British prisoners of war at 'Great Escape' camp built second tunnel weeks after breakout

Stalag Luft III gained infamy as the German prisoner of war camp 76 Allies escaped from which featured in classic film the Great Escape, and new drawings have been unveiled

Stalag Luft III will be forever remembered as the Great ­Escape camp after the iconic film about 76 PoWs who fled, only for most of them to be rounded up and ­executed by the Gestapo.

Previously unseen sketches have revealed another tunnel was already being built not long after the 76 allied airmen broke out. One drawing shows PoWs sitting on chairs made from old Red Cross crates that were used to conceal the chamber entrance.

A cross section of the ­underground passage reveals it led towards the boundary fence. Men add to the ruse by innocently played chess over the tunnel.

The drawing is dated September 1944, five months after the legendary mass escape from Stalag Luft III by crawling to freedom in a 111-yard tunnel. Those heroics were immortalised in the 1963 movie starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough. But only three men made it beyond the clutches of the Nazis.

The other 73 were captured and 50 gunned down on the orders of Hitler, who was furious a supposedly escape-proof PoW camp was breached. According to historians, the new tunnel was likely to have been dug to hide from the SS amid fear the Nazis would execute the remaining PoWs as the tide of the war turned.

The sketches provide a fresh insight into life at the notorious camp in Sagan, Poland. Other drawings show PoWs listening to a makeshift radio, a man preparing ­breakfast with a healthy list of rations after ­liberation and the camp’s cat, nicknamed Heinkel, which mocks the Germans by saying it prefers prisoners as they always have more food.

They were created by Lancaster bomber navigator Terence Herbert Francis Entract. Historian and author Guy Walters said: “This album of sketches is a historical gem.

“Not only does it show the mundanity of everyday life in the camp, but ­excitingly it also reveals the existence and location of a tunnel dug by the ­prisoners of war near a block house. Although the Germans never found the tunnel, it was never used, as the weather by the end of the summer of 1944 made escape conditions too treacherous… a lesson the PoWs had learned during the Great Escape when the weather was particularly brutal.”

Further drawings show camp buildings, including the theatre, sleeping quarters – dubbed Sagan Slum – and sick bays. Talented artist Entract was the only member of his crew to survive being shot down over France in August 1943. He was turned over to the Germans by a farmer and sent to Stalag Luft III. In the collection of drawings and pictures, there is a black and white photograph showing inmates performing Noel Coward’s play Hay Fever in May 1944.

Entract worked as the set designer in their “Belaria Theatre”. There is also a letter from camp Commandant Friedrich-Wilhelm von Lindeiner-Wildau to General Charles Goodrich, in charge of the PoWs, rebuking him after they played the British national anthem at the end of a concert.

In November 1944, as the Soviet forces made gains in the east, the PoWs were force-marched 200 miles west to Luckenwalde camp. One sketch shows guards ­patrolling the barbed wire fence during a large-scale air raid on March 15, 1945.

There is also a first-person drawing of Entract’s bed and belongings, which include a hat, uniform, towel and pot, at Luckenwalde as well as one of the soldiers sunbathing outside their huts. The camp was liberated by the Soviets on April 22 that year. After the war, Entract worked as an artist in the advertising industry. He sold his album of drawings in 1946 so he could buy a scooter.

They were later acquired by the historian Michael Booker, who became an expert on the Colditz PoW camp. His archive, including the Entract sketches, was recently put up for sale at Wellers Auctions of ­Guildford, Surrey. Entract’s grandchildren tried to buy the album back but were outbid and it sold for £6,500.

“The detail in the collection, especially the sketches, is just amazing," said the auction house. Entract, originally from Woking in 1917, married Irene in 1950 and they had two sons and five grandchildren. He died in 1999.

Stalag Luft III opened in March 1942 in modern-day Poland. Its soil was meant to be too hard to tunnel in. It is now home to the Stalag Luft III Prisoner Camp Museum.