AV600 Stalag Luft III WWII RAF cover signed POW Great Escape tunneler KEN REES

Description: 60th Anniversary of the Great Escape 24/25 March 2004 Official Cover signed by Wing Commander Ken Rees who took part in the Great Escape on 24 March 1944 and was due to exit the tunnel when the guards raised the alarm Special commemorative cover produced by ourselves in association with former Allied Prisoners of War who spent time at Stalag Luft III to raise money to preserve and maintain plaques/memorials for those British and Commonwealth subjects killed or executed while POWs. The artwork for the cover has been done by former Matchbox artist Ross Wardle, and shows the unmistakable watch towers and searchlights watching over the prisoner's huts at Stalag Luft III as night draws in. Two German soldiers or 'goons' as they were known to the POWs are shown standing on patrol - little knowing that 30 feet below them there is a tunnel. The cover bears Royal Mail 1st Class Lord of the Rings stamp (illustration may differ from stamp shown) cancelled with our BFPS 2770 postmark for the 60th Anniversary of the Great Escape - Stalag Luft III 24 March 2004. This is the official cover for this postmark. Wing Commander H.K. Rees This cover has been hand signed by Wing Commander Ken Rees who had helped build the tunnel and would have been the 79th out of the tunnel on the night of the Great Escape but he heard shouts and a gun fired so he and two other POWs about to exit the tunnel turned around and went the way they had come. He was the last to exit the tunnel at 'hut 104' and for his part was sent to 'the cooler' for 14 days. The story of the Great Escape was made into the cult 1963 film 'The Great Escape' starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough. Telegraph Obituary Wing Commander Ken Rees, who has died aged 93, was the last surviving member of the digging team that constructed the tunnel used during the “Great Escape” from Stalag Luft III in March 1944. Rees was the pilot of a Wellington bomber shot down in flames over Norway during a mine-laying operation in October 1942. He managed to crash-land into a lake and scramble ashore where he and two of his colleagues were soon captured — the other two members of his crew lost their lives. After interrogation, Rees soon found himself at Stalag Luft III at Sagan in Silesia, a camp specially built for captured airmen. A gregarious, high-spirited, and at times irreverent young man (he was 21 years old at the time of his capture), Rees was a restless and troublesome prisoner, always baiting his captors and he regularly found himself in the “cooler” — the punishment block. When Hollywood filmed the escape from Stalag Luft III many drew parallels between Rees and the character of Hilts, the “Cooler King” played by Steve McQueen. “It’s always said that he was based on me,” said Rees late in life, “apart from him being a 6ft tall American and me a Welshman of about 4ft 3in who can’t ride a motorbike.” Rees’s antagonistic attitude to some of his captors stemmed from his outrage on learning that his pilot brother-in-law had been machine-gunned to death by a circling German aircraft as he floated earthward having bailed out of his burning Hurricane. “We would do anything to disrupt the Germans,” recalled Rees. “We were capable, well-trained ... we felt almost invincible.” When Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, the head of the escape committee and known as “Big X”, was making plans for a mass breakout of the camp by tunnel, Rees was chosen to be a member of the digging team. He believed he was selected because he was a Welshman and it had been assumed that he must have some experience of mining, which was not the case. The escape plan called for three tunnels to be dug: “Tom,” “Dick” and, finally, “Harry”. As the longest of the three, Harry was to stretch for 330 feet and surface in some woods beyond the perimeter wire. Nothing on this scale had ever been attempted before. In the event, Tom was discovered and Dick was abandoned. Rees spent long hours digging Harry, much of it at the face of the tunnel. There was the constant risk of collapse and being buried in the soft sand and there were numerous roof falls, which had to be shored up with bed boards. For the stocky, powerfully built Rees, the tunnelling in Harry became an occupational therapy to alleviate the boredom and hunger through one of the coldest winters of the past century. After digging out 250 tons of sand, the mass escape was fixed for the night of March 24-25 1944. The tunnel entrance was concealed in Hut 104 where 200 men gathered, with their escape kit, before the guards locked all the huts. Rees described the atmosphere as “stomach-churning — worse than waiting for a bombing operation to get under way”. He was alarmed to see a German officer in the hut, only to discover it was a fellow escaper in an elaborate disguise. When the tunnel diggers broke through to the surface they discovered they were short of the woods. This caused significant delays in exiting and progress was very slow. Seventy-six men eventually clambered from the tunnel as Rees crouched below guiding them to the exit. When it came to his turn to leave, he had almost reached the exit ladder when a shot rang out signalling the discovery of the tunnel. On all fours, Rees rushed back along the tunnel expecting a bullet or a bayonet in his backside and he was the last to clamber back into the hut before the trap door was closed. He arrived to find others frantically burning forged papers and eating emergency rations. Moments later the Germans arrived in force. Rees was sent to the cooler where he heard the horrific news that the Gestapo had murdered 50 of his colleagues (who had been caught on the run). Among them was his great friend Johnny Bull, head of the tunnelling team, and Roger Bushell. “Had I got out, I would have ended up like the 50 who went before me,” said Rees in later life. “It was a certainty, with my record of stays in the cooler and annoying the Germans generally.” Later in the year Rees became involved in the planning of another tunnel but the threat of being shot, together with the rapid progress of the Allies, caused the idea to be abandoned. In late January 1945, Rees and his fellow prisoners were given one hour’s notice to collect their meagre belongings and leave the camp as the Soviet Army advanced from the east. They suffered severe privations and terrible winter weather as they were marched westwards by their guards. Finally, Rees was liberated by the advancing British Army on May 2 and flown back to England where he was reunited with his wife — they had been married a few days before he was shot down. Henry Kenneth Rees was born on February 2 1921 in Wrexham and was educated at Ruabon Grammar School. He worked for two years in a draper’s shop before joining the RAF to train as a pilot. After completing his training in March 1941 he joined No 40 Squadron to fly Wellington bombers. Over the next few months he attacked targets in Germany and the French Biscay ports. After completing 20 operations, the squadron was sent to Malta at the height of the siege. From the battered airfields on the island he flew 26 bombing missions, attacking ports in Italy and Greece. He also flew raids on targets near Tripoli and Benghazi. Rees had a great determination to attack the enemy. After completing his bombing duties he often descended to low level to shoot up installations, searchlights and transports. After returning to England to be a bombing instructor he volunteered for another tour of operations and joined No 150 Squadron at the end of September 1942. On the night of October 23 he was directed to drop mines off the coast of Norway near Stavanger. Intelligence sources were not aware that the Germans had built a new line of air defence guns along that stretch of the coast. As Rees prepared to drop his mines, his Wellington was hit and set on fire. It was his 56th bombing operation. After his release from captivity in May 1945, Rees had great difficulty settling down. He left the RAF but rejoined after a few months. He became a flying instructor and later commanded a Valiant V-bomber squadron. In 1967 he commanded the RAF’s island staging post at Gan in the Indian Ocean before retiring a year later. 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End Time: 2024-12-18T22:47:19.000Z

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