Squadron Leader Roger Joyce Bushell was a South African aviator in the British Royal Air Force.
26 Facts About Roger Bushell
1.
2.
Roger Bushell masterminded the famous "Great Escape" from Stalag Luft III in March 1944, but was one of the 50 escapees to be recaptured and subsequently shot and murdered by the Nazi German Gestapo secret police.
3.
Roger Bushell was first schooled in Johannesburg, then aged 14 went to Wellington College in Berkshire, England.
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In 1929, Roger Bushell then went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge to study law.
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Keen on pursuing non-academic interests from an early age, Roger Bushell excelled in rugby and cricket and skied for Cambridge in races between 1930 and 1932, captaining the team in 1931.
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Roger Bushell additionally won the slalom event of the annual Oxford-Cambridge ski race in 1931.
7.
At an event in Canada, Roger Bushell had an accident in which one of his skis narrowly missed his left eye, leaving him with a gash in the corner of it.
8.
Roger Bushell became fluent in French and German, with a good accent, which became extremely useful during his time as a prisoner of war.
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Roger Bushell was commissioned on 10 August 1932 and promoted to flying officer on 10 February 1934, and flight lieutenant on 20 July 1936.
10.
Roger Bushell was given command of No 92 Squadron in October 1939.
11.
Roger Bushell assumed he was in friendly territory, so he had a cigarette.
12.
Roger Bushell surrendered to a German soldier who came by on a motorcycle.
13.
Roger Bushell became a prisoner of war and was sent to the Dulag Luft transit camp near Frankfurt with all the other captured aircrew.
14.
Roger Bushell was given a place in the tunnel but elected to escape on the same day as the tunnel break by cutting through the wire surrounding a small park in the camp grounds.
15.
Roger Bushell hid in a goat shed in the camp grounds and, as soon as it was dark enough, he crawled to the wire and made good his escape.
16.
Roger Bushell was recaptured some time later on the Swiss border, only a few hundred yards from freedom, by a German border guard.
17.
Roger Bushell was treated well and returned to Dulag Luft before being transferred to Stalag Luft I with all the 17 others who had escaped in the tunnel.
18.
Roger Bushell was at Stalag Luft I for only a short period before being transferred to Oflag X-C at Lubeck.
19.
Roger Bushell was then sent to Stalag Luft III at Sagan, while Zafouk continued to be held in Prague.
20.
At Stalag Luft III, Roger Bushell took over control of the escape organization from Jimmy Buckley, who was being transferred to another camp in Poland.
21.
The most radical aspect of the plan was not merely the scale of the construction, but the sheer number of men that Roger Bushell intended to pass through these tunnels.
22.
Previous attempts had involved the escape of anything up to a dozen or twenty men, but Roger Bushell was proposing to get over 200 out, each of whom would be wearing civilian clothes and possessing a complete range of forged papers and escape equipment.
23.
Roger Bushell organized another mass breakout, which occurred on 12 June 1943.
24.
Roger Bushell's name appears on the war memorial in Hermanus, South Africa, where his parents spent their last years and where they were buried.
25.
In 1934, Roger Bushell had fallen in love with Georgiana Curzon, but her father forced her into an unhappy marriage with someone else.
26.
Roger Bushell has been portrayed by Ian McShane in the made-for-TV film The Great Escape II: The Untold Story.