Paul Gordon Royle

Flight Lieutenant Paul Gordon Royle Royal Air Force Pilot, Great Escape Survivor and Australian Prisoner of War 17 January 1914 to 23 August 2015

His first combat mission ended in a crippled aircraft, a forced landing in occupied France and almost five years behind barbed wire. Four years later, Flight Lieutenant Paul Gordon Royle crawled through Tunnel Harry into a frozen forest and became one of the 76 Allied airmen who broke out of Stalag Luft III in the legendary Great Escape.

Paul Gordon Royle was born in Perth, Western Australia, on 17 January 1914 and spent much of his childhood in South Perth. He attended Hale School and briefly trained as a naval cadet at Jervis Bay before returning home. During the difficult years of the Depression, he worked with his father surveying airfields and later found employment in the Kalgoorlie gold mines. The underground knowledge he gained there would eventually become invaluable in a very different kind of mine beneath a German prisoner-of-war camp.

Royle had long been fascinated by aircraft. He applied unsuccessfully to join the Royal Australian Air Force in 1934, but he refused to abandon his ambition. When a Royal Air Force recruiting team visited Australia, he applied for a short-service commission and was accepted. He sailed for Britain in February 1939 to begin flying training, and his appointment appeared in the London Gazette that June. His RAF service number was 42152.

He trained on the de Havilland Tiger Moth, Avro Anson and Bristol Blenheim before qualifying as a Blenheim pilot in May 1940. Germany had already launched its offensive in Western Europe, and Royle was immediately posted to No. 53 Squadron, Royal Air Force, in northern France. He had finally reached an operational unit, but his combat career would last less than an hour.

On 18 May 1940, Royle took off on his first operational reconnaissance mission. His Bristol Blenheim was attacked by German Messerschmitt fighters and badly damaged. Royle managed to force-land the aircraft in a French field. Although wounded, he helped carry his injured observer to a nearby village, then returned to the Blenheim and destroyed it to prevent the aircraft from falling intact into German hands. German troops arrived later that day and took him prisoner.

For many airmen, capture meant waiting for the war to end. For Royle, captivity created a new duty: escape.

After passing through an army prisoner-of-war camp, he was sent to Stalag Luft I near Barth on the Baltic coast. There he became involved in organized escape work. His experience in the Kalgoorlie mines made him comfortable underground, and he participated in tunnelling efforts while learning the methods required to conceal tools, distribute soil and deceive German guards. In March 1942, he was transferred with other Allied airmen to the newly constructed Stalag Luft III near Sagan.

The Luftwaffe had designed Stalag Luft III to discourage escape. The camp stood on loose sand that was difficult to tunnel through, while raised huts and hidden microphones helped guards detect underground activity. Under Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, known as “Big X,” hundreds of prisoners nevertheless created an elaborate escape organization and began work on three tunnels named Tom, Dick and Harry.

Royle became one of the prisoners nicknamed the “penguins.” Wearing specially adapted clothing, the penguins carried excavated sand inside their trousers and released it gradually while walking around the compound. The soil from deep underground was a different colour from the camp surface, so every load had to be scattered carefully where it would not attract attention. It was slow, monotonous and dangerous work, but it helped keep the tunnels hidden.

On the night of 24 March 1944, the escape finally began. Royle entered Tunnel Harry carrying civilian clothing, food, a compass and a map. Pulled through the narrow passage on a wooden trolley, he reached the exit at approximately 2:30 the following morning. He climbed into the snow-covered forest beyond the camp and joined Flight Lieutenant Edgar Humphreys, with whom he planned to travel towards Switzerland.

Freedom lasted only a short time. Royle and Humphreys crossed the Berlin to Breslau autobahn and remained at large for roughly a day before German auxiliary police arrested them near a village. They were taken to Görlitz and interrogated. Royle was returned to solitary confinement, but Humphreys was selected for execution. He became one of the 50 recaptured airmen murdered by the Gestapo following Adolf Hitler’s order for severe reprisals.

Royle never found a satisfactory explanation for why he lived while Humphreys died. They had escaped together, been recaptured together and faced the same interrogators. Yet Royle was sent back to camp while his companion was taken away and killed. That uncertainty remained one of the most haunting parts of his Great Escape story.

His return to Stalag Luft III did not end the ordeal. As Soviet forces advanced in early 1945, the Germans moved prisoners westward through bitter winter conditions. Royle was eventually held at Marlag und Milag Nord, where British troops liberated him on 2 May 1945. He had spent nearly five years as a prisoner of war.

Royle’s verified wartime medal group comprised the 1939-1945 Star and the War Medal 1939-1945. The Star recognized his operational service during the Battle of France, while the War Medal recognized his full-time service during the Second World War. His service medals were formally presented to him during celebrations marking his 100th birthday.

After the war, Royle returned to Australia and built a career in mining and engineering, drawing upon the technical experience that had first taken him to Kalgoorlie. He eventually retired to Perth in 1980. He married twice, raised a family and generally resisted allowing the Great Escape to become the sole definition of his long life. His own son did not fully understand the extent of his involvement until encountering his father’s name in a book during the 1970s.

Royle also rejected the glamorous image created by the 1963 film The Great Escape. The real operation had involved cold, darkness, exhaustion and the constant threat of execution. There had been no spectacular motorcycle chase, and the escape had been organized largely by British and Commonwealth prisoners. For Royle, the film transformed a dangerous military obligation into an adventure that bore little resemblance to the reality experienced by the prisoners.

As the decades passed, Paul Royle became one of the final living links to the Great Escape. He gave interviews, preserved his memories and helped ensure that the men who disappeared through Tunnel Harry were remembered as real airmen rather than fictional characters. The Australian War Memorial later included his portrait in its project honouring Australian Second World War veterans.

Flight Lieutenant Paul Gordon Royle died in Perth on 23 August 2015 at the age of 101. At the time of his death, he was the second-last surviving member of the 76 men who had escaped from Stalag Luft III.

Paul Royle’s first operational flight lasted only minutes, but his war continued for five more years. He survived capture, years of confinement, the Great Escape, brutal interrogation and the knowledge that many of his companions had been murdered. His life remains a powerful story of courage without spectacle, resistance without certainty and endurance when freedom seemed impossibly far away.