The Long March From The Camps – Winter 1944/5

by Ingram Murray

The Archives of the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum hold many accounts by British Prisoners of War of the forced marches from camps in Eastern Europe to the west as the Red Army swept through Poland and Prussia in late 1944.

There is none so moving as the story of Bernard Green, known as ‘Pop’ because of his age, who had been one of the 76 RAF officers who on the 24^th. March 1944 escaped through a tunnel from Stalag Luft III. He had been recaptured and returned to the camp; fifty other escapers had been shot on the orders of Hitler.   On the 27^th January 1945 the Commandant was ordered to evacuate the camp immediately and the prisoners were forced to gather what they could before being marched out.  After several days on the road in dire conditions, the PoWs were loaded into trains and distributed to other camps before bring finally liberated by the Allies.

Bernard Green had volunteered for the Buckinghamshire Battalion in 1914 and served throughout the war as a Machine Gun Officer winning the MC. At the outset of World War Two he had volunteered for the RAF aged 52 but had been shot down and captured on his first sortie.  His medals were donated to the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum by his family along with the account of his service in ‘Great War to Great Escape; the Two wars of Flight Lieutenant Bernard ‘Pop’ Green MC’, by his grandson Laurence Green.

A cycling event entitled ‘Remembering the Long March – January 1945’ is being organised in early May to raise funds for several military charities.  The route is from Sagan (now Zagan in Poland) the site of Stalag Luft III to Berlin.    The sons of two survivors of Stalag Luft III and the escape with supporters will be riding the 300 kilometres from the camp to the capital.  Contact has been made with the organisers and information about ‘Pop’ Green and the museum exchanged with the group.

You can support their fundraising campaign here.

I.B.H.M.

4 May 25.