Shropshire Magazine

Shropshire will never see another Jimmy James, who passed away on January 18 this year at the age of 92. Warm, private and self-effacing, he was a hero in every sense and the perfect subject to start a series looking at some of the county’s war veterans and the part they played in the conflict

By Shirley Tart

Jimmy James pictured in his wartime uniform.

He was our hero, Shropshire’s most decorated military man. We intended beginning our new series this month in the obvious place, with the Jimmy James story.

We are indeed doing that. But a planned interview with the grand old man has become a tribute to him, to his life, to his courage, to a dogged persistence during wartime capture and to all that he did for his country and its people.

Because on January 18, Jimmy James died. He lived in Ludlow and was exactly three months short of his 93rd birthday.

But his story of bravery in the face of the greatest danger – a date with Adolf Hitler’s order to execute – goes back nearly 70 years. From the moment his aircraft was shot down in 1940 and he was captured, Pilot Officer Bertram Arthur ‘Jimmy’ James had one aim in view – to escape. Altogether, he made an amazing 12 attempts, including the Great Escape which was to inspire the Hollywood blockbuster of the same name with Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough. But the script for this real-life battler was in every way more incredible than any film. Even when Jimmy James was sent to Sachsenhausen, the principal and deadly Nazi camp for Berlin, he escaped from there as well.

Yes, reading his hair-raising story now is pure adventure, a massively good, edge-of-seat yarn set in those six long and eventful years which reshaped the modern world and redeemed Europe from a manic dictatorship.

But make no mistake, for every gripping storybook or mega film with a World War II background, the reality was always so much worse, more brutal, a grim battle for survival against crushing odds. A drama which saw our valiant front lines facing the worst the enemy could throw at them yet not flinching from their bid to save their country from the horrors of Hitler.

The price they paid was massive in terms of life, suffering and loss. Yet you will never hear an old soldier, airman or sailor complain – except maybe anguish over the comrades they lost and still feel they should have saved.

Living or dying, they remain giants among men. And Jimmy James was a giant among giants.

As second pilot of a Wellington bomber, Jimmy was at the controls when his plane was caught in a searchlight cone and shot down over the Dutch coast by heavy anti-aircraft fire in 1940. A few years ago he recalled with absolute clarity: “I walked all night and tried to get to the coast but it was full of Germans. I was caught in the morning, taken to various places and interrogated. I went through Dulag Luft, the transit camp for RAF aircrew at that time and we arrived at Stalag Luft I on the Baltic in July 1940.”

Colditz and Great Escape veterans met up at the Imperial War Museum in 2004. Jimmy James is seated third from left.

Less than a year after the war began, and Jimmy James was a prisoner – but not one to take his capture quietly or with anything approaching resignation.

For airmen in enemy hands, it was a very particular experience. Soldiers and sailors were taken prisoner after a long struggle, months at sea or battling in the field. But aircrew could be injured and captured within hours of leaving the familiar comfort of their home base.

By the time of the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III the camp was like the United Nations, with 10,000 airmen of all nationalities – British, American, French, Polish, Belgian, Dutch, Canadian, Australian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, New Zealander, South African, Greek and Czechoslovakian.

All had escaped crippled aircraft by parachute, many survived with the misery of knowing the rest of their crews were killed. Yet far from being seen as impenetrable, life in terrible conditions behind menacing barbed wire presented only a challenge to Squadron Leader James, whose incredible escapology career was about to begin.

As he explained in his later years – with memory razor sharp even as he reached his magnificent 90s – it was almost a ‘nothing to lose’ situation.

“We had no books or diversions, not much food apart from a bit of black bread and soup and, really, no hope. This was before the Battle of Britain and the Germans were occupying most of western Europe. We wondered what had happened, how long we would be there and whether we would ever get home.”

We can never imagine what it was like for them with no communication, no idea what the state of war really was and, as Jimmy said, only a forlorn hope that they would get home at all.

But they were young and before neglect took its toll, still pretty fit. As the weeks went by, they were joined by more and more young RAF aircrew who had been shot down and survived.

And so this cream of our nation hatched the first escape plot.

A sketch by Ley Kenyon of the daring tunnelling exploits that British POWs would organise while in captivity.

They dug a lot of tunnels from that particular camp and Jimmy almost made it when he and fellow POW John Shaw burrowed a tunnel from an incinerator conveniently near the captor’s wire. “We used it on an air raid when the lights went out. But I was caught while John had already got away and made it home,” Jimmy said. They would not have known John’s fate until they also were back in the free world. And in such extraordinary circumstances, those who didn’t get out would never have become bitter because someone else did. They simply tried again. Or in Jimmy James’s case, again and again and again . . ..

Stalag Luft I was all the lads had to call home for two long years. Then in April 1942 they were moved to the east compound at Stalag Luft III and started digging tunnels again. Here though, the sand was fine and soft, making any headway a double challenge and the camp was about as far away as it could be from neutral territory – so getting out could even be the start of a bigger dilemma. This was one of the new camps being built as the bomber offensive increased, with more and more RAF prisoners being rounded up and then locked up. Jimmy and his pals were also moved to the Oflag officers’ prison camp for a time, where the only thing which could be said was that the brick building was a change from the barbed-wire cage in which they were usually kept.

Then in April 1943, they were back in Stalag Luft III at Sagan where Jimmy met Roger Bushell, who was to become the mastermind of the Great Escape – code name ‘Big X’ and played in the film by Richard Attenborough. They hatched the audacious plan to dig themselves out with three possible routes, nicknamed Tom, Dick and Harry. They went with Harry, which seemed most promising.

And so during the night of March 24, 1944, Jimmy was one of 76 officers who escaped from the camp through the precarious 365-foot tunnel. The ingenuity with which they had created their escape route was breathtaking but only three reached freedom; the rest were recaptured with the chilling order from Hitler to shoot them all.

Interrogation

Fifty were indeed executed. After interrogation by the Gestapo, Jimmy James was sent to the grimmest of the grim – the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. But guess what? He promptly escaped again with Lieutenant Colonel John ‘Mad Jack’ Churchill and was on the run for 14 days before being recaptured. Back at the camp, they were locked in the Zellenbau cell block, the fearful death row.

What an amazing story, and this only a fragment of it. Jimmy James’s war ended in May 1945 when he and other prisoners were taken to the Austrian Tyrol and finally liberated by the American Army.

In a way his war had been one long escape attempt, mostly from death camps. He was awarded the Military Cross and mentioned in dispatches, took a regular commission in the RAF and retired in 1958.

Jimmy was involved with Foreign and Commonwealth groups and tthe Diplomatic Service, and was British representative on the International Sachsenhausen Committee until shortly before he died. He and his wife Madge enjoyed these later years in Ludlow, though sadly faced another great sorrow with the death of their only son.

Of such breathtaking courage are heroes made. Jimmy James, we salute you!

A model of the type of German prison camp from which Jimmy James turned escaping into an art form.