Forty Days at Kamas (15 page)

Our three days without noonday meal bars were now behind us. When the foreman's whistle announced the lunch break, I slipped my ration bar out of my coveralls and sat on a half–loaded pallet to savor my midday meal.

"Mind if I join you, Paul?" came a voice from behind me.

It was Al Gallucci.

"I admired what you did this morning, Paul," he began. "Maybe it wasn't the most sensible thing to do but Renaud had it coming to him."

"I’m sure he did but why is it always up to the newcomers to draw the line on goons like him?"

"That’s just the way it is. Too many of the older prisoners have lost their spirit. Especially the ones who've been up north."

"How about you? Have you been there?" I asked

"Only for a summer, thank God. In winter, I wouldn't have lasted more than a week. And wouldn't have wanted to."

"What do you mean?"

"I've watched what happens to men who have returned from the north," Gallucci explained. "I believe too much cold can kill a man's soul. After a while it seems that a man's spirit just gets smaller and smaller and then it snuffs out like a thin blue flame.

"After too much cold and hardship, the emotions disappear, too. No more love or hatred; no more anger or even pity.

"No more friendship, either. I’ve seen friendship survive enormous adversity in the camps if it was rooted in better times. But where life is too harsh, friendship can't take root and grow. Instead of helping each other, each man withdraws and lets himself be herded like sheep. And that’s what State Security aims for, because that’s what lets them rule the camps.

"So how do you fight it?" I asked. "You make it sound as if every prisoner eventually knuckles under."

Gallucci shook his head.

"Far from it. Hundreds of men in this camp have resisted the worst tortures imaginable and have never signed confessions or denounced another human being. But most men aren’t made of such stern stuff. That’s why the bosses are constantly seeding the camp with stooges to help them weed out the strong and keep the rest of us from uniting. Believe me, I'm not a violent man, Paul, but I’ll grant the hard–liners this much: unless we eradicate the stoolies we’ll be on our knees till the day we die."

I interrupted Gallucci.

"If you feel so strongly about the need to unite, why aren’t you out there leading the way? Men like Reineke and Quayle serve as barracks representatives. Knopfler leads a work team. You're an engineer, yet I've heard you've refused promotion to foreman. Why?"

"To accept a position as a foreman in a forced labor camp is something I hold to be fundamentally wrong. I refuse to bend another man to my will or the will of the bosses. I’ll work to eat but I'll never let them use me to oppress another man."

Gallucci pointed a finger toward the fence between the brickyard and the lumberyard, where I had seen Reineke in conversation with Ralph Knopfler the week before. Once again, Reineke and another prisoner were talking quietly with their heads bowed close together on opposite sides of the fence.

"Do you see that man talking to Glenn Reineke?" Gallucci asked. "He knows more about how to stay clean in the camps than any other man I know. Alec Sigler has been in the system for nearly eight years and he's still standing tall after everything they've thrown at him. His term is up this summer and he has a wife in Heber who's waited for him the whole time. If you want to learn how to get out of here with your spirit in one piece, talk to Alec."

Both of us spent the final minutes of our lunch break eating in silence. I watched Alec Sigler retreat from the fence and resume his work sorting good bricks from broken ones. As the afternoon wore on, from time to time my eyes returned to that spot, watching Sigler’s slow measured movements, serene expression, and easygoing teamwork. I found myself thinking about how to approach him.

About an hour before quitting time, I glanced over at the sorting area one more time and spotted Sigler heading toward a tool shed near the perimeter fence. All at once the hairs on the back of my neck bristled and I thought of the ill–fated Lillian, shot during my first afternoon in camp. She, too, had strayed too close to the wire. I raised my eyes to find the nearest watchtower and saw a glint of light reflecting from the telescopic sight of a sniper's rifle. A flash leapt out of the gun's black muzzle and a moment later I heard the sharp crack of a rifle shot. Sigler fell.

I sunk to my knees, utterly deflated. How had I sensed what was about to happen? What on earth did it mean? And why did a man as fine as Sigler have to die this way just a few months short of his release?

