Sydney M. Pozer; Had Role in Legendary Prison Camp Escape

Sydney Melbourne Pozer, 78, an Allied prisoner who played a key role in the legendary “Great Escape” from a German prison camp during World War II. Pozer went to war in 1940 as a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force, flying 15 missions as a rear gunner before his plane crash-landed. He was imprisoned in the Nazi camp Stalag Luft 3 in what is now Poland. He was not among the 80 whose names were drawn from a hat on March 24, 1944. Of the 80 who crawled through a 330-foot tunnel, only three made it home; most were killed, the others were captured. Pozer had acted as lookout; he was posted by a window pretending to read a newspaper, signaling by lowering the paper that guards were approaching. He served 2 1/2 years and remained in the camp until it was liberated. The event was memorialized in a book, “The Great Escape,” written by fellow prisoner Paul Brickner in 1949 and made into a movie starring Steve McQueen in 1963. On Friday in Prince George, Canada.