Roger Joyce Bushell

Squadron Leader Roger Joyce Bushell was born on 30 August 1910 at Springs in the Transvaal, South Africa, and educated in England at Wellington College and at Cambridge, where he made his name as a champion skier before being called to the Bar as a barrister. He joined the Auxiliary Air Force in 1932, flying with No. 601 Squadron, and on the outbreak of war took command of No. 92 Squadron. Leading his Spitfires over Dunkirk on 23 May 1940 he was shot down near Calais and taken prisoner.

Over the next four years Bushell became the driving force of Allied escape efforts. At Stalag Luft III he conceived and directed the mass break-out that became known as the Great Escape — three tunnels, “Tom”, “Dick” and “Harry”, dug by hundreds of prisoners, through which 76 men got away on the night of 24/25 March 1944. As the escape’s mastermind, “Big X”, Bushell was among the first out.

He was recaptured within days and, on 29 March 1944, shot near Saarbrücken by the Gestapo alongside the Frenchman Bernard Scheidhauer — one of the fifty escapers murdered on Hitler’s direct orders, a war crime for which several of those responsible were later tried and hanged. Bushell is buried in the Old Garrison Cemetery at Poznań, Poland. He was 33.