Page 16 - RCAF Centenary

Training where on 17 May 1941 he and 45 others were commissioned as Pilot Officers with now a daily pay rate of $4.25. Bidding goodbye to his family, he and Betty boarded a train to Halifax where on May 27 he boarded a troop ship to England. Betty waving goodbye dockside would not see him again for four years.
After weeks of operational training he was assigned to the RCAF 401 squadron at Biggens Hill flying Spitfires. On 27 October 1941 – 5 months after leaving Halifax he took off in a flight of 24 Spitfires heading for Nieuport and Gravelines in France, a mere 26 minute flight from their base. Referred to as a ‘Rhubarb’,
the two squadrons in teams of 2 or 4 aircraft were to fly sweeps over enemy territory at low level below cloud cover searching for and attacking ground targets of opportunity.
However, Luftwaffe Messerschmitts were waiting above
the clouds and caught the airmen off guard, one delivering
a fatal hit on Floody’s Spitfire. Luckily his quick reaction
to the situation gave him time to bail out and his chute to
open, landing him safely on the ground near Saint-Omer
where he was quickly captured. After interrogation Wally
was sent to Stalag Luft #1 near the Baltic Sea where he began
developing his tunnelling skills and being involved in the
planning, design and construction of as many as 47 tunnel
projects started by some of the 9000 British Commonwealth
and American airmen billeted there. Being recognized by his
captors as being one of the principals of attempted breakouts, Wally earned a one-way ticket to a more escape-proof camp, Stalag Luft III, a complex of 8 fenced-off compounds ultimately holding over 10,000 Allied airmen.
It was here in the forest around Sagan that, while engaging in sports including the art of escape, he joined Roger Bushill’s X-Organization - a plan to burrow 3 tunnels simultaneously - one of which would be chosen to provide
passage for over 200 airmen in one single attempt to gain their freedom. Known now as the Great Escape and the tunnels as Tom, Dick and Harry, Floody played a major role on the Escape Committee, applying his experience and common sense to the design and construction
of the tunnels, underground lighting and ventilation systems as well as being one of the diggers working in the claustrophobic tunnel working it’s way through the sandy soil and beyond the electrified barbed wire of the North Camp compound.
But in early March 1944 guards picked up telltale signs of sand being surreptitiously dropped around the camp by POWs known as ‘Penguins’. Suspecting Floody was playing a role in an escape plan, he and 19 others were transferred to Belaria, a sub-camp 8 kilometres from the main cluster of
compounds. Some say that move saved his life.
There, in late January 1945 as the Soviet Red Army advanced on the area, Floody and tens of thousands of Allied prisoners were force-marched westward over various routes in the grasp of a brutal, cold winter to Luchenwalde where eventually he was liberated by the Russians on or about April 22nd.