The defeated Roman consuls had been recalled to Rome in disgrace, and it was revealed that their armies had been stripped of much of their weaponry by the slaves. At last the Roman senate grasped the danger they faced. They quickly named Crassus, a well-born and respected commander, as the general in charge of the war, and placed under his command eight legions of the best trained troops. And if Crassus did not crush the slaves fast enough, the famous commander Pompey would be summoned from Spain to finish the job.
That was the last thing Crassus wanted. Pompey was his rival for power, and he knew that whoever arrived last would take credit for winning the war. Crassus was determined to destroy the slave army before Pompey returned. His first action was to make sure his troops were more afraid of him than of Spartacus, and he harshly punished deserters and any soldiers accused of cowardice. Then he prepared for a massive onslaught against the slaves.
Now, almost two years after the breakout at Capua, Spartacus knew that despite all the victories, his army could not hold out any longer. On reaching the southern shores of Italy, Spartacus had bargained with Cilician pirates to take his men in their ships across the strait to Sicily. He knew that a slave revolt had been crushed on that island only a few years before, and he guessed that the memory of it would still be vivid there. Perhaps he and his followers could rekindle the sparks of rebellion.
The pirates took gifts from Spartacus and promised to return with more ships. But Spartacus waited in vain for them on the seacoast. In the meantime, Crassus had followed him south, and set up camp behind the slave army. There, he began to build a fortified wall lined with sharpened stakes and fronted with a deep ditch.
At first Spartacus laughed at the wall. But not for long. The barrier soon stretched from shore to shore straight across the neck of land that led to the southern tip of Italy. Crassus had trapped Spartacus between his wall and the sea.
But Spartacus had not yet run out of tricks. On a snowy winter night, he ordered his men to begin filling a part of the trench with earth and branches. Before Crassus was aware of what was happening, a third of the slave army had crossed the trench and clambered over the wall, and the rest soon forced their way across. Spartacus hoped that if they moved swiftly east to the port of Brundisium, they might sail from Italy across the Adriatic Sea.
He knew it was their last chance for escape, but by now many of his troops thought too highly of themselves to listen to their commander. Spartacus’s strategy of sudden attacks followed by retreat — so successful in the past — now seemed beneath them. They were tired of staying on the defensive, forever on the move.
The slender thread of control Spartacus still held over his army snapped at last. Crassus’s legions had been close on their heels for days, as the Roman general hoped to force a battle before Pompey’s return. Spotting Crassus’s nearby camp, a number of hotheaded slaves rushed to attack the soldiers nearest them. In no time, men from either side were leaping into the fray.
Spartacus watched grimly, and he knew that the decision to attack had been snatched out of his hands. On his reluctant command, the rest of his army wheeled around into battle formation, and Spartacus prepared to face Crassus head-on. Leading his men, he rushed straight for the Roman commander. In the brutal struggle that followed, Spartacus was last seen surrounded and outnumbered, defending himself with his raised shield and sword.
In the end, it had taken eight Roman legions — about 44,000 men — and two years to defeat Spartacus and his rebels. Pompey did arrive from Spain and stole the glory for the victory from Crassus by catching the last stragglers of the slave army fleeing the battle. The Romans took a terrible revenge on the slaves who had dared to defy them: 6,000 were executed as a warning to other slaves.
Yet even the Roman and Greek historians of the era, who would have liked to describe Spartacus as a low-life barbarian, were forced to admire his ingenuity and courage. To their shock, 3,000 Roman prisoners of war were found unharmed in Spartacus’s camp after the slaves’ defeat. And Spartacus had died as they believed a man should, boldly leading his troops in battle. It seemed scarcely believable, but this Thracian slave had behaved almost like — dared they say it — a Roman.
