Dominic Bruce; RAF Pilot Was POW

Dominic Bruce, 84, a Royal Air Force pilot who made 17 attempts to escape from German prisons during World War II. Captured by the Germans in 1941 after bailing out of his Wellington bomber when it was hit by hostile fire over the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, Bruce was eventually sent to the infamous Colditz prison. Even though the Germans believed Colditz impregnable, Bruce escaped by hiding in one of the tea chests, a 3-foot by 3-foot container given to prisoners to stow personal belongings. Guards carried the chest to an attic, where Bruce broke out and then used a rope to escape through a window. He got as far as the port of Gdansk, 400 miles away, before he was recaptured while trying to board a Swedish freighter. He was returned to Colditz where he spent the next eight months in solitary confinement. “I kept trying because it was fun,” he once said of his unsuccessful escape attempts. “It gave you a feeling like winning the [soccer] pools or hitting the jackpot. And, most importantly of all, I knew it got up the Germans’ noses.” Once he left behind a message for his captors that read: “The air in Colditz no longer pleases me. Goodbye!” Bruce was freed in 1945 by Allied liberators. After the war, Bruce studied history at Oxford University, and became principal of Kingston upon Thames College of Further Education in 1969. Bruce, who joined the RAF to escape a life in the coal pits of his native Newcastle, was awarded an Order of the British Empire for his services to education. On Feb. 12 in London. The cause of death was not reported.