These guys are money, as many of you know. We are so fortunate and privileged to be associated with them. Tonight, we welcome our two guests. Westra,lls, and kayla of the Minnesota West Community and technical college, the coauthors of great wartime escapes and rescues. Ill start by saying they had me in grade school. I was a fourthgrader when hollywood released the great escape, starring Steve Mcqueen and james garner, richard. And borough, and charles bronson, among others. It quickly became a tv staple all of the guys in my class fell in martinsburg, missouri fell in love with it. We played it out in recess. All of us wanted to be mcqueen. I think i ended up with the attenborough role. Get executed at the end of the movie. Of course, mcqueen survives. What we didnt realize then and what we probably didnt care about was that the movie was based on a true story, the escape of 76 allied soldiers and in 1944. From germany the film pretty much gave us the reallife tragic ending to that story. Only three of those men who escaped state escaped. Two norwegian pilots, another pilot from the netherlands, no americans. Werenly set other 73 killed or captured. More than two thirds of them were executed. The fact is, escaping is hard and it wasnt often tried during world war ii in particular and when it was, it often didnt succeed. When it did, it really was an inspiration and it was often hollywood stuff. Book detailslas during agents in tehran the 1979 hostage crisis, which was the basis for the best argo. Oscarwinner this is the third time david has spoken here at the library. Last was a little over a year ago and we talked about the power pairing between Dwight Eisenhower and george marshall. Kayla, who is a former kansas city resident, is here from where she now lives in minnesota, where she is the dean of institutional effectiveness and liberal arts at the Minnesota West Community and technical college. Thanks so much for making the trip. Please join me in welcoming both of them. Westra. Lls and kayla [applause] david good evening, everybody and thanks for coming out. Looks like the weather is cooperating. Last year, we were supposed to have a couple different presentations that got canceled because of the weather, so it is great to see every body. Thanks for coming out. Im dave mills and this is my good friend kayla westra. We have been friends for about 10 years. We Work Together at Minnesota West Community college until a few years ago when i took a position down here, but about two years ago, kayla and i decided to write this book about p. O. W. Escapes and rescues. Many of you probably remember the man who was instrumental in orchestrating many of the discussions and talk about world war ii down here, so when i told him about our book, he asked us to come and talk about a number of these episodes. Start off talking about the history of prisoners and their treatments, and then we will talk about why it is so hard to make a successful escape. Then, we will talk about our specific episodes of prisoners and the escape attempts they made, so we have a variety of stories for you tonight. We will talk about the great escape in a little more detail, we will talk about a prison camp in the philippines where the entire prison camp was rescued, and then we will talk about a number of individual escapes that included american, french, german, and british officers. I hope you enjoy it. In 2004 when tom brokaw coined the phrase the greatest generation, he was talking about orse who grew up in war to stayed at home and labored for the effort in world war ii, and it was a time when we still had a number of those people in our midst. Fewer and fewer of that generation, we are losing that generation, and this is my dad. My dad has gotten such a kick out of that. He had a great sense of humor, but my dad was part of the greatest generation and served in world war ii, as well. As we talk about these escapes and rescues, we focus today on a couple of episodes. When we were working on this book, i purposely did not watch the movies. I am a movie buff and know a lot of movies, but i did not track down the movies on these because as entertaining as they are, they are not always aligned with history, as we know. Im not antimovie. I use movies and him in english teacher by trade so i use movies students excited about history, but we must look beyond what the movie tells us to get the real story because i can tell you from the research we did that there is little glamour in many of these escapes and rescues, and very little victory against all odds, but it is important that we tell the stories and retelling them is crippled critical to remembering people and their efforts and the untold stories, especially for those that did not get out. Im going to take you back to my favorite time. , which is the middle time period, which is the middle ages. Younderstandable should understand where the concept came from. In the middle ages, there were a few prisoners of four, mostly because unless you were noble, you werent worth a whole lot. If you were a noble, you might be ransomed to your family, but a commoner, they didnt have much use for you so they would kill you off or an slave you were massacred you. There wasnt much point in keeping you around. Then the french wars in the 14th century and changes in tactics and weaponry, Army Competition composition changed. Armies became larger and more lethal and common soldiers became more important because they were fighting with pikes, longbows, and eventually rifles. At this point, a commoner could actually killing noble so the value of the common soldier increased. Nobles refined the rules of engagement a little more. The 16th and 17th centuries, armies numbered in the thousands so if you can imagine taking care of prisoners of war on that scale, it became more difficult. By the mid 18th century, we went from small professional armies to more National Armies and soldiers that fought for ideology, an idea. It became more difficult to get men to switch sides which was common in the middle ages. Fight for us and we will not kill you was a pretty strong argument. More men were needed if you were keeping these prisoners of war, so it became a time where they had to write down rules of engagement and how things were going to be handled. Been