Over the Wall
Pössneck, East Germany, 1978
SOMETHING STRANGE WAS DEFINITELY GOING ON. That’s the only conclusion 14-year-old Frank Strelzyk could come to. His parents had been going out a lot at night. And they never went out. His dad hated how you had to be careful what you said in public. You couldn’t complain about your job or criticize the government without worrying that the person next to you would call the police. At least in my own living room I can speak my mind, his dad would say. So his parents usually stayed at home with Frank, watching West German TV. Until recently, that is.
And it wasn’t just the nights out that were odd. His dad was spending hours in the garage with their neighbor, Günter Wetzel. Maybe that wasn’t so strange — his dad, an electrician, often repaired things at home for extra money. But he usually loved to show Frank how to fix stuff. Now his workshop was off-limits. What were they doing in there?
One day Frank had snuck into the garage and seen the two men standing in front of something weird — it looked like a big airplane propeller. When they saw Frank they nearly jumped out of their skins. A couple of weeks later he passed the open door and had another peek. Inside, a giant roll of fabric leaned against the wall. His dad and Günter exchanged glances. “It’s a tent,” his dad said as he closed the door, blocking Frank’s view.
Frank had wandered into the kitchen, where his mom was staring out the window, a faraway look in her eyes. She didn’t even notice Frank at first.
What’s happening? he thought. If something’s wrong, why don’t they tell me? He could understand if they didn’t want to worry his younger brother, Andreas.
But why don’t they tell me? he wondered helplessly. I’m not a little kid anymore.
Peter Strelzyk didn’t like hiding things from his son, but he couldn’t afford to take chances. Not now, not when they were so close.
It had started over a year ago, but back then it was just a game. A game that helped him forget the long hours he worked with nothing to show for it. A game that made him feel better when he could no longer read the newspapers without throwing them down in disgust. They were full of official lies about how good life was in Communist Germany. No one dared say anything different — the secret police’s spies were everywhere. Troublemakers might be arrested in the middle of the night, and their neighbors would never find out what happened to them.
Sometimes Peter gazed across town toward the West. Not many miles away was another world he couldn’t go see — because of the long stretch of barbed wire that snaked along the border between Communist East Germany and the democratic West. He’d never felt so trapped as when he visited Berlin and saw the looming concrete wall, first built in 1961, that sliced the city in half. The Communist government said it would safeguard the socialist way of life, but everyone soon discovered its real purpose — to keep people in, not enemies out.
And so he’d started playing a game in his head. If I wanted to get out, how would I do it? He asked his friend Günter what he thought.
“There’s just no way out by land,” Günter said in his usual slow, thoughtful tone. “The fences along the border are crawling with armed guards — in watchtowers and on the ground. They see everything. And even if you were able to get over the barbed wire, there’s the death strip.”
Peter nodded. Günter didn’t have to explain what he meant: the barren strip of land between the barbed wire fence and the final wall bordering West Germany. It was covered with hidden mines that would explode under the lightest footstep, and trip wires that set off hails of automatic bullets.
“And there’s no route by boat,” Günter went on. “So that leaves only one way. Air.”
“But where would we — I mean, someone — get an airplane, or a helicopter?”
Günter shrugged. T
hey both knew it was impossible, unless you were very rich.
Peter couldn’t remember who thought of it first. But one day at lunch, one of the friends nudged the other.
“I’ve got it — a balloon!”
“What?”
“Why don’t we build ourselves a balloon?”
Both men grinned. So it wasn’t just a game anymore! They were hooked on the idea from the start. Peter was known for solving problems on the assembly line at work. And there wasn’t a car engine or machine that Günter couldn’t fix. This would be the challenge of their lives!
But how would they build it? Neither of them had any firsthand knowledge of balloons.
“Hot air rises,” Peter reasoned. “So we heat the cold air inside a big balloon with some kind of flame. But the flame has to be strong. We need enough heat to push the balloon, the basket, and all of us into the air.”
That was about all they knew.
The next morning they stopped off at the People’s Library to look for a book that could help them. In the sparse collection they found only two helpful items. And one was an entry in an encyclopedia about the first balloon flight in history — 200 years ago!
