There was something Dickensian about Christmas 1944, and not just because of the six inches of snow that fell in the night, covering the pine trees beyond the barbed wire, dusting the roofs of the barracks and the watchtowers and managing to turn the vast acres of Stalag Luft III, near the east German town of Sagan, into a charmed place, if only for a few hours. Nor was it because of the shiny decorations that the men had hacked out of old tins and strung in rows across their rooms. What was so special was the spirit of Christmases past and Christmases to come that shone in the camp. A choir of 80 gave full voice to Handel's Messiah, accompanied by a full orchestra. Then, in their hundreds, the prisoners trooped to 'church', filling the theatre in the centre compound to overflowing. Standing there in long, ragged coats with blankets wrapped tightly round their heads to keep out the bitter cold, they resembled a flock of unkempt Nativity Play shepherds, come to hear the good news.
This was despite a Scrooge-like beginning to the festivities. In previous years, the months before Christmas had been used to squirrel away the odd tin of meat or paste, any treats from home that could be kept and brought out for the feast. Not any more. Supplies of Red Cross parcels had dwindled. Luft III was 100 miles south-east of Berlin, 60 miles from the border with Poland and too close for comfort to the advancing Soviet army. On the choked railways and roads, supplies for prisoners took second place to soldiers and arms heading for the front. For weeks the 10,000 inmates of its five separate compounds had been forced to depend on local German rations: sour bread, sausages of congealed blood (and, it was said, the occasional human fingernail), mouldy potatoes, thin barley or pea soup, cheese with a taste to make a man vomit. Nor were there caches of home-brewed alcohol to juice up the merriment as there had been at previous Christmases. Precious few ingredients could be found, and, anyway, the guards had cracked down on the illegal stills. The Germans had promised there would be beer, but no one really expected it to arrive. A terrible year was about to end badly.
Sagan was famous for the escaping activities of the air force officers held in captivity there. Unlike other camps, where escaping was a minority activity, here the 'tally-ho' boys were always top dog. At any one time, more than two thirds of the prisoners were helping out - whether as diggers of dirt or forgers of false papers or tailors running up civilian clothes or look-outs keeping an eye on the 'ferrets', the German Army intelligence troops who poked and prodded their way round the compounds looking for tunnels. In the 22 months after the camp opened, the Germans logged 262 escape attempts, 100 of them involving tunnels. Most had failed, of course, but some had been spectacularly successful. Two men had made it all the way home in 1943 after digging a tunnel from the middle of the compound - disguised from the Germans by the wooden vaulting horse which covered its entrance and was in constant use by a squad of gymnasts while the escapers burrowed away below the surface.
Success had led to over-ambition and disaster. In March 1944, 76 mainly British officers exited from the north compound through the most famous tunnel of World War II. Theirs was The Great Escape; Hitler's response was The Great Retaliation. He personally ordered 50 of those recaptured to be shot. An ominous poster went up in all camps addressed 'To all prisoners-of-war' and warning that 'Escaping from prison camps has ceased to be a sport... Breaking out is now a damned dangerous act...All police and military guards have been given the most strict orders to shoot on sight all suspected persons... The chances of preserving your life are almost nil.'
The murders and the threats cast a pall of gloom over Luft III that, nine months later, had still not lifted. Some of the prisoners were cheerful enough, busying themselves with plans for the future, confident that the war really was coming to an end and they would soon be civilians again. One would-be tycoon was spending his time on drawings for a caravan which he planned to put into mass-market production after the war. But for others, the approaching Russians signified not liberty but death. Flight Lieutenant Ron Walker, an old stager who had been shot down in 1941 after a bombing raid over Dusseldorf, had given up on ever getting home. He did not know any of the 50 who had been massacred - they were in a different compound - but he felt sure he would share their fate.
'I could never understand how we were going to survive,' he recalled. 'I thought the Germans wouldn't be bothered about us and they would simply shoot us down. There was a real danger we would be murdered. Germany was in turmoil - how would we survive it? I really didn't believe we would. Not everyone thought that way, but I'd been a prisoner a long, long time.' He was not party to the desperate plans drawn up by senior officers on the escape committee in case a massacre looked imminent. They would go on the offensive, attack the guards with bare hands, storm the German compound, seize some guns, die but take some of the bastards with them.
Then came a small miracle to lift the gloom. A few days before Christmas a batch of Red Cross parcels arrived, and out of them tumbled canned turkey and plum puddings, cigarettes and cigars, candles, a Christmas cornucopia. The Americans in the west compound even had an unexpected seasonal visitor. They were shivering in the cold night air as the roll call was taken on the parade ground on Christmas Eve, longing to be dismissed to the comparative warmth of their rooms, when they heard the impossible sound of sleigh bells. From behind one of the wooden huts came, 'a small wagon carrying Santa Claus, resplendent in a red and white suit, pulled by two men dressed as reindeer. As we watched hopefully, Santa made the rounds tossing out bundles of mail to each group as he passed. Faces were a little brighter as we returned to the barracks. Santa had brought the Spirit of Christmas to this lonely camp in the wilderness where the ever-burning light of hope at times grew dim. Mail had been allowed to accumulate over a period to permit Santa's Visit. It was one of the 'not to be forgotten' days at Sagan.'
Over in the north compound, RAF pilot John Hartnell-Beavis and his roommates tucked in. They had managed to save enough biscuit crumbs, sugar and dried fruit to bake a cake, and they took a slice each at tea-time on Christmas Day, along with bread and butter and jam from the Red Cross parcels. But the best was yet to come. That evening they sat down to thick soup, tinned turkey, sausages and vegetables, cooked in a makeshift oven. For most of them, that was enough. Their stomachs had shrunk, the unexpected feast was too much, and they gave up, groaning with pain and pleasure, before they reached the pudding and half a pound of whipped cream each. Not Hartnell-Beavis. As a matter of principle, he pushed on until every scrap due to him was gone and he felt - for the one and only time in his 18 months of captivity - full.