Legacy MattersGreat Escape gardener dies aged 97
A British World War II veteran whose efforts to help prisoners escape from a Nazi camp was immortalised in the film The Great Escape has died aged 97.
Alex Lees was a prisoner at the infamous Stalag Luft III camp in March 1944 when scores of Allied servicemen escaped through tunnels they had dug by hand.
Lees - a gardener at the camp - helped dig the tunnels, but because he was not an officer he was not given the chance to escape himself.
He used an ingenious system to dispose of the soil from the three tunnels, storing it in a bag hidden under his trousers and then dumping it on the camp's vegetable garden.
The story of Lees and his comrades was made into the 1963 film starring Steve McQueen.
Alex Kees: PoW at Stalag Luft III
Since he had been transferred to Stalag Luft III as part of a gardening detail, his raking down the soil was not immediately calculated to cause suspicion among the camp guards.
After months of work the main escape tunnel, “Tunnel Harry”, was finally ready and on the night of March 24, 1944, a moonless night the would-be escapers had selected to give them their best chance, the escape attempt began as night fell. Out of the 100 men it was thought might escape before daylight, 76 had succeeded in crawling to freedom beyond the wire when at 4.55 am on the 25th the 77th man was spotted emerging from the tunnel.
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After being repatriated from Stalag Luft III in 1945 he returned to his life in insurance in Scotland, finally retiring in 1969 as life and pensions superintendent at what was by then the Commercial Union. Latterly he had lived in a care home for ex-service personnel in Erskine, Renfrewshire.