen-of-stalag-luft-iii-interview-with-kristen-alexander/

Or go straight to you tube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuUeIGcd1xg

Grieving the 'Great Escapers'

 Much has been written about the Great Escape: what occurred on the night; what happened to those involved; and the commitment to obtaining ‘exemplary justice’. 

Artist: Ley Kenyon, published in Paul Brickhill and Conrad Norton: Escape to Danger (Faber and  Faber, London,  1954). 

 This post, however, focuses on how the airmen’s kriegie friends and Australian families responded to their deaths.

Courtesy Chris Armold, MSgt, USAF (Ret). Taken in March 2017.

Alan Righetti, who had been one of the many ‘stooges’ or lookouts over the previous few months, remembered hearing the shots fired after the discovery of the break out. It ‘was pandemonium’, he recalled, as the Germans tore the North Compound apart. When things quietened down, the airmen ‘were bitterly disappointed that we hadn’t got at least 200 out’. But, Righetti added, they were, ‘at the same time, very proud of the fact that we had the whole of the area and the German Army rushing all over the place looking for our fellas’.

Alan Righetti, courtesy of Alan Righetti

Days later, when the names of the dead were announced, Righetti recollected that ‘we were shocked’. A memorial parade was held and, recalled Justin O’Byrne, the men ‘went into mourning’. ‘Every prisoner wore a black diamond of mourning on his sleeve for the remainder of our term in prison’, including on Anzac Day ten days later, when photos were taken of the men wearing their black patches.

Justin O’Byrne, courtesy of Anne O’Byrne

Courtesy Andrew JB Simpson  NSW POWs North compound Anzac Day, 1944 

Just as many British Great War memorials had been voluntarily built by families and communities to provide a focus for their grief, Stalag Luft III’s air force ‘family’ in North Compound decided to erect a memorial using stone provided by the Germans. Originally referred to by the prisoners as ‘The Vault’ (pertaining to its crypt-like purpose of holding the ashes of the dead), the prisoners’ memorial resembled an altar. 

From Walton and Eberhardt, From Liberation to Interrogation. A Photographic Journey. Page 418.

In conceiving this design, prominent Australian-born architect and theatrical designer Wylton Todd, who had had a thriving architecture business in London before the war, seems to have been inspired by the recently deceased Sir Edwin Lutyen’s altar-like Stone of Remembrance. (The Stone became the centrepiece of the Imperial War Graves Commission’s most significant cemeteries.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_of_Remembrance

 Like Lutyen’s iconic design, the prisoners’ memorial evokes heroic sacrifice in warfare, as do many British memorials as well as significant Australian memorials such as Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance and Sydney’s Anzac Memorial.

Shrine of Remembrance, author’s photo.

The airmen’s names are engraved on three granite tablets reminiscent of Great War honour rolls. Underneath is the inscription, ‘In memory of the officers who gave their lives. Sagan March 1944’. 

SLIII memorial. From the Casualty Section, Dept of Air, March 1947 via Air Ministry London, provided to them by His Majesty’s Air Attache at Warsaw. Courtesy of the Preen Family.

The simple wooden cross atop the nearby cairn (which appears to be a later addition) evokes the crosses which marked the graves of the First World War servicemen who died overseas, before the Imperial War Grave Commission replaced them with stone headstones.

SLIII memorial. From Casualty Section, Dept of Air, March 1947 via Air Ministry London, provided to them by His Majesty’s Air Attache at Warsaw. Courtesy of the Preen Family.

Courtesy Chris Armold, MSgt, USAF (Ret). Taken in March 2017.

Close up of the cairn plaque, Sagan, Poland, September 1998.  Courtesy of Drew Gordon. 

Todd’s design included an eagle, which was mounted below the inscription. Particularly pertinent, the spread-winged eagle is a key symbol for airmen, representing both the ‘brotherhood of the air’ and the insignia—‘wings’—which declare an airmen’s aviation credentials. 

Reg Kierath’s RAAF Wings. Courtesy of Peter Kierath.

 Arthur Schrock, 1944, in Earle M Nelson: If Winter Comes.

This drawing of the memorial, by Flight Lieutenant Grenfell Godden (a South African in Stalag Luft III who was killed in a flying accident on 23 November 1945), was sent to Mildred Williams, the mother of John Williams, one of the five Australians killed in the Great Escape reprisals. It was published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 25 April 1945. Courtesy of the Preen Family.

AWM ART34781.022. Albert Comber, drawing of the Monument to those 50 officers who were shot after the break from Stalag Luft III, 1945. https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C168955?image=1

SLIII memorial. From the Casualty Section, Dept of Air, March 1947 via Air Ministry London, provided to them by His Majesty’s Air Attache at Warsaw. Courtesy of the Preen Family.

While visible in Bert Comber’s sketch and other early drawings and photographs, and repeated in the commemorative plaque mounted on the stone cairn erected in front of the memorial, the eagle is no longer extant.

