A BALLYMENA man who was held captive for three years at the famous German Air Force prisoner-of-war camp on which the Great Escape film was based (Stalag Luft III] during the Second World War, has died.
Alexander Ballentine, 85, a former member of the Royal Air Force (RAF) from 1940 to 1947, died peacefully from cancer last Monday at a Belfast clinic. Although Alex as he was known, was not involved in the escape bid, he was forced to walk 800 miles to his eventual freedom from Poland back into Germany.
On June 11, 1942, Mr Ballentine's plane was shot down in the Frisian Islands off the coast of Holland and he was captured by the Germans.
He was held as a POW at Stalag Luft III for three years near Sagan – now Zagan in Poland – 100 miles south-east of Berlin.
Mr Ballentine's eldest son Paul Ballentine, 52 said that during his father's life he rarely spoke of his experiences during this time but a diary he kept when he was eventually freed sheds some light on it.
Mr Ballentine was liberated on May 2, 1945, by the British 6th Airborne Division and arrived back in Ballymena on May 14, 1945. But, explained Paul, it was a long walk to freedom.
"At the end of the Second World War he eventually had to walk about 800 miles from Poland back into Germany because the Russians were advancing on the Germans."
The father of three, who lived just off the Holywood Road in Belfast, was the seventh of eight children born to Alexander and Margaret Ballentine on August 11, 1922, in Ballymena.
After joining the RAF as a teenager, Mr Ballentine was deployed to Bomber Command where he operated as a rear gunner in a Short Stirling aircraft.
Paul Ballentine, who lives in Coleraine said that his father's role was to defend the rear of the aircraft against attack from German fighter planes.
"My father was based in England and the plane he was in bombed Germany and wherever the Germans were," he said.
"The mission that he was on was known as 'mine laying', whereby the RAF dropped mines into the sea.
"If a German ship struck against the mine it would explode and it was hoped the ship would sink."
Mr Ballentine, known as Alex to his family and close friends, left the RAF in 1947 and joined the civil service where he met his wife Audrey, now 82.
Married for 54 years, the couple had three sons – Paul, Ashley, 48 and Mark, 44 – who together have now produced seven grandchildren.
After working for the Department of Agriculture in Northern Ireland from 1947 to 1982, Mr Ballentine became chief executive of Seed Potato Promotions NI where he worked until he was 79 years old.
In his youth, Mr Ballentine was a founder member of the Wellington Street, Ballymena Boys' Brigade.
Mr Ballentine is survived by his wife Audrey and one of his six sisters, Florrie Madden, who turns 90 on Sunday.
His funeral was held last Wednesday in James Brown and Sons Funeral Church, Newtownards Road, Belfast and he was laid to rest in Ballymoney Cemetery.
ON Friday, March 24, 1944 the Great Escape attempt from Alexander Ballentine's Stalag Luft III camp began. Unfortunately for the prisoners, the tunnel had come up short.
It had been planned that the tunnel would reach into a nearby forest, but the first man out emerged just short of the tree line. Despite this, 76 men crawled through the tunnel to initial freedom, even through an air raid during which the camp's (and the tunnel's) electric lights were shut off.
Finally, at 5 AM on March 25, the 77th man was seen emerging from the tunnel by one of the guards. Out of the 76 men only 3 escaped. 50 men were killed and the rest were captured and sent back.