page_title: Tom Leigh (RAF officer)
section_title: 'Great Escape'
hierarchical_section_title: Tom Leigh (RAF officer) / Wartime service / 'Great Escape'
caption_attribution_description: Català: Recordatori pels oficials afusellats. Deutsch: Mahnmal für die erschossenen Offiziere. English: Memorial to "The Fifty" down the road toward Żagań. Memorial to "The Fifty" Allied airmen executed after the "Great Escape". Español: Memorial «a Los 50». Lietuvių: Sušaudytų karo lakūnų belaisvių kapas Poznanėje. Nederlands: Herdenkingsmonument voor "De vijftig", langs de weg richting Zagan[19]. Polski: Pomnik upamiętniającą rozstrzelanych lotników. Na trzeciej tablicy w lewej kolumnie widnieje nazwisko Włodzimierza Kolanowskiego.
context_page_description: Thomas Barker "Tom" Leigh was an Australian-born Handley Page Halifax bomber rear gunner who was taken prisoner during the Second World War. He took part in the 'Great Escape' from Stalag Luft III in March 1944, but was one of the men re-captured and subsequently shot by the Gestapo.
context_section_description: Allocated an escape queue position in the 40s he was one of the 76 men who escaped the prison camp on the night of 24–25 March 1944, in the escape now famous as "the Great Escape". When the Germans discovered the escape they began extensive well planned manhunts.
  Recaptured after travelling for several nights on foot in freezing conditions Leigh was one of nineteen officers loaded into a lorry the following day and moved to Görlitz prison under Gestapo control. Here the numbers of recaptured officers grew until thirty-five were held there. The prisoners were threatened with death and interrogated harshly but not physically.
  On 30 March 1944, two of the survivors saw three large sedans with ten Gestapo agents collect six officers, Ian Cross, Mike Casey, George Wiley, Tom Leigh, John Pohe and Al Hake struggling to walk on his frostbitten feet. they were not seen again having been shot in woods near Görlitz and Halbau, their cremation urn labels stated that they died on 31 March 1944 and had been cremated at Görlitz.
  He was one of the 50 escapers executed and murdered by the Gestapo. Originally cremated and buried at Sagan, he is now buried in part of the Poznan Old Garrison Cemetery. Post-war investigation found that a Gestapo agent named Lux led the squad who shot the group of six recaptured airmen beside the autobahn near Halbau on the instructions of a senior officer named Scharpwinkel.
  He was among the 47 murdered officers named in the British and Commonwealth press when the story became public knowledge on or about 19–20 May 1944. The Glasgow Herald of 19 May 1944 published an early list naming several officers who had been killed. Leigh was not listed with other Australians named in an article in The Canberra Times on 28 February 1946.
  As a "Halton brat" or an "old Haltonian", a graduate of the RAF Halton aircraft apprentice scheme, Leigh is commemorated by name in the stained glass window in St. George's Church, RAF Halton dedicated to those murdered following the "Great Escape". He is also commemorated on the Dunsfold War Memorial website.
caption: Memorial to "The Fifty" down the road toward Żagań. Leigh is shown on the right hand panel
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