Forty Days at Kamas Page 10

  Rocco banged his mug on the metal table as soon as his aides opened their notebooks. All eyes were upon him except mine. Instead I glanced down the table at my colleagues and saw their narrowed eyes and firmly set jaws, braced for the severest kinds of threats and reprisals from the Warden and his crew.

  "Before anything else is said here today," Rocco began, "I want you all to know that I take full responsibility as Warden of this camp for the shooting of prisoners yesterday at Recycling Site A. I give you my personal assurance that nothing of the kind will ever happen again at this camp as long as I am in charge."

  Rocco leaned forward on his elbows and looked at us serenely over his half–rimmed bifocals. From the expressions on the faces of others around the room, I could see that I was not the only one in shock.

  Rocco continued.

  "I have brought my senior deputies here today to express our sincere regret for this tragic loss of life, to listen to your accounts of how the shooting happened, and to receive your proposals for how we ought to deal with it. So unless Doug or Jack or Colonel Tracy here has anything to add, what I'd like to do is listen to what your side has to say."

  To all appearances, Rocco's words were well intentioned, sincere, and delivered with sensitivity. But coming from a man with Rocco's history, none of us was quite ready to believe them.

  "Warden, I'll be the first to admit that what you've said comes as a welcome surprise," Glenn Reineke replied. "If State Security is genuinely willing to take responsibility for what happened and to prevent any more unprovoked shootings, this meeting might go more smoothly than I had expected."

  "I certainly hope so," Rocco answered.

  "But just to make sure we don't misunderstand each other, I'd like to read out a number of points that were raised this morning among the barracks representatives."

  Rocco nodded amiably.

  "What our fellow prisoners want is summarized in the following points:

  "One. Suspension without pay of any camp official who fired on a prisoner or issued a command to fire, pending a full investigation.

  "Two. A joint commission of camp officials and prisoners to report on their investigation within two weeks.

  "Three. Prompt trial of anyone charged with wrongdoing and punishment of anyone convicted.

  "Four. Compensation to the families of dead prisoners and full medical care for the wounded, along with disability pay.

  "If you are willing to grant us those four items, Warden, along with the apology that you've already given us, I think we might convince the men to go back to work."

  Rocco listened patiently and Chambers did the same, showing no sign of agreement or disagreement. Whiting, however, curled his upper lip in disdain and looked off into the distance. Colonel Tracy’s cheeks turned crimson with rage. He opened his mouth to speak but Rocco cut him off, responding to Reineke without so much as a glance at anyone else on his own side of the table.

  "Well, I didn't hear anything so unreasonable in all that. You're asking for the officers involved to be suspended pending an investigation; for a report within two weeks; for swift trials and punishment of anyone found guilty; and for compensation to the victims. Is that it, or have I left something out?"

  "That’s the gist of it, Warden," Reineke replied.

  "And if we agree to your terms, you will recommend an end to the strike and a return to work tomorrow morning? Do I have your word on that?"

  "You’ve got mine. How about the rest of you? Ralph?"

  "I'll agree to that," Knopfler said.

  "Pete?"

  "If you give us those four points, I think we have a deal," Murphy added.

  "George?"

  "Agreed."

  "Chuck?"

  "I’ll go for it."

  "In that case, maybe we can all forego the ‘who–struck–John’ portion of this meeting and get right to a deal," Reineke suggested.

  The Warden came out from behind his table to offer his hand to Glenn Reineke. Reineke accepted the handshake. I looked back across the table and saw Doug Chambers scratch his chin with a puzzled look. Both Whiting and the red–faced Colonel looked as if they were about to have heart failure.

  The rest of us were left speechless. The whole thing had lasted less than five minutes.

  CHAPTER 12

  "He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how."

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13

  Immediately after the session with Rocco and the camp authorities, the five members of the prisoners' delegation met again with the three dozen barracks representatives. I watched the representatives rush into the meeting room to hear the outcome. Reineke and Perkins explained that Rocco had agreed to every one of their demands on the condition that the strike was to end by morning. At first a cheer rose from the group, but within moments I sensed that many representatives did not accept the Warden's assurances at face value.

  Having experienced countless times how fluently lies and false promises flowed from the bosses’ lips, these seasoned camp veterans scoffed at assurances that the Warden would follow through. When had Rocco ever punished a guard for shooting a prisoner? What if it was all a fraud?

  The more the delegates tried to allay their concerns, the more the representatives appeared to retreat into sullen apathy. The delegation had been hoodwinked, they moaned. Rocco and his ilk would say anything and promise anything to get the one thing that mattered: an end to the strike. Yet not one of the barracks representatives suggested repudiating the deal the delegation had struck. Clinging to their cynicism, they accepted the Warden’s offer grudgingly and resigned themselves to be disappointed.

  By evening the barracks representatives had spread word of the meeting’s results throughout Division 3. But unlike most of the representatives, who nurtured a deep hatred and distrust of the Unionist regime, most rank–and–file prisoners accepted the recommendation to end the strike. They cast aside the suspicions of their representatives and took into account only that Rocco had accepted the delegates’ terms and had vowed to set things straight. A festive air filled the mess hall that evening, with even the contract kitchen workers joining in the spirit and handing out extra helpings of soup and bread until supplies ran out.

