The Great Escape (Classic Movies)

This geocache is dedicated to the 50 Allied servicemembers who were murdered by the Gestapo for their participation in the escape from Stalag Luft III on the night of 24/25 March 1944. Their names and additional details of the escape can be found at the webpage maintained by Mr. Rob Davis -- for whom we give many thanks -- hyperlinked both here and toward the bottom of this page: The Great Escape

The cache is NOT at the above coordinates, but that is where we parked, then walked up Boulder Street to the trailhead. You CANNOT park at the top (westernmost end) of Boulder Street -- that entire street is for residents only. Please park at the listed cache coords, and then make the relatively short walk up Boulder Street to the trailhead from there.

BE SURE TO WRITE DOWN THE LETTER CODE ON THE LID OF THE CONTAINER, AND IN THE FRONT OF THE LOGBOOK (SAME CODE) WHICH IS USED IN THE “CLASSIC MOVIES" FINAL CACHE which is linked below.

Welcome to the second Classic Movies cache by the 3 Williams Kidz geo-team. The idea is that you will have to watch the movie to get the answers to the questions below; there are one, maybe two exceptions, for trivia’s sake. Since the entire script is available – and easily “searchable” -- online, I have tried to come up with questions that you cannot answer by searching the Internet, so some of these questions are pretty obscure.

Here are all the geocaches in the Classic Movies series:

1. Casablanca

2. The Great Escape

3. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

4. Cool Hand Luke

5. Patton

6. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

7. The Godfather

8. High Noon

9. The Wizard of Oz

10. Gone With the Wind

And the FINAL cache: Classic Movies FINAL cache

If you are willing to watch one of Hollywood’s finest classic movies, get the TV and video player ready, maybe pop some popcorn, and have a pen and paper ready to answer the below questions, which are NOT IN THE ORDER they are presented in the film (just one part of the difficulty rating). I used the 20th Century Fox Special Edition 2 Disc Collector's Set DVD to develop the questions, but you should be able to get the answers by watching any version. Make sure to plan enough time to watch this film -- it is 2 hours and 52 minutes long.

The cache is located at North AB CD.EFG West HIJ KL.MNO

Latitude:

A: Big X (Roger Bartlett, portrayed by Richard Attenborough) wanted to get 250 men out, and 76 men did escape. The number of the escapees that actually made it to freedom (were not either killed or re-captured) is A. Trivia: "X" was prisoner-code for "escape", as in, X-cape.

B: Colin Blythe the forger (Donald Pleasence) says "For God's sakes Smithy, you've left out a whole bloody eagle !" Over Smithy's shoulder, the number of photos taped to the wall is B.

C: There are 3 trucks leaving the camp, and they each have evergreen tree branches in the back; the total number of prisoners that are trying to escape in the three trucks is C.

D: Cavendish (Nigel Stock) has caught a ride in a truck; just before the truck meets up with a whole bunch of German soldiers, we can see the truck's license plate which has 2 letters followed by 4 digits. The third of the four digits is D.

E: The German Kommandant enters his office after observing the trucks of prisoners arriving; there is a noticeboard outside the building, which has yellow and white colored paper notices on it. The total number of notices is E.

F: Hilts has stolen a motorcycle, and is trying to get to the border, when a German soldier asks him for his Ausweis (permission to be on Reich property). Hilts kicks the soldier and speeds off in the direction of Ravensburg, which is a certain number of kilometers away, that is two digits. The first of the two digits is F.

G: Many of the escapees have made their way to the Neustadt train station. The train then arrives, and the train number has five digits. The last digit is G.

Longitude:

H: Hendley and Blythe are going to jump off the train; as they step out the door of the train car, there is a 2 digit number above the word "Stehplatze" on the back of the train car, to the left of the door. The first digit is H.

I: The number of Academy Awards that "The Great Escape" won is I. (Really? Yes, really. And, the number it was nominated for is H, above.) This number -- which is I in the puzzle -- is the same number of American prisoners that escaped on the night of 24/25 March 1944.