Recent photo of the memorial, with modern dedication, c 2015. Courtesy of Geoff Swallow

The memorial was located in the nearby cemetery where other prisoners had been buried. There, fifty urns containing the dead men’s ashes were interred on 4 December 1944. In accordance with RAF mourning custom, a service funeral was held. Thirty prisoners along with members of the Swiss Legation attended. Wreathes were laid and the Roman Catholic and Protestant chaplains said prayers and blessed the monument and ashes.

From the Casualty Section, Dept of Air, March 1947 via Air Ministry London, provided to them by His Majesty’s Air Attache at Warsaw. Courtesy of the Preen Family.

Some of the airmen recorded details of the memorial service in their wartime log books. Some marked the pages, drawings, photos and nominal rolls with a cross, the traditional symbol denoting the dead. 

Lifted from Brickhill and Norton: Escape to Danger.

Before he returned to Australia, Comber produced for the Australian War Memorial’s collection three pen, ink and wash drawings of the memorial’s construction.

AWM ART34781.024 Albert Comber, The monument in the early stages of construction, 1945. https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C168957?image=1

Six months earlier, on 20 June 1944, a memorial service for family and friends of the Fifty had been conducted at the Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London. As the men had been killed in the course of carrying out their service duty they were accorded full air force honours. Australian-based families could not attend and so either British family members or others represented them. 

Author’s collection

Squadron Leader William Melville, the liaison for prisoner of war matters at RAAF Overseas Headquarters, considered it ‘a very great honour and privilege’ to represent Reg Kierath’s mother, Ada. After the ceremony, Melville wrote to her as he wanted her ‘to know something of the very magnificent tribute that was paid to your son and the others who died with him’. He told her about the service:

Sir Archibald Sinclair—Secretary of State for Air—Sir Charles Portal, Chief of Air Staff and our Air Officer Commanding, Air Vice-Marshal Wrigley, were but three of the many Air Force representatives who came to pay their tribute and Mr Bruce our Australian High Commissioner was also there. After the first hymn the Vicar of St Martins read the first part of the service and the psalm, and Sir Charles Portal the lesson. Then came the Address by the Chaplain-in-Chief of the Royal Air Force in which he paid tribute to the memory of those whose courage and high faith was an inspiration to us all. As we stood, after the recession, the Blessing, crystal clear came the notes of the Last Post—the most honoured tribute to the serving member and one which is paid to him alone. For a moment there was silence—and then in the distance, the roll of a drum and the awakening call ‘Reveille’. It seems so singularly appropriate, for to all of us in our hearts and memory they will live through their example of courage and steadfastness.

During the service, the RAF chaplain-in-chief had stated that ‘Their sacrifice was touched by the finger of God’. Melville too recognised that sacrifice. He explained to Ada that Reg, ‘and the others, have become my very real friends and I cannot express how much the sacrifice which they have made has meant to me personally’.

Reg Kierath. Courtesy of Peter Kierath

Others acknowledged the deaths in a similar way. Families placed ‘in memoriam’ notices in newspapers. Friends send condolence letters. 

The Argus, 25 March 1947

Unattributed clipping, courtesy of Preen Family.

Group Captain Thomas White, former prisoner of the Ottomans and commanding officer at 1 Initial Training School, Somers where Catanach and Albert Hake had attended believed that the young man’s ‘name and memory will long endure as among the noblest of those who gave their all’.

Those who died after the Great Escape were not forgotten. Their friends attended remembrance services. Winifred Munt, Jimmy Catanach’s childhood nanny, known to him as ‘Da’, was a member of the Australian contingent to the Service of Remembrance at St Clement Danes (the Central Church of the Royal Air Force) on 22 March 1969. Bill Fordyce, who was in the tunnel when the escape was discovered, attended the 50th anniversary service on 25 March 1994. 

Bill Fordyce, courtesy of Lily Fordyce

 Courtesy of Lily Fordyce

Courtesy of Ian Fraser

 Reg Giddey, who regarded Albert Hake as ‘one of nature’s gentlemen’, placed a tribute on his former friend’s grave during 50th anniversary commemorations at Posnan, Poland. 

Reg Giddey. Courtesy of the Preen Family

Their families made pilgrimages to Sagan and wore their service medals.

  

The Preen Family’s pilgrimage to Stalag Luft III, 2013. Courtesy of Max Preen.

The Search for the Compass Maker, Albert Hake 2013: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaFwU7FI-cU 

Peter Kierath, nephew of Reg Kierath, retraced his uncle’s journey. Photo from The Daily Liberal, Dubbo. http://www.dailyliberal.com.au/story/3538949/retracing-family-steps-at-war-photos/

Albert Hake’s great niece and nephew, wearing medals. Anzac Day, about 1997. Courtesy Jude Preen. 

 That continuing sympathy of family and friends, along with the dedicated commemoration, brought comfort to those who grieved. So too did the knowledge that the deaths of the Fifty had been construed as sacrifices for the cause, as extensions of their air force service. As their ‘Duty Nobly Done’.