  We awakened to a harsher reality the next morning. During the night, strong winds heralded the approach of a frigid mass of arctic air. By roll call, the temperature had dropped to minus five degrees Fahrenheit, with steady winds up to thirty miles per hour. A line of prisoners claiming sudden illness and unfitness for work extended around three sides of the dispensary.

  As I lined up for roll call, I assessed my own fitness for work that day. After a week at Kamas, my reserves of physical and mental strength were even lower than when I had arrived. Despite improved physical conditioning, more efficient work methods and partial adjustment to the 6,500 feet of altitude, the inadequate diet, long work hours, and exposure to the elements had worn me down. I had lost several more pounds, often found myself short of breath, and was never quite able to feel warm at the core, even after a meal of hot oatmeal or soup in the overheated mess hall. Prisoners who had survived camps in northern Canada claimed that the human body could adapt to far greater cold than we faced at Kamas but I couldn't begin to imagine it.

  The trek from camp to the recycling site that morning strained our nerves to the breaking point. The contingent of armed guards who accompanied us had doubled in number. At the head of our column was a canopied troop truck whose tailgate had been lowered to reveal a swivel–mounted, .50–caliber machine gun aimed straight down our throats. The guards who walked along our flanks, far from looking contrite, wore smug expressions that unnerved us. There would be no investigation, their eyes seemed to say, and we were at their mercy once again, having given up our strike without receiving anything tangible in return. And while they were dressed warmly in thick goose down parkas, heavy insulated gloves, and Arctic–rated snow boots, we wore the same patched and faded coverall
s that we had slept in and in which we had awakened, still chilled to the bone.

  Frequently that morning the members of our work team examined each other’s faces and ears for signs of frostbite and treated the telltale white spots by breathing onto them or rubbing them with bare hands. We tried speeding up our rate of work, then slowing it down, in an attempt to find a pace that would produce the optimum balance between warmth and fatigue, but we could not solve the equation. No matter how hard we worked, we could not generate enough warmth to keep our limbs warm. And we all knew the horrors of frostbite from having seen the missing fingers and toes of prisoners who had survived previous Utah winters.

  At the mid–morning break I heard a whistle and followed the rest of the work team to a sheltered corner of the brickyard where Ralph Knopfler had convened our work team. Knopfler told us that he had learned upon arrival at the recycling site that all Division 3 prisoners would draw short rations for the next three days to make up for the meals we had eaten during the strike. Starting the next day, no ration bars would be issued for lunch. Furthermore, Knopfler announced, new calculations showed Recycling Site A to be further behind quarterly targets than expected. Daily work quotas would accordingly be raised until further notice. The ugly truth dawned on us that retaliation for the strike had already begun and that the Warden’s promises of justice were worthless.

  But the cold ensured that none of us dwelled very long upon the betrayal. All we cared about now was warming ourselves, returning to camp, and consuming hot soup, fresh bread, and sweet tea when we arrived. Little more was said among us until the closing whistle blew.

  By the time we assembled at the main gate for the march to camp, it became clear to many of us that the cold had done more than make us miserable. From time to time I would hear shouts and see a foreman or work group leader try to revive a prisoner who had collapsed, usually with shouts and kicks and blows from shovels. About half the time, the prisoner could not rise to his feet and had to be dragged by his ankles to the side of the road.

  Four times that afternoon I heard rifle fire and twice watched prisoners commit suicide by running for the perimeter fence, where they were shot before reaching the electrified wire. When a man chose to end his life like this, it seemed to me no less murderous than when the guards had tricked Lillian or Fong into approaching the wire. Yet today none of us raised his voice or took so much as a step out of line.

  No shots were fired on the march back to camp. But the column stopped many more times than usual for the guards to deal with stragglers. A rumor spread before lights–out that Recycling Site A alone had lost more than a dozen men that day to exposure, exhaustion, or suicide. Still, no one proposed another work stoppage. Our spirit of resistance was tapped out.

  A peculiar consequence of the one–day strike was that, for three days afterward, no one came around to padlock the barracks from the outside, as was normal camp procedure. Several times during the first night the door opened to admit visitors. Among them was Glenn Reineke.

  Reineke sought directions to my bunk and asked me to join him for a short walk. When I had done as he asked, he led me to a nearby barracks where a handful of his former comrades–in–arms and loyal friends had emptied the bunks in one corner to offer him some privacy. Reineke asked me to take a seat next to him, then spoke in low tones to ensure our privacy. His unblinking eyes were fixed on mine and possessed an almost hypnotic quality.

  "I never had a chance to talk to you or the other fellow who carried me in from the train. If I'd been left in that rail car, there’s no doubt the warders would have finished me off. I am in your debt.

  "But I also wanted to talk to you about something else. Knopfler tells me you're a hard worker and lead a clean life and aren't the kind that breaks when the cold and the hunger get you down. He said you'd be a good man for me to talk to, somebody whose mind is still fresh and uncorrupted by camp life.

