A 300KM charity cycle ride that may mirror the route of the Long March from the prisoner-of-war camp of Stalag Luft III, in Poland, to Lübeck, in Germany, was launched at Coventry Cathedral last week.
Alan King, the daddy of certainly one of the ride’s organisers, was born in Coventry and endured the Long March made by 8000 Allied POWs, when, on Hitler’s orders, they evacuated the camp in Poland, because the Russians advanced into Germany, in January 1945.
They set off at an hour’s notice on the night of 27 January, in a blizzard and sub-zero temperatures in certainly one of the coldest German winters in living memory. Many died along the best way, from malnutrition, cold, and exhaustion. The POWs ended up near Lübeck, and, after liberation by the Allied forces, were flown back to England on 8 May.
The cycle ride will set off on 5 May and arrive on 8 May on the Neue Wache Memorial, in Berlin. Funds raised might be shared between the RAF Association, the RAF Benevolent Fund, the Royal British Legion, the Stalag Luft III Prisoner Camp Museum, and Coventry Cathedral, built after its predecessor was destroyed by German raiders in 1940.
Alan King served with 218 Squadron and was imprisoned in Stalag Luft III after bailing out of his bomber over Holland. It was his twenty third mission and the second time that he had been shot down. Stuart King, who’s collaborating within the ride, was only 12 when his father died in 1976, aged 56. He has been piecing his father’s story together over the past few years, and has visited each the Stalag Luft III Prisoner Camp Museum, built on the location of the camp, and a memorial erected in 2010 on his father’s crash site.
“My father didn’t talk much about his wartime experiences. I’m very anxious to boost awareness of what he did as a young man,” Mr King said on Monday of last week. “There were quite a lot of other long marches, too.” Born and brought up in Coventry himself, he had found the visit very poignant.
“We wanted very much to incorporate the cathedral in our fund-raising, due to its iconic status. It gave me space to reflect,” he said.
The team of cyclists is formed of RAF veterans, Mr King, and other friends and relatives of POWs. “It might be a tribute to the boys’s courage and endurance, and a strong act of remembrance,” he said.