used for centuries. Prisoner of war became a legal status only in 1899. The provision for treatment was for humane treatment and specified what prisoners could do. The agreement required each prisoner to reveal name and rank. Responsibility for the protection of prisoners was placed on the leaders of the powers that had captured them. Torture was outlawed to extract information, but the communist forces notoriously violated that in korea. David you are going to go ahead and advance my slide for me and point out that i was supposed to do that first. Thanks. So escape. It sounds like it ought to be a nobrainer. It sounds like everybody would want to try and escape, but there are a number of problems if youu have to consider are going to try and escape from a prison. The first is first and foremost, you know you can be shot upon escape or upon recapture. Happened, sothing it was not a decision to be taken lightly. He once a prisoner decided or she was going to try and escape, there are a number of questions that have to be answered. How aret question is, you going to get out of prison, right . Youve got a lot of really smart people who put together a prison in order to keep you inside of have somewill considerations to think about like guards and dogs and sense andd wire searchlights and watchtowers and landmines. A number of obstacles designed to keep you in. Lets assume you get out of the prison. What is the next question you probably need to ask yourself . How are you going to travel and where are you going to go . Walking takes a lot of time and a lot of energy, and prisoners would probably want to avoid the public where they could attract suspicion and maybe the attention of the police. A prisoner didnt have money to purchase a ticket on an airplane or trainer ship or any other kind of mode of transportation. And they probably didnt speak the local language, so a number to beblems needed overcome. The third major issue is one of logistics. Clothes prisoners, the they would be wearing were out of the ordinary. Most soldiers are captured in ofir uniforms and uniforms enemy personnel down the street will attract the wrong kind of attention, so what about identification papers that europedy, at least in was required to carry at this time. How would you eat . You have no money come you want to avoid the local population, you cant walk into the local ennys and order up some grub. The fourth major issue in germany or japan is the problem of fitting in. This is particularly obvious with an american in the Pacific Theater where the japanese would have control of the philippines and other islands and other territories, but even in germany i lived in germany and russia for a number of years, and nobody ever mistook me for a local. I dont know how they knew i was an american, but they always did. The last question is one of physical limitations. Lot ofcan see, a whole these guys are not treated particularly well, so the idea of getting out of a prison camp and putting some distance between themselves and the guards who would probably be looking for them rather quickly raises some obvious problems. Issuesre a number of that you have got to think through before you can even consider the idea of escape. One of the things you might want to do is get some help in your escape efforts and for these reasons, every escapee had the help of other prisoners. Large prison camps would have escaped committees. The are usually made up of highest ranking folks in the prison camps themselves and if you were a prisoner and you had an idea that you were going to escape from prison, you would need to go to the escape committee and present your plan, so remember, this is a military organization. The idea of hierarchy is one that is embraced. Go to have a plan, you the committee, you brief the escape committee on your plan, and the committee can approve it or disapprove it. One of the reasons the escape committee might disapprove of , you cantsay no escape in that manner at that time in the way you have described. You need to put your plans on the back burner. One of the reasons that might be the case is you might interfere with another escape plan already in the works, so you need to coordinate that. The last thing you would want is to mess up one plan because you have stumbled into something. Another reason the escape might be disapproved is that it had little chance of success. The escape committee might look at this idea and say, all youre going to do is bring a lot of scrutiny and attention to the prisoners and the idea of escaping, which May Institute new rules and regulations that will make it harder for everyone else. You actually did need to have some semblance or chance of success in getting out. If the Committee Approved of your escape plan, that meant the entire committee and most likely a whole lot of folks inside the prison itself were going to help you out and assist. There is not a lot that folks could do, but maybe a distraction to draw attention away from whatever area you were going to be focused on getting out of the prison. Theyre also used to be a number of civilian occupations that a prisoner in their escape. It used to be there were whole lot of folks who were printers and new ink and were able to forge identification papers. Artists were also very good at helping with more intricate details of faking it into vacation papers. Identification papers. Tailors would be able to take your uniform and make it more like a civilian suit. Then an army uniform, especially if it was dyed. Bribing guards is another thing that the prison system would do. Everybody would be checking, so how vulnerable is this new guard . Can i bribe him . Can i buy some things from him . How amenable is this person to making a trade of some sort . Oftentimes, the only way you could get critical equipment like a typewriter or a camera to take pictures of people to make these fake id papers was to bribe guards. Lots of folks did not even know where they were in the prison camp system. Information could be had from guards. You could also bribe guards to get money. So prisoners, once they escaped, would have some currency. Maybe if they spoke the language well enough, they could try to purchase a ticket and that sort of thing. On one hand, escape is pretty difficult, but you can try to