The story of Gilbert Insall, VC: the madness of courage?
The presentation will be live and online.
Group Captain Gilbert Insall holds a unique record: he is the only person to have both won a Victoria Cross and to have escaped successfully from a German prisoner-of-war camp during the First World War.
In his talk, Dr Tony Insall will describe how, after a successful combat with a German fighter which he then descended very low to destroy, Gilbert was shot down just behind the French front line. He ignored intensive German shelling in order to repair his aircraft overnight and return to base. A few weeks later, after an encounter with another German aircraft in which he was badly wounded by anti-aircraft shrapnel, he was shot down and captured. He spent the next year and a half in different prison camps, making several attempts to escape.
At Heidelberg, he managed to dig a tunnel more than forty yards long, removing and concealing some five tons of earth in the process. At Crefeld, near Dusseldorf, he hid among piles of boxes on a cart transporting prisoners’ luggage to storage.
After his transfer to Ströhen, Gilbert and several companions concealed themselves in a claustrophobically small space they had excavated under the floor of the bathhouse and remained there for seventeen hours, enduring the heat of a summer day while a fruitless search for them was being carried out. They eventually emerged early the following morning and reached Holland a few days later in September 1917.
Members wishing to participate will need to register, details of how to register will be circulated via The Western Front Association's newsletter 'Trench Lines'. If you are not a subscriber to Trench Lines please subscribe now via the box at the bottom of this page.
It is also possible to register by clicking this link: The story of Gilbert Insall, VC
The talk will be undertaken using the 'Zoom' software which is freely available. It may not be necessary to load the software to your PC / iPad etc: but we would recommend doing so if you wish to participate in this event.
