History of Great Escape Rolex sold at Bourne End Auction Rooms revealed

A piece of history has gone under the hammer at the Bourne End Auction Rooms.

A Rolex wristwatch owned by Flight Lieutenant John Francis Williams, a member of the 'Great Escape' from Stalag Luft III, has sold at auction for almost £200,000.

Watch consultant Martin Perrin has been telling reporter JAMES HARRISON about the item's history.

It was one of the most daring, and tragic, tales of the Second World War.

Immortalised in the Steve McQueen classic, the Great Escape, 76 Allied prisoners of war escaped from a high-security prison deep in enemy territory.

But, within days, 73 had been recaptured, 50 of whom would later be killed in what became known as the Stalag Luft III murders.

And at Bourne End Auction Rooms, in Station Approach, a piece of history from that fateful episode has gone under the hammer, fetching a record breaking price.

On Wednesday, December 2, a watch belonging to one of the victims was sold for a final total of £194,700 to an anonymous ‘lady collector’ who specialises in ‘military related items connected to heroic deeds’.

The Rolex Oyster Chronograph wristwatch, which belonged to Flight Lieutenant John Francis Williams, was put up for sale along with his medals, RAF brevets, personal correspondence from his time in the camp and a selection of other photos and newspaper clippings.

Also known as Jack, he ended up in the famous prison camp after his Douglas Boston light bomber was shot down over France on April 27, 1942.

A watch of the same model, also owned by a prisoner at Stalag Luft III who worked on the Great Escape tunnels, but was not one of the escapees, was sold by the same auction room in 2013 for £57,000.

John Francis Williams was born in Clapham on July 7, 1917, the only son of John and Bertha Williams, and volunteered for the RAF shortly after the war started.

In 1940 he joined the RAF Voluntary Reserve, hoping to become a fighter pilot, but was instead selected to be trained as an air observer with Bomber Command.

After arriving at Stalag Luft III, the camp quickly expanded as more airmen were interred following capture and it wasn’t long before elaborate escape plans were formulated – such as the famous ‘Great Escape’, which would attempt to free about 200 prisoners.

It was during this time that Flt/Lt Williams took advantage of a special offer from watch firm Rolex offering to sell timepieces to British officers, with payment deferred until the end of the war.

The project was the initiative of Hans Wildorf, founder of the company, who was not only relying on the products making it to the camps in one piece, but also gambling on eventual German defeat and the survival of his customers.

The planning of the Great Escape started in March 1943 and progressed quickly, with Flt/Lt Williams acting as a ‘penguin’, secretly disposing of soil from the tunnels through specially designed clothes.

By March 1944, the tunnel codenamed ‘Harry’, of ‘Tom, Dick and Harry’ fame, was complete, with Williams selected by lot to be the 67th man to go through.

The day before, he gave his watch to his friend Sergeant Don Wilson for safe keeping.

He was never able to retrieve the Rolex, however, as in the days after the escape he was rounded up along with 73 fellow escapees and selected for execution.

A total of 50 men were killed following the attempt, with those responsible later tried at the Curiohaus in Hamburg and sentenced to death for war crimes.

Sgt Wilson was not part of the escape attempt and kept hold of the watch, even during the Long March, in which thousands of POWs were forced to walk hundreds of miles across Germany to escape the advancing Russians.

Returning to England after the war, he sought out Williams’s family and returned the watch to them.

It was later passed on to the seller, who wished to remain anonymous, a third cousin of Williams, who was said to remind his mother of her son as a young boy.