Bram van der Stok

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Bram van der Stok MBE (Oct 13, 1915 in Pladju, Sumatra - Feb 8, 1993, Virginia Beach), also referred to as Bob van der Stok, was the most decorated aviator in Dutch history, as well as one of the three to escape from the German POW camp Stalag Luft III.

[edit] Personal life

He spent his childhood between Sumatra, the Netherlands and the Dutch West Indies. After finishing his education at the Lyceum Alpinum in Switzerland he studied medicine at Leiden University where he became enamoured with rowing and ice hockey, and in 1936 he joined the Royal Netherlands Air Force where he flew a Fokker D.XXI, and continued his medical training at Utrecht University.

When the Netherlands were attacked by German forces in 1940, Bram scored the first victory when he shot down two Messerschmitt Bf 109s while on patrol over De Kooy airfield. After the Netherlands' capitulation, he made three unsuccessful attempts to escape to England, before finally reaching Scotland by raft in June 1941. He was awarded the Dutch Bronze Cross for his actions by Queen Wilhelmina, and flew briefly in the 91st Squadron before being transferred to the 41st Squadron where he racked up another six kills to become an ace pilot.

[edit] Stalag Luft III

In July 1942, Bram was shot down while flying his Spitfire Vb BL595 over France and parachuted into a waiting German patrol, who processed him and brought him to the newly-built Stalag Luft III where he made a total of three escape attempts. The first was foiled inadvertently by another POW who drew attention to the escaping Bram while retrieving a stolen German cap from the roof of a hut, and the second was thwarted when German officials noticed that his forged pass was out-of-date. In what later became known as the "Great Escape" or "Big X", he was among the first 20 of the total 76 prisoners that managed to escape from the camp. Out of these escapees, only three made it to neutral countries and freedom, Bram who crossed much of the European countryside before arriving in the safety of Spain, and two Norwegians Per Bergsland and Jens Müller who managed to row to neutral Sweden.

The remaining 73 escapees were captured. Hitler wanted to execute them all, but Himmler persuaded him not to do this, and fifty were shot as an example. The remaining 23 were held in the custody of the Gestapo before being sent off to other camps. 17 were returned to Stalag Luft III, four were sent to Sachsenhausen, and two to Colditz Castle.

Bram had managed to evade capture wearing a RAAF overcoat with a modified naval jacket and trousers, RAF-issued shoes, and a beret. He travelled from the Breslau train station to Dresden where he was stopped at several checkpoints, convincing the Germans that he was not one of the escapees. He finally reached Utrecht through Oldenzaal, and met up with a member of the Underground who prepared him for his bicycle trek to another safe house in Belgium. There he adopted a new Belgian persona, and travelled by train through Brussels and Paris, before reaching Toulouse where he was grouped with two American lieutenants, two RAF pilots, a French officer, and a Russian all being led by their French guide who led them across the Pyrenees to Lleida in Spain. The British consulate took possession of the Allied escapees, and over three months after his original escape, Bram finally arrived in Gibraltar on July 8, and flown to Bristol.

After his escape, Bram rejoined the RAF Spitfire 91st Squadron and took part in both D-Day and anti-V-1 operations. The following year, he joined the 74th Squadron for a brief time before moving on to the Dutch-manned RAF 322nd Squadron based in the Netherlands where he learned that his two brothers had been killed in concentration camps, and his father had been blinded by the Gestapo.

[edit] After the War

He was awarded the Order of Orange Nassau from the Netherlands, and two years after the war he was inducted as a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

He later moved to the USA with his wife Petie and their three children. There he worked as an OB-GYN in Syracuse, New York — though he later joined NASA's space lab research team in Huntsville, Alabama. In 1970 van der Stok moved to Honolulu, where he practised medicine, and in 1987 published "War Pilot of Orange". He later joined the U.S. Coast Guard and took part in 162 rescues before his death in 1993.

In the 1963 film The Great Escape, he was composited into the character of Sedgwick, played by James Coburn.