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| -Obits- |
| RIP Jimmy James, the Great Escapee |
| 2008-01-31 |
| Jimmy James, a British flier in World War II who was obsessed with escape plots during his five years in German captivity, most prominently the breakout portrayed in the movie "The Great Escape," died Jan. 18 in Shrewsbury, England. He was 92. His death was confirmed to the BBC and The Birmingham Post by Howard Tuck, a military historian who said he had been working on a book with James. On the night of June 5, 1940, Flight Lieutenant James, co-pilot of a Wellington bomber, was on the way to a mission over Germany when his plane was shot down by antiaircraft fire over the occupied Netherlands. He bailed out about 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, south of Rotterdam but was captured and taken to the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag Luft I on the Baltic coast of Germany. James made at least seven unsuccessful attempts to tunnel out of that camp. Then he was transferred to Stalag Luft III, southeast of Berlin. By the time he was liberated by U.S. troops in Austria in May 1945, a few days before Germany surrendered, he had tried to escape at least 11 times from POW camps and a concentration camp and had succeeded twice, only to be recaptured. "I was just a guy who wanted to get home; I was no hero," The Birmingham Post quoted James as saying. But his unrelenting will to be free brought him the Military Cross for gallantry in 1946. The most storied escape occurred on the night of March 24, 1944, when 76 Allied prisoners, mostly airmen from Britain and the Commonwealth nations, tunneled out of Stalag Luft III. James and another prisoner had overseen the hiding of soil displaced by the digging. He was the 39th man to escape through the tunnel. Only three made it to freedom. Fifty of the 73 who were recaptured were shot on Hitler's orders. James was recaptured at a German railroad station while fleeing toward the Czech border and eventually transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In September 1944, he joined several others in escaping through a 30-meter, or 100-foot, tunnel they had dug using a table knife. He was recaptured and imprisoned at two other concentration camps before he was liberated. He later entered the British diplomatic corps, holding posts on the Continent and in Africa. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #1 Fifty of the 73 who were recaptured were shot on Hitler's orders. Just think of the spirit that that represents. Today, people would sneer at them for not staying safe and sound in prison, with guffawing references to Darwin and ridiculing the prisoners and their families. |
| Posted by: gromky 2008-01-31 21:50 |