The Great Escaper: The Life and Death of Roger Bushell

Just read this book cover to cover, and couldn't put it down.Roger Bushell is best known as his fictional personality, "Roger Bartlett" from the World War II PoW movie "The Great Escape." He is less well-known as who he really was: sharp lawyer, crack fighter pilot, champion skier, ladies' man. Before he was shot down, he was one of the RAF's rising stars, and probably would have been a World War II fighter ace.After he was shot down (before the Battle of Britain), he spent his years in the German PoW camp system as one of Germany's tougher captives. He led the British escape efforts, turning them into organized operations. Keeping in contact with British intelligence in London through coded messages, he was able to provide them with useful information.His first escape had strange results. He hid in Prague with a Czech family, where he apparently romanced a young woman. She gave him Czech lessons and he gave her English lessons. This existence ended when someone ratted them out to the Gestapo in the wake of the assassination of SS Gruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, which also led to the destruction of Lidice. Roger was re-captured and shipped back to Stalag Luft III.Infuriated by what he had seen the Germans do to occupied Czechoslovakia, Roger organized the greatest escape effort of World War II, digging three tunnels at Stalag Luft III to scatter 250 PoWs across the Reich, headed for freedom. He knew that most would not make it home, but that was not his goal. It was to cause chaos for the German war machine as they would have to waste valuable resources hunting down the escapees. It was an operational war, and PoW escapes were operations, he said. Stalag Luft III became an escape factory, with forgers creating fake documents, tailors turning uniforms into civilian clothes, diggers in longjohns clawing at sand and dispersing it under buildings, and "stooges" sitting around keeping an eye on German guards to ensure security.The plan worked, but like most military operations, not as well as hoped. The first tunnel was found. The second had to be used for storage. Only 76 PoWs got out of the third. Sure enough, the Germans mobilized everything they had -- troops, cops, game wardens, Hitler Youth, and most importantly, the Gestapo. All but three of the escapees were recaptured. Hitler himself ordered 50 of them shot, in violation of international law, as a warning against other future escapes. The Gestapo committed the deadly deed, and 50 urns of ashes were shipped to Stalag Luft III. One of them was Roger's.This book is the first comprehensive biography of this unusual warrior, who fought his battles from behind the wire of a PoW camp, with the same determined energy and courage of his colleagues in the skies of Europe. His fate was truly tragic, but his example remains inspiring. This book does justice to a British airman and warrior who deserves to be remembered as he was -- and not as a movie.

I avidly read The Great Escape book, and watched the film, as a teenager. Here, I'd say the author did a good job with the material at hand -- and which he went to some effort to find, in many cases. I didn't find it a particularly engrossing story, but for those who want to all they can of this bit of WWII history, I don't think they'll be disappointed.

it seems to be (haven't launched the dinghy yet) what I read in the description on Amazon...a book about someone previously neglected by the historians

Roger Bushell, the man who led the Great Escape, comes vividly to life in this first biography written about him. Simon Pearson,making use of the newly available Bushell family papers and just about every other imaginable source material, paints a portrait of an exuberant, arrogant and courageous soul who lived to defy authority. Such defiance was mostly fun and games in a prewar life that saw Bushell lucky in skiing and lawyering but unlucky in love. It took on a deeper and grimmer meaning in the crucible of WWII RAF and POW life, and indeed it cost Bushell his life just when it seemed that he and his lost love would reunite after the war. This book presents a Roger Bushell that none of the other books could. (It also makes Guy Walters' portrayal of Bushell as a heedless egomaniac in his otherwise excellent recent book The Real Great Escape look willfully cavalier and one sided.) For anyone interested in the Great Escape, it is essential reading.

I was left wondering if I would have liked Roger Bushell. Yes he was a good man in many respects but also selfish and probably reckless. With the war on the turn and Germany on the ropes the escape seemed rather a doomed mission. Bushell knew his fate and the fate of others if caught.. However what do I know, I wasn't held for years in a prison camp. You had to admire his spirit and strength, A good read.

The book was very well written, and benefitted from telling te story of a very interesting person, someone one would like to have been personally acquainted with. I wish that photographs of the principals had been included in the Kindle version that I read.

Even if you've read many books on the "Great Escape" this book brings out all the sides to the story. A great read! Ken Buchanan. 23-Jun-2019.

