Prison camp art that escaped guards (The Great Escape)

London Times ^ | 9/2/06 | Jack Malvern

[wagglebee]

The cartoon depicting the Great Escape was drawn ten days after the breakout from Stalag Luft III

Prison camp art that escaped guards

By Jack Malvern

PoW's scrapbook of the Great Ecape is to be auctioned

A CARTOON of the prison break depicted in the film The Great Escape has emerged in a prisoner’s war diary.

The cartoon — drawn ten days after the event and accompanied by a poem lamenting the shooting of 50 of the escapees — appears in a scrapbook that belonged to Clive Nutting, a prisoner who was involved in the two most celebrated escapes of the Second World War.

Nutting, although a Corporal in the Royal Corps of Signals, was a prisoner in Stalag Luft III, a camp primarily for RAF officers 100 miles southeast of Berlin in what is now Poland. He witnessed and helped to prepare the prison breaks depicted in the films The Wooden Horse and The Great Escape.

His unpublished diary, which will be sold at auction by Bonhams & Goodman in Australia on September 11, records daily life at the supposedly escape-proof camp.

The most vivid page features a drawing, by an unknown artist, recording the remaining prisoners’ shock when they were told that 50 of the fugitives had been shot. The accompanying poem tells how the escapees thought that the breakout would be fun.

“Fifty fine fellows/ With good stout intentions/ Trusting no doubt in Geneva conventions/ Reckoning not with the mind of th’ Hun/ Fifty fine fellows/ And now there are none.”

The poem, dated March 24, 1944, concludes that the murders will not be forgiven. “Will we forget/ Or pardon this? Might we?/ I’ll wager a bet/ Not bloody likely!” The murders were ordered by Hitler.

Nutting, a shoemaker before the war, helped to create disguises for escapees at the camp’s shoe workshop.

His son, John Nutting, said that his father had been proud of his part in the escape attempts. “He did make, along with the others in the boot shop, materials that were used in the Great Escape. He told me they made belts and shoes from leather stolen from the German officers who had their boots repaired in the workshop.”

He also helped to distribute the sandy soil removed from tunnels by dropping it out of the legs of his trousers, as depicted in the 1963 film, The Great Escape, which starred Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough.

Nutting was also an active participant in the Wooden Horse escape, which inspired Eric Williams’s book and the 1950 film of the same title. Prisoners knew that guards had set up sensors to detect vibrations from tunnelling activity, so they disguised their digging by setting up a vaulting horse in the exercise yard. Nutting was one of the prisoners who repeatedly jumped over the horse while the diggers laboured beneath it.

Nutting’s son said that his father liked both films, despite changes to the story of the Great Escape required for a Hollywood film.

“He thought the tunnelling scenes were good [but] he laughed about Steve McQueen jumping a motorbike over a wire fence.”

The Corporal was also likely to have contributed his possessions to the escape attempts. The Luftwaffe, which ran the camp, estimated that materials stolen for escape attempts included 4,000 bed boards, 1,699 blankets, 161 pillow cases, 34 chairs, 52 tables each capable of seating 20 men, 90 double-tier bunks, 1,219 knives, 478 spoons, 582 forks, 30 shovels, 1,000ft (305m) of electric wire, 600ft of rope, 3,424 towels, 246 water cans and 69 lamps.

The diary will be sold as part of a lot that includes Nutting’s Rolex watch, which he got while a prisoner in the camp. Rolex operated a scheme whereby prisoners would only have to pay for watches after the end of the war. The combined lot is expected to fetch up to £20,000.

[wagglebee]

The Great Escape is one of my all-time favorite movies.

[wagglebee]

You might like this.

[Professional Engineer]

ping

[JennysCool]

The Great Escape is one of my all-time favorite movies.

Mine, too. And that cartoon is excellent! What a find!

[Gay State Conservative]

The bravery and determination of those who fought against tyranny during WWII never ceases to amaze me.

I've said it before,and I'll say it again...Brokaw was absolutely right to label them "The Greatest Generation".

[wagglebee]

Brokaw was absolutely right to label them "The Greatest Generation".

About the only thing any of the mediacrats have gotten right in the past half a century.

[Gay State Conservative]

About the only thing any of the mediacrats have gotten right in the past half a century.

I agree.But,IMO,in order to maintain our credibility we must give credit where credit is due...even to people/groups that so seldom deserve any recognition.

[TimesDomain]

I passed this article on to the person who's making a documentary film on a WWII American pilot

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"His only mission was to survive."

September 20, 1943 : "I looked into my rearview mirror and saw an unmistakable image: that of a Japanese fighter in firing position. He was so close I didn't bother to look over my shoulder and I didn't have time to be afraid!

Instinctively, I shoved the P-38 into a violent dive. It was then that I felt the shudder of bullets striking my plane."

With these words begins the incredible story of Charles P. Sullivan - an ace fighter pilot - forced to crash land in the jungles of New Guinea and survive alone for thirty days during World War II.

[OSHA]

You should read the book if you haven't done so. The cleverness, inventiveness and daring of the prisoners is amazing.

[sinanju]

As a middle-school kid reading the book I was enraged that the Germans moved out the American prisoners unannounced to another camp. Thereby depriving us of our fair share of the glory.

[SJSAMPLE]

Bill Ash, the real-like "Cooler King", upon whom Steve McQueen's movie character was based, spoke at my Airborne School class graduation back in the summer of 1986 (wow, 20 years). He talked about the early days of The Paratrooper and some of the crazy stuff they did way back then.

[WorkingClassFilth]

Ditto. The prisoner's use of jelly candies melted and reconstituted to form a film on which they cut a mimeograph stencil was brilliant. The stencil was attached to a cylindrical box (think Quaker Oats) and it was used to print multiple copies of forged documents with shoepolish ink.

Pure unalloyed genius.

I think a similar lot of today's youth similarly drafted and situated would probably cave-in and collaborate.

[samiam1972]

Oh, how awesome! Greatest movie ever! ;o)

[DieHard the Hunter]

> I think a similar lot of today's youth similarly drafted and situated would probably cave-in and collaborate.

I hold out greater hope for the kids of today. I look at my son and his friends: nice kids, infinitely resourceful -- and I don't hardly understand a word of what they say. But he stops, and takes the time to translate just for me.

They do amazing things. The Future is in good hands. Our forefathers fought not in vain.

(Today is Father's Day in New Zealand)

[WorkingClassFilth]

I'll grant you the blood is fine in some of the next generation...but our popular way of life and the ideals we inculcate are pathetic, anemic and socialist. Go to any shopping mall, school or meeting place of the young and look at the young men - let alone the young women. The ruggedness of the WWII generation is an altogether different mettle.

On a better note, I, too, have great expectations for some of today's crop. The young men (and women) coming home from overseas are going to have a whole different take on the world than their boomer parents. Thank God.

[WorkingClassFilth]

BTW, happy Father's Day! Sounds like you've done a good job on your'n. Passing the torch of liberty onto the next generation is a great deed well done.

[mware]

A bit of trivia regarding one of the actors in The Great Escape.

Pleasence's acting career began in a 1939 production of Wuthering Heights, but was soon interrupted by his service in the Royal Air Force and a year in a German prisoner-of-war camp. He had been a conscientious objector at first, but later joined the Royal Air Force. He was shot down and taken prisoner and tortured by his captors. At another stage of his captivity he produced and acted in plays in prisoner of war camp.