Page 145 - They Also Served

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Herbert Massey 1916.
Many readers will have watched the classic 1963 film The Great Escape about the mass break out of aircrew POWs. The film features actor James Donald as Group Captain Ramsay, the urbane and avuncular senior British officer (SBO). However, the fictional character was based on a real person.
Herbert Martin Massey was born in Hilton, Derbyshire, on 19th January 1898. Commissioned from Sandhurst in April 1916 into the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment, he elected to undergo pilot training and was posted to 16 Squadron RFC, flying reconnaissance missions. Soon after, he was promoted to temporary captain and made a flight commander in December 1916. In February 2017, his plane was shot down by the legendary German flying ace Werner Voss. Wounded in the leg and his observer dead, Massey survived the crash-landing but was badly burned before he could extricate himself from the tangled wreckage. Evacuated back to the UK, he was awarded the MC later in 1917 and was granted a permanent commission in the RAF in 1919.
Massey rose steadily through the ranks in the inter-war years, qualifying as a flying instructor and flying boat pilot and acting as personal assistant to the chief of the air staff. In 1934, he took command of 6 Squadron and was awarded the DSO for leading ground attack missions during the Arab revolt in Palestine. During one of these operations, he was shot down by rifle fire and wounded in the same leg. At the start of the Second World War, he was on the staff of 5 (Bomber) Group before promotion to group captain and command of 10 OTU at RAF Abingdon. On the night of 30th May 1942, the RAF launched the first thousand bomber raid on Cologne. To make up for the shortfall of frontline aircraft, crews from OTUs were pressed into service. For the second such raid, to Kassel on 1st June, Massey flew as an observer in a Short Stirling. However, the aircraft was shot down and he became a POW.
Sent to Stalag Luft III in Sagan, he was the SBO and approved the mass escape through one of three tunnels, the brainchild of Squadron Leader Roger Bushell (Played by Richard Attenborough in the film). The scale of the work involved can be
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