The Great Escape- 4th tunnel found

[SPANNERmkV]

Their story just humbles me

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... l?ITO=1490

[the330thbg]

wow.., great, great article!

Thanks for posting!

[Pat Carry]

Very interesting! thanks for bringing it to our attention.

[b29flteng]

NOVA produced a DVD a few years ago where they dug up tunnel "Dick", this is another great find.

[tom d. friedman]

wow that opens a new historic twist to the story!! what a find!! certainly some camp survivors had the knowledge that the george tunnel existed after the war was long over!! interesting it's just now coming to light!!

[Mark Sampson]

"George" is mentioned in Paul Brickhill's book that the movie derived from. PB also wrote that the Germans emptied a sewage wagon down one of the discovered tunnels... he would have known, of course, since he was a POW there. But it never occurred to me that any evidence of the tunnels would have survived this long. Fascinating!

[Dan Johnson II]

"George" is mentioned in Brickhill's book "The Great Escape" and that was published in 1950. I think finding it was the big discovery, not knowledge of it.

edited. Beat me by 3 minutes!

[tom d. friedman]

what really perks my curiosity is how the german pistol was aquired / smuggled in! looks to me to be .32 caliber, but i can't i.d. the make. pretty ballsy of them to plan an "attack" tunnel!!

[b29flteng]

"George" is mentioned in Brickhill's book "The Great Escape" and that was published in 1950. I think finding it was the big discovery, not knowledge of it.

edited. Beat me by 3 minutes!

For the longest time, the camp area was a training facility for the Polish Communist Army and was off limits. Until the Cold War was over nobody was allowed to examine the area.

[kmiles]

A group of us visited the area in 2005. The area around and including the former camp was still a training facility for Polish tank crews at that time. A lot of the building foundations are still there and intact. It is all grown over now with 50+ old forests. It is kind of a difficult place to visit because even being close to the German border, Polish is the primary language, and not too many people there speak anything else. Our German tour guide had a really hard time finding ways to communicate with the people in the area. There is a very nice (but small) museum set up there where they have placed a lot of the items that they have found. There is a vehicle road that follows the same path as the original perimeter fence in the area where tunnel Harry went under the fence. When they did they dug up the tunnel several years back, they placed markers along the sides the length of the tunnel so that when people visit, they can see just how much of an accomplishment the tunnel was. There was a small memorial to the 50 that were executed at the point where the tunnel exited on the outside of the fence. It was a very interesting place to visit (just brush up on your polish before visiting).

[Dan Jones]

Is the cairn with the ashes of the fifty still there?