Peter wasn’t discouraged. “If they could do it then,” he whispered to Günter, “we should be able to do it today!”
Peter sat at the kitchen table, scrawling calculations on a pad. The balloon would need to carry four adults — Peter and his wife, Doris; Günter and his wife, Petra. Plus four kids — Frank, Andreas, and the Wetzels’ two children. Then there was the weight of the basket, the heating system and the balloon itself. All in all, about 1,700 pounds!
Peter’s pencil scratched until he arrived at the size of balloon they would need to lift it all. He stared at his results. Their balloon would have to hold as much air as a house — a big one! They’d need a huge amount of fabric.
Where would they buy all it all? Not in Pössneck, that was for sure. Stores were so badly stocked, Doris sometimes lined up for hours for groceries, only to find they were sold out when her turn came.
Peter and Günter drove from city to city. At last they found a roll of brown cotton in a department store.
“How much do you need?” asked the salesperson.
Peter glanced around to see if anyone was listening. He paused, then blurted out, “Eight hundred and eighty yards.”
The salesperson’s jaw dropped. “We run a camping club,” he added hastily. “We need to line our tents.”
Peter quickly paid cash with his savings and the two men lugged the rolls of fabric back to the car, shoving them into the trunk and back seat. After dark they drove to Günter’s house and carried them up to the Wetzels’ bedroom in the attic. They couldn’t be too careful — a nosy neighbor might report any odd behavior to the police.
Over the next two days they cut the material into huge triangles and long, narrow rectangles. Günter hunched over Petra’s forty-year-old sewing machine, pumping the foot pedal to sew the strips together, while Peter fed him the long pieces of fabric.
Outside the bedroom, Petra blocked the door with a ladder. “We’re renovating,” she told visitors. Günter put a second doorbell in the attic to warn them if someone came to call. After two weeks of labor, Günter’s eyes were bleary and his ankles swollen, but they had their balloon — 50 feet wide and 66 feet long.
Next the men drew the curtains in Günter’s workshop on the second floor and set to work on the basket and burner. Peter’s welding torch sparked for hours as he pieced together the passenger basket from steel posts and wooden boards. He strung a clothesline between the posts for a guardrail.
The gas burner was trickier. It would have to be powerful. Peter rigged two propane bottles to a stovepipe, and prayed they would work.
The two men worked fiendishly, and within a few weeks it was time for a test. Peter and Günter drove around, looking for a place to try out the balloon in secret. Outside town they found a clearing in a wood of tall pine trees. Perfect!
Just before midnight, Peter and Günter stuffed the rolled-up balloon and equipment into the trunk and back seat of the car. Peter could hardly contain his excitement as they drove to the test site and quickly set up.
The burner shot out a flame, but the balloon stayed flat as a pancake. The fabric wasn’t airtight! Peter groaned — they’d have to start over.
But they didn’t dare buy so much material all at once again — it was too risky. The two men and their wives spread out to hunt for bits and pieces of fabric, driving to different towns and stores to buy airtight taffeta scrap by scrap.
On a cool May evening, little more than a month after the first test, the two couples spread their multicolored balloon across the clearing, and Peter started up the blower. The roar was deafening, even with the muffler Peter had added. Günter cringed at the noise.
“Don’t worry,” Peter shouted in Günter’s ear. “People will think it’s a motorcycle.”
Günter, Doris, and Petra held up the neck of the balloon. Watching Peter, they braced themselves for the impact. Günter nodded, and Peter turned on the blowtorch and burner. The flame streaked out — higher than they expected. Doris and Petra jumped out of the way. Peter’s hair was singed as he held the powerful burner steady.
The fabric on the ground began to stir, rippling as the air streamed through it. Peter stared at it as he gripped the burner. Come on, he thought. This time it has to work.
Ever so slowly, the colored stripes began to rise off the ground, snapping in the air. The balloon swelled as it lifted high above their heads.
