Flight Lieutenant Andrew Neilson Orr
On April 17, 1943, F/Lt Andrew Neilson Orr’s Halifax bomber was shot down over Stuttgart, Germany. After bailing out of his aircraft and free falling in the slip stream as he struggled with his parachute, Orr was unable to walk after landing. He was picked up and taken to a German internment camp and eventually to POW camp Stalag Luft III.
F/Lt Orr would spend the next two years at the camp and was an active participant in what is famously known as The Great Escape. Orr would help with some of the digging for Tunnel Harry and contributed largely to the forging of approximately 400 identification passes, perfect in every detail, each of which bore a head and shoulders photograph.
Luckily, Orr was not one of the men chosen to go through Tunnel Harry on the fateful escape night and remained in the camp until he was moved at the end of the war. The Russians had surrounded the camp and wouldn’t release any prisoners. One day an American jeep full of officers came into the camp and F/L Orr, who had always kept his uniform in pristine condition, jumped in the back of the jeep. Because he didn’t have the appearance of living in a POW camp for two years, the Americans assumed he was entitled to do so and drove off with him in the back. The camp was finally liberated three weeks later.
