How a Pow’s secret codes fooled the Nazis
British officer held in jail featured in The Great Escape sent hidden messages to his mother
A PRISONER of war held in the Nazi camp that inspired the 1963 film The Great Escape sent a secret message to military intelligence hidden in a letter to his mother.
Researchers at the National Archives have discovered secret correspondence written by a British officer held in Stalag Luft III, the camp famous for its mass breakout in 1944.
The message was found sealed behind a photograph enclosed with a cheerful message sent by Flt Lt Peter Gardner, a Spitfire pilot, to his mother in England.
The coded 1942 note, which requested vitally important forging materials, was passed on by his mother to intelligence experts at MI9 and such coded messages may have influenced future escapes.
The discovery of the message was made as part of research for a new National Archives exhibition on Pows and civilian internees in the Second World War, held by Britain, Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire.
Dr William Butler, the curator of the exhibition, said the note shows that “intelligence services are smuggling information to prisoners to do certain things” and prisoners themselves are “disseminated letters” sharing intelligence and asking for materials.
The newly discovered letter was sent by Grimsby-born RAF Flt Lt Gardner and reveals he was making a nuisance of himself by securing forgeries.
In 1942, he wrote an apparently innocuous letter to his mother in which he talked of the “glorious weather” in Poland, the site of Stalag Luft III and a camp atmosphere “like Blackpool beach”.
The note was written on the reverse side of a photograph of Capt Guy Griffiths, his campmate and a Royal Marine pilot, who he says is an old friend “from school”.
Experts believe this schoolboy story may have been concocted both to fool the German censors and to alert his mother to the importance of the apparently innocuous letter.
His mother appears to have understood this and handed the note over to wartime intelligence authorities, and it ended up with MI9, the allied body responsible for escape and evasion training.
Between the photograph of Mr Griffiths and the message on the reverse side about the weather, a hidden note was sealed, written in code using a magnifying glass to create illegibly small characters.
This secret message was far from innocent and it requested that the Pows being held in Stalag Luft III be supplied with the material required to forge documents, with Flt Lt Gardner suggesting that the necessary paper should be hidden in the leaves of books delivered as part of humanitarian aid.
The coded message also requests originals to copy from, specifically an example of an “identity card for foreign workers in Germany”.
Two years after the note was sent and processed by MI9, there was a mass breakout of 76 Pows from Stalag Luft III and forged documents played an important role in the escape, allowing prisoners to travel great distances undercover.
While more than half of the escapees were executed, three made it home, two with the help of forged papers which stated they were Norwegian electricians working in Germany.
The newly discovered secret letter from Flt Lt Gardner, who died in 1984, will be on display at the National Archives as part of the new exhibition, Great Escapes, along with other documents connected to the 1944 breakout from Stalag Luft III.
These include a series of illustrations created by Capt Griffiths, the man whose photograph was sent to England, of fictional and high-tech planes like the jet-propelled “Westland Wildcat”.
These drawings were created before being left lying around for German officers to find, to create the false impression that the allies had extremely advanced aircraft.
‘Intelligence services are smuggling information to prisoners to do certain things’