All four stood with their heads tilted back, mouths open in amazement. It was beautiful! Like a dream, the balloon towered over the trees and swayed against the starry sky. Flushed with their first success, Peter shouted for joy.
It was time to tell Frank, he decided. He had worried that the kids would have a hard time keeping a giant balloon a secret. One little hint to their friends, and the whole plan was finished. Worse, they could be arrested. But now Frank was getting suspicious — it might be more dangerous to leave him guessing any longer.
Back at home, Peter led Frank to the garage, and this time he didn’t hide anything from his son. As Frank stared at the deflated balloon, basket, and burner, Peter told him the story of their escape plan. Frank blinked with disbelief, then a slow smile spread across his face. It seemed too good to be true!
“We’re almost ready to go,” his father added.
Peter watched Günter as he wandered restlessly around the garage. He had been quiet tonight, even for Günter. Something was wrong.
Finally Günter spoke up. “Petra’s been having bad dreams,” he said slowly. “She’s more afraid now — that we’ll get arrested. That we’ll crash.”
“That’s natural...” Peter began to say.
Günter cut him off. “It’s not just Petra who’s having doubts. Look, we’ve filled the balloon, but we still don’t have enough lifting power.” He looked down, avoiding Peter’s eyes. “I’m just not sure that we can do it anymore.”
Peter nodded. He turned his face to hide his disappointment. How could he blame them? Günter and Petra would have to risk so much.
“It might be better if we didn’t see each other,” he said at last. “I don’t want the police arresting you and Petra as our accomplices.”
There was nothing else to say. The two friends shook hands and Günter walked out into the night.
Peter stood in his backyard in the crisp spring air and stared at the propane tanks at his feet. It had been a year since that wonderful night when their balloon had filled the sky. Peter was still struggling alone to solve the puzzle of lifting power.
Peter sighed as he upended another used propane bottle. He turned the tap to empty the last bit of gas. Instantly propane streamed out through the opened tap. The pressure was incredible!
That’s it! Peter thought. Turning the bottles upside down increases the pressure! That night he confirmed his theory at the test site — th
e burner’s flame was at least 40 feet long.
Nothing was holding them back now. The Strelzyks waited nervously for the right flying weather — a clear night with a westward wind that would blow them over the border. Frank spent days at school staring out the window at a nearby weathervane. Doris and Peter made a point of taking on long-term projects at work, so no one would suspect they had a sudden departure on their minds.
Then one afternoon at school, Frank didn’t hear a word his teacher said. The weathervane outside had been pointing steadily in the right direction for hours. The sky was blue — not a cloud in sight. Tonight would be the night!
Back at home, Doris grabbed the family’s identification papers and made sure everyone had warm clothes — they would be soaring thousands of feet up in the cold night air. But they took little else with them. Extra weight would be disastrous.
The hours passed slowly as they waited for dark, then for their neighbors’ lights to turn off. Slipping through the garage into the car, Peter told the boys to lie down in the back seat, so no one would see them out late.
The motion of the car soon put Andreas to sleep. But Frank was wide awake, his heart racing. He’d never felt so excited — or nervous.
At the clearing they set up quickly, and Peter made a final equipment check: flashlights, matches, altimeter. He started the blower and the balloon began to fill with cold air. Glancing up at the sky, he frowned. A few clouds drifted across the sky. They hadn’t been there when they left. But he wasn’t turning back now.
It was time to heat the air. He ignited the blowtorch and held the flame to the neck of the balloon. Frank quickly put the burner together. He watched for his dad’s signal, then lit it.
The balloon rose so swiftly they were startled. The lines holding the basket to the fabric stretched to the breaking point.
“Come on,” Peter shouted as he turned off the blowtorch and threw it down. The four of them scrambled inside and crouched down on the steel floor. Peter and Frank leaned over the sides and cut the cables holding them to the ground.
Escapes! Page 10