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P/O. Frank Reece
Royal New Zealand Air Force 500 Squadron
from:Dunedin, New Zealand
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.
