In the north compound of Stalag Luft ill, near Sagan East Germany, there was a secret association of escapers known as the ‘X Organization’, a team of young officers of the Royal Air Force, Dominion and Allied Air Forces who, early in 1943 started to dig a tunnel called ‘Harry’. It was one of the most gallant and imaginative escape projects ever attempted by prisoners of war. Although ‘Harry’ took fifteen months to complete the enemy was un- aware of the undertaking.

On the night of the 24th March 1944 seventy-six officers broke out of the tunnel which was 350 feet long and 30 feet underground the longest prisoner-of-war tunnel ever dug.

All but three escapers were caught and fifty were murdered by the Gestapo on an order from Hitler.

The drawings in this portfolio were made by Flight Lieut. Ley Kenyon D.F.C., one of the R.A.F. officers who shared in the escape project. Not long before the mass break-out Kenyon was asked by the Senior British Officer in the camp, Group Captain H. M. Massey D.S.O., M.C. to go into tunnel ‘Harry’ to make a pictorial record of it. He sketched under extremely difficult conditions, sometimes lying on his back in the cramped space, using the tunnel roof as a drawing board. A flickering flame from a ‘Kriegie lamp’ gave light for the job. Immediately after the drawings were done they were packed in an airtight container made of old milk tins and hidden in an abandoned escape tunnel called ‘Dick’. Months later, in January 1945, all the prisoners were suddenly evacuated from the camp on a forced march because the advancing Russians were only thirty miles away. The drawings had to be left behind. There was just time to flood 'Dick’ as a precaution against the drawings and other documents hidden there being found by the Germans. Though the enemy used the camp for a while as an advanced depot they never discovered the tunnel cache. Eventually the Russians overran the place.

The drawings were later recovered by a British officer who was too ill to be evacuated with the main body of prisoners, so he was left behind in the camp hospital. After his release by the Russians he descended into the flooded tunnel where he found much of the water had seeped away and the drawings and documents undamaged in their sealed containers. He brought them back to England.