The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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209514 P/O. Frank Reece Royal New Zealand Air Force 500 Squadron from:Dunedin, New Zealand Sagan My Father Frank Reece piloted a Blenheim on a night-bombing raid in September 1941 on the St Nazaire submarine pens, lost his port engine in flak on the return and made an emergency landing in the shallow bay of St Efflam. After 5 weeks on the run with the assistance of the Resistance, he was captured and spent 3 freezing months in solitary at Fresne under the Gestapo because of his civilian clothes, but was finally able to establish that he was an airman, and sent to SL3. He was in Hut 103. He worked magnetising razor blades for the escape committee's compasses, as well as doing penguin duty and operating the air-pump. He had also been involved in the Wooden Horse escape as one of the men who carried the horse (plus hidden digger, plus, on return, all his dug sand) to and from the site of the hidden tunnel. As his number for the Great Escape was 129, he was nowhere near getting out. He didn't talk much about his experiences until he was in his seventies, and died in 2001, aged 81. At his funeral another POW, Owen, told how one day Dad hadn't come with him on their customary 22-circuit walk, and the man who took his place was shot by a guard in a pill-box who had just heard that his family had all been killed in an Allied air-raid on Berlin. If anyone can add to what I know about Dad's time at SL3 I would be happy to hear from them. Pamela Waded Add to this record.  Related Content: No. 500 (County of Kent) Squadron Royal Air Force Stalag Luft 3 Prisoner of War Camp Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.