J: After learning about the "Butcher Bird", the German guard leaves the building, and walks past the first "stooge" who taps his pipe. The number of times he taps his pipe PLUS ONE is J.

K: In the opening credits, on the lower left, is the "Approved Certificate" for the film; it is on the same page as "Copyright MCMLXIII". The second of the five digits is K.

L: Hendley and Werner (Robert Graf) are looking out a window, and Hendley is smoking; to gain the confidence of Werner, Hendley gives him a certain number of cigarettes, before giving him more, for his roommates. The number of cigarettes that Hendley gives Werner AT FIRST is L.

M: The "stooges" set up a great system of signals; in one, a man with a pipe nods his head -- then, a man sitting on a bench picks up a book -- then a man at the washbasin grabs a wet shirt from a ledge, and then finally, a man knocks on the side of the building. The number of times he knocks is M.

N: The number of times in the entire movie that Hilts (Steve McQueen) gets put into the cooler is N.

O: The convoy bringing the prisoners arrives at the camp for the first time; the motorcycles line up, and the one closest to the you, the viewer, has a license plate on it, with black characters on a white background. There are two letters and five digits. The middle (third) digit is O.

Hope you enjoyed the movie, and this puzzle ! If you have your solution, check it for accuracy at Geochecker.com.

The film was a dramatization of the escape, and many of the characters in the film were amalgamations of real people; if you wish to learn what ACTUALLY happened, I recommend the following webpage, written and maintained by Mr. Rob Davis: The Great Escape

FTF congratulations go to ... hartsdale !!! GREAT job on our most difficult cache to date.

A few movie inaccuracies:

Hilts escapes in order to find out where the train station is, and what the nearest town is, as the prisoners don't have any idea of what is just beyond the trees; in actuality, the prisoners did know what the nearest town was, and where it was, long before the escape occurred.

Part of the reason only 76 men escaped was because the escape took place in March, during the coldest winter in Germany in 30 years; when they tried to break through the surface, the ground was frozen solid, and it took over an hour to break through. And then of course, they were 20 feet short. Also, there was a tunnel collapse during the escape that also slowed progress considerably. Eventually, the escape ended when a German guard stumbled on the tunnel exit at 5am; 79 men actually made it out the tunnel, but 3 were captured before they could run from the area of the tunnel exit; 76 actually got away and were pursued.

It was so cold outside, and so hot with all the escapees in the tunnel, that one escapee who made it into the forest (yes, they used a rope as the signal) looked back and could see a column of steam coming up out of the tunnel exit.

The capture of Bartlett (who was based on a real person, Roger Bushell) happened very similarly to what was portrayed in the film. He was traveling on foot with one other escapee, when they reached the town of Saarbrucken, one hour's walk from the French border. They showed the guards their papers, which got them through. Until -- one of the German guards who was suspicious of the men, called out "Good Luck!", and the fellow escapee replied "Thank You!" -- in English.

Hitler was so irate that an escape of this magnitude occurred in Germany that he personally gave the order to kill the escapees; he wanted to have them all killed, but his military advisors talked him out of it, fearing that doing so would ruin the tenuous relations Germany had with neutral countries. He replied that they should shoot over half of them; Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo, recommended 50, which was agreed upon.

The escapees -- once recaptured -- were not all shot in a field, together, as was depicted in the film. There were usually just one or two traveling in a car with a couple German soldiers who would stop the car; the escapees were told they could stretch their legs (or relieve themselves) on the side of the road, and were then shot in the back or in the back of the head.

With the coldest winter in 30 years, there was so much snow left on the ground that while most escapees planned to travel through the wilderness, they physically couldn't -- and were forced into the towns, to try to travel on established roads and via motorized transportation -- which is how and when most were caught. Also, the escape took place overnight and when those prisoners that were going to travel by train made it to the train station, they couldn't find the entrance in time to catch the pre-dawn train; once the sun came up, they found the entrance and were then all on the platform aware of each other, but trying not to look suspicious, while waiting for the early morning trains. A lot of those prisoners waiting for the trains were recaptured before boarding the trains.

Additional Waypoints