Whilst Roger Bushell is your typical British spirit, he was in fact South African. However, he came to symbolise that great British attitude that won them the war - the Blitz spirit. This is a great story about a truly great man and of course, his leading 'BigX' role in The Great Escape. But it's also a story of sadness given the results of his romantic dalliances in Prague particularly and indeed, at home. It's a story for boys of courage and derring-do. It's a story of how an evil Nazi regime was brought slowly, to its knees, by people like Roger Bushell. However, it's a story that so well written, so well researched and so easy to read, it typifies the comment "unputdownable". It's just that. Get it, read it and be enthralled. Magnificent.

Very good

I've been waiting for someone to write this book for forty-plus years, and Pearson's book does not disappoint.Inevitably it covers much of the same ground as the three books that - to my mind - introduced Roger Bushell to my/Pearson's generation. Pearson openly acknowledges his debt to those books - The Great Escape (Paul Brickhill), 'Wings' Day (Sidney Smith) and Escape From Germany (Aidan Crawley). But in these books - great as they are - Bushell appears in his final form, a lion already caged, with little information of what formed this great, but arguably flawed leader of men.Pearson's great achievement is that he shows the making of the man, through the words of those who knew him. Pearson admits that luck played a part - doors opened for him to meet a few survivors of the Great Escape, and at a time when the family was making Bushell's papers available.It is a scholarly work, with 15-20% devoted to a thorough bibliography and cross-reference to his sources. At the same time, it is a thoroughly readable story, too, capturing the moods of the man through the letters he wrote, and revealing much that was not known (or could not be published) at the time of those earlier books. In that vein, I'd particularly commend the research into Bushell's time in Prague, sheltered by Czech Resistance, as being pivotal in bringing new insight into the man, and the events that moulded Bushell into his final form - the Bushell of the Great Escape.If you ever read PoW tales, then you'll have got a glimpse of Bushell and wanted to know more. For more than sixty years Bushell's life story was begging to be told, and now it has been.Go read it.

Everything you could possibly want to know about the man who organised ‘The Great Escape’. In fact, to my mind too much time is spent on his early life before he joined the RAF and in speculation about his love life before and during his incarceration.However, once the reader gets to the part that everyone is interested in, namely his time as a POW, then it becomes, in the main, a fascinating story. As not only was he the ‘Big X’ for the escape, but he had escaped previously, spent much time outside and had eventually been caught by the Gestapo in the wake of the assassination of Heydrich in Prague, where he, Bushell, happened to be at the time.Given that it had been a close-run thing as to whether he would be murdered by the Gestapo then, it is extraordinary that he took part in ‘The Great Escape’ as he knew he was already a marked man.Apart from being ‘Big X’, Bushell also organised the transfer of intelligence back home, including information about the V1 & V2 rocket testing at Peenemunde for instance.Bushell always regarded POWs as another front against the Nazis and did everything he could to disrupt their war effort, which was one of the reasons for the mass escape he organised.However, despite the efforts he made and his ultimate murder, little official recognition was ever made of his contribution to the war effort, as he ended his life without a single medal, nor were any awarded posthumously.This book is well worth a read if you are interested in the lives and escapes of Allied POWs in WW2 and particularly of course in ‘The Great Escape’.

I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED WITH THE CONDITION OF THIS BOOK WHICH WAS INTENDED AS A CHRISTMASGIFT' IT HAS THE APPEARANCE OF A SECOND HAND BOOK--THE BOOK IS SLIGHTLY WARPED AND THE COVER IS "DOG-EARED". IT ARRIVED OCTOBER 30/23 SECURELY PACKAGED.THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION.HELEN MCINTOSH

Everyone knows of "The Great Escape" as a wonderful film, possibly also as a book by Paul Brickhill who had personal involvement in the escape from Stalag Luft III during the Second World War. Most people know that Hitler was so enraged by disruption to his reducing forces that he ordered that 50 escapers recaptured should be shot, constituting murder and breach of the Geneva Convention. This book traces the life of their worthy leader Roger Bushell, (called Roger Bartlett in the film and played by Richard Attenbrough) from his birth in South Africa to his life in England up to and including the War, as well as the Great Escape itself with tragic consequences for fifty men including Roger Bushell. This book is full of this man's incredible courage and daring deeds and explains why the Gestapo had warned him that escape again and you will be shot. In the knowledge of that Bushell was determined to not only escape but to disrupt the German forces as much as possible. His attitude hardened towards the enemy probably in the light of his experiences in Czechoslovakia immediately prior to being sent to Stalag Luft III and the brutality he witnessed first hand meted out to people who helped him as well as the rough treatment he himself received at their hands. An incredible life, and a brilliantly detailed and well researched book, which I could metaphorically not put down.This is a masterpiece of the genre by Simon Pearson. Thank you.