The men around me dropped their loads of bricks and faced the tower from which the fatal round had been fired. A second shot rang out–no doubt Sigler's belated warning shot. Beyond the outer perimeter wire I spotted Jack Whiting emerge from the cab of a canvas–topped troop truck.

At Whiting’s command, a dozen black–uniformed guards leapt from the truck onto the snow–covered ground and trotted across the no–man's land into the brickyard. The guards, armed only with nightsticks and pepper–spray, surrounded Sigler's corpse while two of their men dragged it by the ankles toward the gate.

Suddenly a husky voice cried out from among Sigler’s work team.

"Put him down!"

Others joined in.

"Let him be! Don't you dare take him away!" someone shouted at the circling guards.

"Let’s get him back!" cried another to the prisoners gathered behind.

In an instant men snatched up picks and shovels and loose bricks and converged on the guards. Two men grabbed each of Sigler's arms and held fast. The guards swung their nightsticks and discharged their pepper spray but could not dislodge the prisoners' grip. A pair of men in orange coveralls leveled their long–handled shovels like lances and jabbed at the guards holding Sigler's shoulders until they let go.

The guards were already in retreat when a burst of machine–gun fire raked the skirmish line. The shovelers fell backward. Instantly every prisoner in the brickyard hit the deck while the guards retreated empty–handed into the no–man's–land and swung the gate shut behind them.

Nearly a full minute elapsed before the first prisoner crawled slowly to his feet and advanced to the aid of the fallen shovelers. Others followed and soon scores of men arrived on the scene from every corner of the brickyard. Seething with suppressed rage, I joined them in hoisting Sigler's body onto our massed shoulders and hauling it toward the main gate. A minute or two later, others did the same with the remains of a dead shoveler.

It was not yet quitting time, but none of us lifted another brick that day. We had only one thing on our minds and that was to bear Sigler's body and that of the fallen shoveler back into camp for all to see.

C
HAPTER
14

"In a state worthy of the name there is no liberty. The people want to exercise power but what on earth would they do with it if it were given to them?"
—V.I. Lenin

TUESDAY, MARCH 19

We did not succeed in carrying Sigler and the dead shoveler out of the recycling site on our shoulders. No sooner did we leave the site’s main gate than we were surrounded by a detachment of Tommy gunners from Jack Whiting's security detail. While they trained their submachine guns on us, a squad of warders seized the corpses and made away with them in a jeep.

The march back to the barracks was as grim as the one a week before, when we had returned to work after our one–day strike. Once again, a troop truck with a rear–facing, .50 caliber machine gun headed the column and once again the armed escort had been doubled. As before, an advance security detail met us outside the camp and led us within range of marksmen posted in the watchtowers. We viewed the firepower arrayed against us and asked ourselves whether such heavy security had been planned all along or whether it was just another example of the Wart’s uncanny prescience.

I felt confused and demoralized by the setbacks we had suffered since the strike. The Warden's false promises, the increased quotas, the reduced rations, the murder of Sigler and of the shoveler who tried to recover his body, and now the doubled escort all pointed toward a shift back toward the bloody days of William Barry.

On our return to camp we assembled on the parade ground to be escorted in shifts to the mess hall. The first whisperings about a new strike arose at dinner.

The consensus among the prisoners was that the Wart had singled out Sigler for assassination because he could not permit someone who had withstood the worst that the system could inflict to walk out of Kamas a free man. The Wart's assertion that Sigler had brought the shooting upon himself by threatening a guard was preposterous. Everyone even remotely acquainted with Sigler knew that he was a devout Christian, non–violent and respectful of camp authority and its rules. Being only a few months short of finishing his eight–year term, he had no conceivable motive to make trouble or escape.

In our eyes, the only acceptable response to Sigler’s murder was to stop work until Whiting and the guards who fired on us were suspended or dismissed. This time promises would not be enough. Sentiment favoring a new strike spread quickly. In Barracks C–14 we heard impassioned pleas from one visitor after another:

"Brothers! How much longer are we going to go on slaving away, taking our wages in bullets? No more! Tomorrow morning, nobody goes to work!"