leverage the knowledge and the expertise of folks within the prison, a lot of times you had a pretty good shot of at least getting a way a little bit getting away a little bit. With that, i will advance the slide. Turn it back over to kayla. Kayla a little bit of my thunder was stolen. But i get to talk about the great escape today. A number of you know the story, but for those of you who dont, dave was talking about the logistics of getting out of the camp. Men still tried to escape, even with all of those issues they had. Prisoners were notorious for trying to escape their german captors. They put the worst of the presence they put those prisoners in the worst of camps. That camp primarily held air force personnel. It was located in poland about 100 miles southeast of berlin. You can see the image on the left side for you. The barracks were built off of the ground, tunneling efforts were pretty difficult. There was also some sand underneath the topsoil. It had a distinct golden color so as they were trying to tunnel, they had to put that sand somewhere. They would often put it in socks and try to walk around and get rid of it, but when it is gold and on top, it is gnosis noticeable. The tunnels had to be extremely long. The barracks were back from the fence quite a ways. In order to tunnel, they had to hide what they were working on. They actually a little humorous, they named their three harrys the tom, dick and tunnels. The tom was built in the dark corner of the barracks. The harry was under the stove, and the other was in a drain. Each tunnel went straight down for about 40 feet. This enabled them to avoid microphones in place so they could hear the tunneling. And the sandy soil they talk about. Eventually they ran out of places to put all of that sand. So they decided to sacrifice one of the tunnels. They would fill that with sand and shortly after that, the tunnel. Found the tom two tunnels were compromised. They began working on the last tunnel with some renewed enthusiasm. They had heard they would be shipped to a more secure camp because of some of their shenanigans. They wanted to get this moving and get out as soon as they could. They finished midmarch, it took them about 15 months to complete one of the tunnels. They had to wait for a moonless night in order to get out. The plan was 40 feet down, 300 past the fence, 28 out past the fence and into the woods. The first ones out were the ones who spoke german. Probably had escaped before. A little bit more confident. Confidence they could do that. Then they had a lottery for the next 100. They thought they could get 200 men out in a single night. At 10 30 that night, the first man made it through the tunnel and found the time of cleared the fence, but it didnt make it to the woods. This was something they had not accounted for. The tunnels exit could be seen from the guard tower. It greatly slowed down the process of getting the men out. They thought they would be able to send out 16 hour and were only able to do about 10. At midnight they started at 10 30 the air raid sirens went off. That cut the power. The pesky americans had plugged into the electricity, so when the raid they hadent off, to stop. The power came back on and then one of the tunnels collapsed. At 5 00 in the morning, they had gotten 76 of those 100 men out. The 77th one was caught. The men who got out all ran into the forest. They thought they would be able to find their way to the rail station with all of their papers. It was not as easy as they thought. There was also quite a bit of snow left so traveling was difficult. All but three of them were caught, rounded up within two weeks. The germans executed 50 of those 76 within two weeks. The three who made it back to their homelands were norwegian pilots and one dutch pilot. Some of you know this story from the great escape. It was a pretty fictionalized account, but an entertaining one nonetheless. You mentioned the cooler king. Im glad you did. This is the character Steve Mcqueen was based on. He was known as the cooler king because he was captured and escaped several times. He was the basis for Steve Mcqueens her. Character. He was a native texan who had volunteered for the Royal Canadian air force in june of 19 he had gone to britain. 1940. He was first shot down on a mission in france. He was one of the most heavily punished prisoners in world war ii, spending over six months in solitary confinement. His first stint came after a prank against the german guards. The guards were trying to count the prisoners, as they often did, and several men started milling around. If you have ever tried to count kindergartners come you can imagine it is very similar. The guards did not find it as funny. He ended up in the cooler. That was his First Experience in the cooler. Then he tried to escape. He was caught hiding in the shower room. He got two weeks in the cooler for that. The camp became overcrowded. He was sent to another camp to about 150 miles to the northeast in poland. About the day he got there, he tried to escape again. Rolledunloading a train, under the train, got to the other side and ran, and they caught him, put him in the cooler again for a couple of weeks. During this time he had secured a small file and was trying to get out of his cell when they caught him the second time. Another two weeks for that. You kind of ca pattern here with william ash. He gets out of the cooler and he tries to cut through the fence with wire cutters. That time, he did not get caught, but his compadres did. Twohe also tunneled out, was caught. He spent 10 days in the cooler for that. He escaped from a camp in lithuania and was on the loose for a couple of weeks. Again was caught. Theytime, they said were going to execute him because he was problematic to keep in, but instead they sent him back to the stalag. About the time he was in the cooler that time was when the great escape took place. He could not participate, because he was in the cooler at the time. After the executed those 50 men, he decided his career was over as an escape artist. As i was researching him, i couldnt think help but think of all the hogans heroes i had grown up watching with the rivalry back and forth, but there were no charming colonel s in the real pow camps. As much fun as they were to watch on tv, th