As yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the Great Escape from Stalag-Luft III at Sagan I thought I would post this item. It is a Wehrpass to one of the camp guards who would of been present at the time of the escape. Unfortunately it will never be known whether he was in, or in the vicinity of, the actual compound the escape took place from but the Wehrpass does show he was stationed in the Stalag-Luft III complex at Sagan-Belaria from 29th December 1943 to 21st June 1944. He joined the military in 1941 and spent the rest of the war serving with a whole host of training and depot based units for medical reasons but on the dates mentioned he was assigned to Landesschützen-Kompanie der Luftwaffe 7/III. These type of units, from all three services, were used as rear area troops to guard PoW Camps, military depots and suchlike. As can be seen from the Wehrpass, the unit entry and it's location can be seen at the top of page 13 and also on the medical entry at the top of page 26. Belaria was the camp used to house those prisoners that the Germans considered trouble makers including one of the architects of the Great Escape, Wally Flood who was placed there just before the escape attempt. I do also own this man's original issue Soldbuch which was issued in 1941 but in July 1943 he had a new one issued which like the Wehrpass also has the camp details entered and has a photo of him wearing a Luftwaffe uniform. It also comes with a military train travel permission slip so he can travel from Breslau to Sagan in January 1944. Unfortunately it is this Soldbuch that I am missing, although I have seen photos of it so know it is in another UK based collection.
