Sydney Dowse RIP

Kyt · Apr 10, 2008

Sydney Dowse | Times Online Obituary

The death of Sydney Dowse leaves only three British survivors of the “Great Escape” by Allied air force officers from the German prison of war camp Stalag Luft III in March 1944. Hitler issued an order that all those recaptured were to be shot but was allegedly persuaded to reduce the figure to 50. Seventy-six men got away but only three reached safety. The 23 survivors of those recaptured were sent to prison or concentration camps. Dowse was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, north of Berlin, from where he again escaped. In all he made five escape attempts.

As an RAF Flight Lieutenant, Dowse had baled out from his photo-reconaissance Spitfire of 608 Squadron over Brest in August 1941, after taking photographs of the German battle cruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst sheltering in the port. Landing in occupied Brittany, he tried to make contact with the French Resistance but was taken prisoner and sent for treatment at a hospital in Germany near Weimar, from where he made his first escape. Wearing civilian clothes acquired in hospital, he travelled by train westwards to Mönchengladbach but was intercepted on the Dutch-German frontier three days later.

Sent to Stalag IXC at Bad Sulza, a camp for captured airmen near Leipzig, he escaped from there by mingling with a fatigue party working outside the wire. Again taking a train, he almost reached the Belgian frontier, but was recaptured in a state of extreme exhaustion while trying to cross it in deep snow. After several days in hospital, he was sent to Oflag VIB, at Warburg.

This was a desolate place, west of the Weser on a plateau three miles from Warburg station, housing 2,500 officers. When Dowse arrived, the inmates were still clearing it of rats and fleas as well as planning a variety of escapes.

Dowse joined in the construction of several tunnels from Warburg, from one of which six officers escaped in April 1942. Later, in June 1943, an escape, which became famous as the “Warburg Wire Job” using articulated ladders to scale the wire, led to the escape of 65 prisoners from this camp in June 1943. But before then Dowse had been moved to Stalag Luft III at Sagan, in Silesia, which housed officers of the Allied air forces.

The camp stood in a pine forest clearing with huts on stilts to prevent tunnelling. When Dowse arrived it held 900 Allied airman and was seriously overcrowded. His jovial and easy-going manner soon won him friends and he was popular with the more relaxed of the German guards.

He took pains to cultivate the friendship of a Corporal Hesse who worked in the letter censorship department of the camp headquarters, which proved useful in gaining information about the guards’ activities such as room searches. As arrangements for a mass escape through a 300-foot long tunnel were nearing completion in February 1944, Hesse warned Dowse that the officer masterminding the escape, Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, a persistent escaper, would almost certainly be shot if he was caught trying to escape again.

The mass escape was to be made through a tunnel code-named “Harry”, work having been halted on two others, “Tom” and “Dick”, dug at the same time as an insurance against detection. When Tom was discovered, Harry was judged to offer the best chance of escape and the 2ft-high tunnel, 30ft below the surface, was completed, after two months of feverish work in claustrophobic conditions, on March 14, 1944.

The moonless night of March 24 was chosen for the breakout by 200 men. The first 30 were fluent German speakers and so judged to have the best chance of making a “home run”, the next 70 had all worked on one or more of the tunnels, and the final 100 were taken out of a hat from around 500 volunteers.

As one of the German speakers, Dowse was allocated number 21. He planned to team up with a Polish officer, Stanislaw “Danny” Krol, and head for Poland in the hope of making contact with the Polish underground movement. They were both well prepared and carried a three-week supply of German food vouchers that Dowse had persuaded Hesse to provide.

The escape was delayed because the exit hatch took longer to dislodge than expected. Then it was discovered that the exit was some 25ft short of the edge of the forest which they had relied on to provide cover from the sentries’ watchtower. Despite these setbacks, the escape got under way at 10.30pm and shortly after 2.30am 80 men had gone through the tunnel. Four of these were supervising the exit and dispersal procedure when a prowler sentry outside the wire stumbled across the exit hole and fired a warning shot to alert the guards.

Krol had gone through the tunnel ahead of Dowse and miraculously the two met in the woods beyond the wire. Their plan had been to catch a train to Berlin then Stettin (now Szczecin), but the delays in the tunnel meant they had missed the first one. Not wishing to hang about Sagan station waiting for another, they decided to follow the line of the railway eastwards and walk the 80 miles to Poland.

They made remarkably good progress and were within a few miles of the Polish border on April 6 when a farmer discovered them in his barn, where they were taking a rest before crossing under cover of darkness. Disbelieving their cover story of being Polish workers, the farmer called a party of Hitler Youth and Volksturm. The pair were separated with Dowse being sent to Berlin for questioning. Krol was among those who were subsequently shot.

After being questioned in Berlin, Dowse was sent to Sachsenhausen where he was reunited with three of the other 23 who had been spared the death sentence. Convinced that it was only a matter of time before they would be shot, or strung up on the gibbet visible from the barred window of their hut, they began to plan their escape.

Unlike in Sagan, where the guards were vigilant for signs of escape, the Sonderlager prisoners were left to their own devices. Dowse and Flight Lieutenant (later Squadron Leader) “Jimmy” James (obituary, January 19) began digging a 120ft-long tunnel from a corner of their prison barrack room under the nearby fence to an empty compound beyond. Their tools were a table knife with a serrated edge and two spoons. The earth dug out was dispersed in the foundations of the barrack block. Part way through their task the two were joined by Lieutenant-Colonel “Mad Jack” Churchill, a Commando who had been taken prisoner on the Dalmatian island of Brac. By mid-September the tunnel had reached the outer compound in which a ladder could be seen leaning against the wall of the camp.

The four former Stalag Luft III inmates and Churchill crawled through the tunnel and scaled the outer wall of Sachsenhausen on September 23, 1944, but all were recaptured by early October and returned to Sachsenhausen and put in separate cells in the punishment block. After further questioning, during which Dowse informed his interrogators that he had posted a letter to the International Red Cross during his few days of freedom, the five men were returned to the camp cell block, where they remained until Sachsenhausen was liberated in May 1945. The following year he was awarded the Military Cross for his courage and persistent determination to escape.

Sydney Hastings Dowse came from a well-to-do background and as a young man he had played rugby for Harlequins. He enlisted in the RAF Volunteer Reserve as an airman in 1937, and was commissioned in 1940. He left the RAF after the war with the rank of flight lieutenant, following which he worked for the Colonial Service for some years.

He was three times married. There were no children.

Sydney Dowse, MC, survivor of the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III, was born on November 21, 1918. He died on April 10, 2008, aged 89
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Andy M · Apr 10, 2008

Another true Hero gone! Thanks for your service Mr. Dowse. Rest well.

Regards,

Andy

Antipodean Andy · Apr 10, 2008

Amazing that he wasn't shot or ended up in Colditz. Made a right nuisance of himself!
RIP.

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