In early September 1916, halfway through the First World War, two haggard Allied soldiers crept toward the barbed wire entanglements surrounding their heavily guarded German prisoner-of-war camp. They had been captured months earlier and had spent weeks carefully planning their escape. Up to this point in the war, no one had ever escaped from German captivity. On that rainy night, it was now or never.
Two years earlier, at the start of the war, James Gerrie Burk of Port Arthur had enlisted to serve his country. Training alongside his older brother Tom (ten years his senior), they were soon sending letters home from Val Cartier, enthusiastically describing life as soldiers of the 8th Battalion. The correspondence continued as the brothers were mobilized to the front. From his dugout, Gerrie described exchanging gunfire with the enemy, the devastation of ruined villages, the sounds of German soldiers coughing and whistling from their own trench, and the narrow, deadly space of no man’s land separating them.
Traversing the barbed wire surrounding the POW camp’s perimeter proved hazardous for Pte. Gerrie Burk and Pte. Herbert William Tustin, a British soldier. After the second entanglement, the back of their clothes were in tatters and Tustin’s fingers were “cut to the bone”. They pressed on regardless. Having saved five days’ rations, they knew they had to move quickly before the alarm was raised.
The Second Battle of Ypres, including the fierce fighting at Langemarck, marked one of the first major engagements for Canadian troops and the first time they faced the horrors of poison gas on the Western Front. Both Burk brothers were captured during that battle. Deep in the fight, Gerrie’s unit may have pushed too close to the German line. They fought for what seemed like hours, the situation looking bleak. When their lieutenant asked if they wished to surrender or keep fighting, the overwhelming response was to “give the Germans Hades!” Even with that spirit, orders soon came from command to drop their weapons and surrender.
Suffering from gas poisoning, Burk and his fellow captured soldiers were marched and then transported in cramped railway cars to the Rennbahn Prisoner-of-War Camp in Münster, Westphalia. Burk was later moved among various labour detachments: rough carpentry, the coke ovens for steel production, the mines, clearing land. The work was relentless, no days off. Eventually, he was assigned to groom horses and retrieve Red Cross parcels for fellow prisoners, a task that would later prove vital to his escape plan.
During the escape, Burk and Tustin hid in ditches, hedges and woods by day. By night they traversed peat bogs, forded rivers and walked along railroad tracks. Word had spread among locals about the two escapees, describing them as “swine.” Avoiding people and dogs was paramount to their success. The men were nearly spotted multiple times during their ordeal, hiding as searchers passed within inches of them. Chased by dogs, sick from the rain and mist, and reduced to eating raw potatoes and mangolds after their rations ran out, they pushed on, guided only by a compass and map.
Those tools were the result of Burk’s ingenuity and nerve. The care packages he had received from home proved instrumental, giving him items to bribe a disgruntled German guard he had befriended. Initially, the bribes earned him access to visit an ailing Tustin. Later, that same guard provided Burk with a compass and map, crucial items for their escape. At night, Burk and Tustin hid under blankets with candles, studying the map and plotting their route to Holland.
After ten days on the run, Burk and Tustin were within 300 yards of the Dutch border. Freedom was in sight when Burk accidentally struck a bell wire, alerting the German sentries. The guards opened fire. The two men ran, crawled, and dodged their way toward safety, finally collapsing once they had completely crossed the border. They had made it.
Guards on the Dutch side helped them to a nearby town, where they were given a hero’s welcome: cigars, chocolates and a hot bath. The English Embassy was immediately contacted to arrange their transport back to the UK.
In late fall 1916, hundreds of people gathered at the train station in Port Arthur to welcome James Gerrie Burk home to the Lakehead. His health, though fragile, was improving, and he was thankful to be back. At St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church, he later told his story to a captivated crowd of 1,500. When he concluded, the cheers that followed were described as loud and long.
Burk’s brother Tom was released from the prison camp in December 1918, after the war ended, having spent nearly three years in captivity. Gerrie Burk went on to marry and have two daughters. He remained in the Lakehead until 1964, when he moved to British Columbia following the death of his wife. In 1974, the Chronicle-Journal reported that he had passed away after a prolonged illness.
If you would like to learn know more about Burk’s escape from a prisoner of war camp or about the other successful POW escape that took place during the same time, contact us at research@tbpl.ca
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