Barracks after barracks, the message made the rounds. Some even attached notes to rocks and threw them over the wall to Division 2, where political prisoners from Canada, Mexico, China, Russia, the Middle East, and a variety of other countries languished together with their American counterparts. Many of the foreigners still harbored hopes of being repatriated in bilateral prisoner exchanges, yet they, too, took the risk of supporting another strike.

The next morning's events unfolded identically to the events of Tuesday the week before. Prisoners reported for breakfast but stayed in their barracks when the time came to assemble for work. Again the bosses looked on in frustration.

About an hour after work was to have started I was on my way to the latrines. Through the Division 3 gate I saw a phalanx of warders and armed escort troops massing outside. They wore helmets and light body armor but carried no weapons more lethal than nightsticks.

Suddenly the gate opened and the attackers fanned out, sending a ten–man squad to assault each of the barracks near the gate. I ran forward to watch. Their method was simple: they sent eight men into a barracks and kept two outside the door. Six of the inside men moved in pairs from bunk to bunk, grabbing prisoners and dragging them to the doorway, where the two remaining inside men shoved them into the waiting arms of the pair outside. Once outdoors, the prisoners were escorted to the parade ground.

Although the prisoners gave only passive resistance, clinging to bedposts and going limp once dislodged, the work proved slow and tedious for the security men. With each barracks holding about a hundred prisoners, the warders and troops soon became exhausted. More than that, many of the prisoners they succeeded in evicting slipped away quietly from the parade ground and took refuge in other barracks or in the mess hall or the latrines.

The guards and warders kept up the eviction work for two hours but succeeded in emptying less than a third of the barracks in Division 3. For the balance of the day, the rest of us kept to our bunks, coming out only to use the latrines and to visit the mess hall. Our methods seemed to have succeeded.

On the second morning of the strike, the phalanx returned before dawn with reinforcements and with Colonel Tracy at their head. He and his squad leaders went as before from barracks to barracks, waking everyone with rough shouts from portable bullhorns.

Ours was one of the first barracks graced by a visit from the Colonel. He entered in his neatly pressed black uniform and peaked hat, unarmed but backed by a retinue of eight junior officers and guards. Even in the dim pre–dawn light, I could see that his face was flushed with anger and that he was hell–bent to have his way with us.

"Listen here!" he bellowed. "How long do you prisoners intend to go on with this slacking? The mess hall and these cozy bunks of yours are only for men who work!"

He pointed to a prisoner who sat on a nearby bunk while lacing his boots. Then he pointed in turn to several other prisoners who were not yet fully dressed.

"You there! Outside! And you, too! And you and you and you!"

He waved for his attendants to seize the men and take them outside. This time the captives were hustled onto a truck and held there at gunpoint.

Someone shouted from the back of the darkened room.

"Come and get us if you have the guts, you swine!"

"Find that man and make sure he spends the next week in the isolator, Lieutenant!" Tracy ordered. "Now which of you are going to work and which of you are going to the camp jail?"

No one moved.

"All right, Lieutenant, fill the truck!"

With that, Tracy turned on his heel and left. His men succeeded in dragging a few dozen more onto the truck but suffered a humiliating setback when most of them escaped in a rush when the truck door was left too lightly guarded. The guards dragged off just enough prisoners to refill the truck before giving up the battle for Barracks C–14.

Once they left us, I ran over to watch the evacuation of Pete Murphy’s barracks. There Tracy and his henchmen were having more success, hustling one prisoner after another into the waiting truck.

But Murphy was not one to accept defeat lightly.

"If it's work or jail, I pick jail! Here, take me first!" he insisted.

Other voices cried out in support.

"I pick jail, too!" one exclaimed. "Save room on the truck for me!"

Within moments, the entire barracks exploded in a chant, "We want jail! We want jail!" and surged forward, overwhelming the doorkeepers.