  "You know, when I landed in my first camp, I was about as bitter as a man can get. The war with China was beyond anything I ever imagined. Not the fighting–after six years of combat I'd seen just about everything. But I never though I'd see the day when our own government would sell out our fighting men in a foreign war. When we broke out from Khabarovsk and fought our way back to Alaska and then by some miracle held off the Chinese landing force the following spring, I was fed up taking responsibility for other men's lives. All I wanted was find a place where they weren’t shooting and people spoke English and I had enough to eat and could get up in the morning without having to worry about anybody but myself. And I wanted to see my family again.

  "And that's what I did. I handed in my resignation and made my way overland from Alaska to Colorado. In less than a month, they arrested me for desertion. State Security goons spent another year softening me up in an interrogation cell before they sent me here to die.

  "At first, the only thing I lived for was escape. I made my first attempt after about four months. They caught me, flogged me half to death and sent me underground to work the silver mines. It was another two years before I made it through the wire again. Gary and I were loose for fifteen days before they caught up with us. Still, I was ready to try it again. But this last week in the isolator, a lot of things became clearer to me. Do you believe in a God, Paul?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Has he ever spoken to you?"

  "Not like you and I are talking right now, but at times I think he sends me a message, if that's what you mean."

  "Well, I think he's spoken to me," he continued, watching my face closely.

  I nodded respectfully and invited him to continue.

  "My spirit was nearly broken after they brought me back here. I kept asking myself what could possibly be the purpose of my being alive if it wasn’t to escape? What should I do next? But then I heard a voice inside me say: ‘No, those questions are for you to answer. What will you do now with the time you have remaining?'

  "At that moment it dawned on me that I’d been doing nothing but escape from one tight spot after another ever since Khabarovsk. I realized that maybe my job at Kamas wasn't to escape but to lead toward something. I got the strongest feeling that a test was coming and that yesterday's strike was just the beginning.

  "Yesterday Rocco outsmarted us but I think we learned something from it. What we need to do now is stay alert and be ready for the next challenge, then move quickly to seize the initiative. But to do that, we need the best and brightest men we can find. People like–"

  At this point one of Reineke's aides interrupted us. It was Gary Toth, Reineke's escape partner and the man who had brought down the attack dog on our first night in Utah. Toth, a former Navy SEAL, had been taken prisoner by the Chinese after an unsuccessful raid on occupied Vladivostok. After the Armistice, he and his fellow POWs had been repatriated straight into a corrective labor camp north of Ogden. Toth was in his early thirties, six and a half feet tall, and powerfully muscled even after his week in the isolator. He was also rumored to be one of the enforcers who slit the throats of suspected stoolies.

  "I have someone to see you, Major," Toth broke in. "He said he has information you should know about camp security. Would you like to see him or should I send him away?"

  "Have you debriefed him?" Reineke asked.

  "He won't talk to anybody but you, Sir."

  "Do you think he might be one of the Wart’s people?"

  "I doubt it. He doesn't seem at all the type for it. We've checked him for weapons and he's clean."

  "Then bring him in."

  Reineke turned back to me.

  "Paul, excuse me, but long experience has taught me that it doesn't pay to keep informants waiting."

  "Would you like me to step outside?" I asked.

  "No, stay. Let's see if he's willing to talk to both of us."

  Toth brought forward a young black man, tall and slender, with delicate features. He approached the bunk without any sign of fear or apprehension.

  "Have a seat," Reine
ke offered. "This is my colleague, Paul. Whatever you'd like to tell me is safe with him."

  "Thank you," the visitor said, sizing up each of us. "I don't know quite how to start this, Mr. Reineke, but my name is Ben Jackson and for three nights now I've been having some strange dreams about the camp. Every night it's the same and every night is clearer than the last. After hearing you talk to us yesterday, I thought you might be the man to bring it to."

  "A few weeks ago I probably wouldn't have been the right man," Reineke replied. "But lately I've been picking up strange messages of my own, Ben, so I guess that puts us in the same boat. Go ahead. Tell me about yours."

  "I haven't been at Kamas very long. I arrived with the last convoy. Before that, I used to work in a bank in Baltimore. One day a couple of the bank's officers asked me to generate some reports and make some accounting entries that were way outside the rules. So I reported it to the regulators and figured it was no more of my concern. The next thing I knew, U.S. marshals came and handcuffed me right in my office and dragged me off to jail. They used to beat me pretty hard in jail sometimes and since then I haven't been able to work very well without getting dizzy or fainting.

  "When I faint I see strange things sometimes–things that haven't happened yet. Oftentimes I can tell when someone in the barracks isn’t going to make it. That's happened five or six times now."

  Reineke said he understood.

  "I've known men who had visions like that just before combat," he told Jackson. "Almost drove them nuts, trying to decide whether to say anything about it. But go ahead, Ben, tell me what you saw in your dreams."

  "In the first dream I saw Kamas camp from way above, like I was in an airplane or something. Only there was no snow in the valley, only in the highest mountains, so I figure it must have been summer. And the walls between the divisions were torn down in places and women were together with the men all over camp. They were walking around together and going to work in the workshops and building things together in the camp yard.