Memorial card, sent by Noela Hake to Dick Wheeler. Dick Wheeler Archive. Courtesy of  Tony Wheeler

My thanks to all the families who have shared their photos and records with me.

I have written a number of other blog pieces on aspects of the Great Escape from an Australian perspective:

https://australiansinsliii.blogspot.com.au/2016/05/43-years-albert-hake-australian-in.html

https://australiansinsliii.blogspot.com.au/2017/03/albert-hake-and-paul-royle-australians.html

https://australiansinsliii.blogspot.com.au/2016/11/how-deeply-we-feel-his-loss-condolences.html

http://australiansinsliii.blogspot.com.au/2017/04/ever-remembered-james-catanach-anzac.html

http://australiansinsliii.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/great-escaper-thomas-barker-leigh.html

http://australiansinsliii.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/70th-anniversary-of-great-escape.html

A bit overcrowded

Prompted by a curious friend, I looked at SLIII’s population statistics. 

According to Red Cross visitor reports, in April 1944, the camp total of British, Commonwealth and allies, and Americans (including in Belaria compound) was 5229. 

By November 1944, the total population, across 6 compounds was 10,091. It had almost doubled in seven months.

The 10,091 comprised 1992 British, 695 Canadians, 261 Australians, 165 New Zealanders, 150 South Africans, 174 other British Commonwealth and Ireland, and 6654 American (not sure what category other nationalities such as Czechs fitted into). 

While the Americans were largely confined to their own compounds (West, Centre and South) there was considerable overspill into the British compounds. 

You have all heard about the increasing numbers of roommates: from six to eight, to ten and even more. One room in Belaria had 16 denizens, accommodated in six beds. As you can see from these images from John Dack’s wartime log book, they very carefully managed their space. 

From 'So, You Wanted Wings, Hey!' by Irwin John Dack. 

And as you can see from George Archer’s, double decker bunks were converted to triple deckers to accommodate them! Despite the cramped quarters, George at least still maintained his sense of humour.

Courtesy of David Archer.

The Kriegie Commandments

Over the last few months, I’ve been delving into the place of religion in helping the airmen prisoners of war in Stalag Luft III cope with captivity. Some men had profound faith which provided much comfort. Others disclosed a particularly secular—even wryly humorous—relationship with religion.

For many, ‘monotony’ was the key characteristic of life in a prisoner of war camp. One wit, for instance, pointed out that Hebrews 13:8—‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever’—admirably summed up their ‘kriegie’ life. Many relieved the boredom with escape work. When the time came to name North Compound’s the three major escape tunnels, George Harsh, who was in charge of security, favoured calling them ‘The Father’, ‘The Son’ and ‘The Holy Ghost’. 

(Author photo from George Harsh: Lonesome Road, Longman, 1971)

Roger Bushell, the escape mastermind, however, vetoed the idea because they would need all the help they could get, and they didn’t want to ‘start out by making the Almighty cross with us’. Bushell then settled on the less irreverent and more anodyne and the tunnels were dubbed ‘Tom’, ‘Dick’ and ‘Harry’.

(Lifted from https://blog.findmypast.com/in-our-prisoner-of-war-records-the-real-great-escapers-1406166255.html)

There were many off duty hours to fill and when they weren’t digging tunnels or carrying out other important escape related jobs, the men were always keen to keep their minds active and stimulated. John Osborne, for example, read religion along with science and philosophy for intellectual interest and a starting point for debate. 

(From the John Carlisle Osborne collection.  Courtesy of Narromine Aviation Museum)

Dick Winn read the Bible and Koran from cover to cover but not for the religious inspiration: ‘these books were so good, because they took so long to read’.

(Dick Winn's POW card)

Some, however, even in times of literary starvation, such as in Stalag IIIA, Luckenwalde after the evacuation from Stalag Luft III, could not stomach the word of God. Bruce Lumsden who carried on the forced march a copy of A Christmas Carol, a hymn book, and his precious Bible recalled that, for weeks, the Dickens ‘was passed around the hut from one to another kriegie, hungry for a read. One or two also borrowed my Bible’.

(Bruce Lumsden and his bible, courtesy of the Bradbeer/Lumsden family) 

Parodying the Ten Commandments, ‘The Kriegie’s Commandments’ exhorted the prisoners ‘to do no arbeit’ (work), or ‘dhobi’ (washing), and to ‘get into as many rackets as possible’. The humour of the ‘commandments’ helped make light of their new life. They also prescribed a formula for harmonious communal living. The ‘commandments’ promoted kriegie safety (‘Thou shalt not walk over the warning wire’) and reflected civilised society’s laws in, for example, the prohibition against stealing (‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s bedboards; nor his palliasse nor his dixie, nor his irons, nor anything that is his’). But they were also subversive. In forbidding arbeit, encouraging their fellows to be involved in rackets, and exposing ‘the rest’, i.e. German involvement in the rackets, the ‘commandments’ also condoned active and passive resistance.

(Courtesy of Alex Kerr)