On March 24, 1944 76 prisoners of war held at the Stalag Luft III POW camp in Germany attempted a daring escape, with disastrous consequences.
Only three of the escapees made it out alive, the rest were recaptured. A furious Adolf Hitler ordered 50 of them executed—in defiance of the Geneva Convention—including Jasper-born Patrick Langford.
Langford was a Flight Lieutenant with the Canadian Air Force, who was sent to the prisoner of war camp after his plane went down during a night raid over Hamburg in 1942.
But before he was captured, and before he ever served in the military, he was a young boy who grew up in Jasper.
Langford was born in 1919 in Edmonton, but because his father, Richard Langford, was the first chief warden of Jasper National Park he grew up in Jasper, where he was a boy scout, and took part in the local rodeos.
As an adult Langford drove a bus for Brewster, before enlisting in 1940.
In 2010 Langford’s brother Dennis attended a ceremony at the Jasper Junior/Senior High School honouring his brother—the only Jasperite ever given military honours in the Second World War.
At the ceremony Dennis said he was proud of his brother for going to war, and recalled the fear he and his family felt when they learned Patrick’s plane had been shot down.
“My family was aware of the capture. The telegrapher came to the house, and [we] knew something was wrong when [we] saw him walking up the street,” he told the Fitzhugh that day.
Three weeks after that visit, Langford’s family learned he had been taken as a prisoner of war.
As a POW, Langford found himself guarding the entrance of “Harry,” a secret escape tunnel located under a stove in hut 104 of the Stalag Luft III camp. It was his job to make sure the tunnel wasn’t discovered. Legend has it he could conceal the entrance in as little as 20 seconds.
H.M.A. Day, who was imprisoned with Langford, wrote how much he admired him in a letter to the Jasper boy’s family.
“I shall always remember your son as a staunch, sturdy figure, pared to the waist, standing at the top of the shaft which sank 20 feet down the tunnel level, pulling up kit bag after kit bag full of sand. I think 70 to 80 bags used to be the quota and each bag was about 100 to 150 pounds of sand. It was only a man with shoulders as fit as your son who could do such work.”
Along with “Tom” and “Dick,” Harry was one of three tunnels the prison’s secret escape committee—“x-organization”—started digging. It was 101 metres long, located more than nine metres under the ground and was propped up along its length by pieces from 90 bunk-bed boards, 62 tables, 34 chairs, 76 benches and thousands of other items scavenged from around the camp.
That feat of covert construction in itself is impressive, but the more than 200 men working on the tunnels also had to collect enough civilian clothes, military uniforms and false papers for every potential escapee, so they had a chance to go unnoticed once they broke out.
The military uniforms went to those prisoners who could speak German, and the civilian clothes went to the others, who could speak just enough German to hopefully fool anyone who questioned them.
Members of the x-organization also created hundreds of crude compasses and maps from materials nicked from around the camp—all under the noses of the Nazi guards.
When the escape attempt finally took place in March, more than 200 prisoners organized themselves into an informal queue, and 76 made it out of the tunnel before the escape was discovered and Nazi guards found the tunnel’s exit.
Langford and his co-conspirators were illegally executed.
Two months later, allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, gaining a costly but important victory that would eventually lead to the German’s defeat.
Although his death was a tragic one, H.M.A. Day assured Langford’s family that Patrick’s death was also honourable, and in some ways fitting.
“It was escape activities that fulfilled his interest and drew him irresistibly. He was a boy full of spirit and the adventure and risk were an irresistible lure,” he wrote in his letter.
Blessed with a much longer life than his brother, Dennis Langford passed away in 2012. But at the ceremony honouring his brother two years prior, he said he believed his brother’s soul was at peace.
“Pat’s soul is where it should be. I believe his memory is back in Jasper, where he enjoyed the early part of his life,” he said.
Trevor Nichols
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