by Don DeNevi
At that exact moment, the lead MP guard walked over, and said,
“There you are! Get up, goddamn it, or I’ll show you what being on the floor is really like.”
“But…,” responded Peter, stunned beyond belief, by both the “almond” noun from Sonny, of all Marines, and the MP’s threat. As the guard yanked him to his feet, Peter fainted, buckling under his own weight back to the floor. His face darkened to a blood red, he was again lifted to his feet, and, regaining consciousness to a certain degree, he felt all bewilderment, dispersion, puzzlement, and relief, culminating in an overwhelming urge to vomit.
Together the three guards led Peter up the one flight of basement stairs, one step at a time, to the first floor, then down the corridor back to the Captain’s office. As they passed numerous frozen-faced MPs leaning back on the walls or chit-chatting one-on-one or in small groups, Peter managed to place a hand on his low thumping heart to check his heartbeat. As beaten and weary as he was, he worried it might be the first organ to give way. Although he felt his blood pressure had reached a dangerous level, he was more concerned about the punches he was taking on his torso and head. those could kill him.
After reaching the door of the Captain’s office, knocking, then being summoned to enter, Hofmeister, dressed as gaudily as ever, sat alone behind his messy desk with his thoughts. Seeing Peter disheveled, crippled, and in pain triggered a slight smile. Some lacerations were open, either still bleeding slightly or in dried blood. After motioning to the MPs to sit Peter in the chair before the desk, he signaled the guards to leave. he then stood up, walked around the desk to sit on its edge before Peter slumped down, pretending to be totally disoriented. He was damned if he would be the first to break the silence.
Then, as Peter slowly looked up, Hofmeister, clutching a knee, leaned back, and with a slight shine in his eye, he sneered,
“Well, hello, Mad Ghoul! Welcome to our last talk, before I abandon you to the hole at night, and the dump during the day.”
In his state of enormous pain and swelling, Peter, struggling to fathom the Captain’s words while weighing how to respond. Again, that face so obviously chiseled from granite was less than a foot or two from his nose and the eerie smell that hit Peter like a ton of bricks was suddenly returned.
Peter, slit-eyed, gazed upon the homely face impassively without comment. Instead, he reflected, “Dare I tell this loathsome sorriest of all the sorry son-of-bitches in the world that when he gets close, he reeks of death. I’ve had to examine corpses. I know up close the smell of the dead. But this pig’s stench is worse. What’s floating from his filthy carcass is shrinking up the thin, soft membranes of my nostrils, clogging up the passages. It’s not body odor. It’s worse than the smell of not having bathed in a year. I’ve only experienced it near him, and especially in this locked up, windowless office. He obviously likes it. All I can compare it to is the appalling malodorousness of charred corpse remains up close. All that’s missing in that sibilant monstrosity of a man are hissing sounds. Oh, for the feel of winds of fresh air.
“Are you thinking evil thoughts of me?” Hofmeister uttered in a snarl. “Oh, I know you are! Worse than, what was it you called me? Something about ‘Sorry, sorry, catch my pants on fire’? Well, smart-alecky Marine murderer, no more infirmary for you. No more physicians, no more medicaments. No more wounds washed, disinfected, and dressed. You’ll enjoy the gangrene before the furnace.”
“That’s what you believe, eh? And for you to mention furnace…that’s all I need to know!” Peter thought, expressionless.
“Like all the others, and their peculiar iniquities, you are trivial, a hick, jerkwater, smartass and we of the prison staff know precisely how to react as one body to the likes of you. We don’t like military justice with all its stupid legal rights. We prefer to punish our black sheep ourselves. There is order here in this stockade.”
Peter, sensing the Captain having unleashed a string of invectives at him might reveal more if properly prodded.
“Why Hofmeister, you old bastard, you dumbfound me! I’m astonished there’s a ‘body’, a select group, to handle Marines the likes of me.”
“You’ll see. Before you know it, like others, you’ll commit suicide. I’m not saying my little squad is going to brutally torture you during interrogations. Just because the Camp Elliott brig and stockade has the most dreaded address of all the military stockades that are homefront. We enjoy helping those who won’t bend appreciate that bending is much easier on the body than beatings. We have no issue, in fact rather enjoy, remanding delinquent Marines to solitary confinement for days, weeks, months, and even years on end, if necessary. The accused must, and will, answer to my interrogator’s questing, or else. Yes, indeed, I have a team, a ‘squad’, if you will, of special men who, together with me, selected, plan and administer our punishments, some small, some more severe. Concentrating on the orderly processing of soldiers in wartime for any or all infractions of military law rules, regulations affecting the safety and security of the armed forces. Yes, sir, you despised wretch, I have my own ‘special unit’.”
Peter, in a moment of almost uncontrollable wild excitement, refused to believe what he heard.
“Was that a confession, or what?” he demanded with an intense glare at Hofmeister. “This fool, probably figuring they’ll kill me at the furnace so they won’t have to physically haul my body out there, felt free to tell me exactly what I need to know. All I need now are victims, names of victims, names of the missing, just names and names and names! Then, to get out of here, taking Campbell and Sunny with me. And, soon, maybe tonight. All three of us are certain to be murdered.”
Suddenly, the telephone on Hofmeister’s desk rang loudly, startling both Peter and the Captain. As the warder abruptly swung away from Peter and returned to his chair from where he answered it. As Hofmeister engaged in a long conversation in which he did most of the listening, Peter attempted to follow the dialogue the way he could. As he did so, he became more and more nervous about his situation. His bones ached and his stomach began to hurt from hunger. He continued to churn over ideas to get out of the stockade. In addition, Peter felt that since Sunny had been imprisoned almost since arrival he had no idea of available escape routes. As for Campbell, the issue of escape never once surfaced in all their friendly discussions. He would not know a way out.
Peter watched Hofmeister closely, as he finished listening to whomever it was delivering a monologue. Even before the Captain hung up, the back door opened and two MPs entered.
Turning back to Peter, the Captain, in a soft, pleasing tone, announced,
“Mr. Ghoul, Mr. Mad Ghoul, that will be all for today. We’ll resume all this tomorrow. Meanwhile, you’ll be locked in the special cell next to be office. You’ll be more comfortable there than in solitary.”
Peter, suddenly alert, knew this was most unusual. Something was up. At first puzzled by the first friendly sentences he had heard from Hofmeister, it now dawned on him that the cell next to the Captain’s office might be the holding cell prior to the walk toward the furnace. Peter was now convinced the three friends were going to be killed that night or in the morning. They had to escape within hours. But if he was locked in a cell on the first floor, how would he reach Sunny and Campbell in solitary confinement in the basement?
Nodding to the MPs, Hofmeister terminated the meeting by turning to a report or document lying on his desk in front of him. Without so much as looking up or even a slight grunt, the Captain dismissed Peter by simply pointing to the door. Obediently, the two MPs pulled him up out of the chair.
“No manacles,” shouted the Captain. One of the MPs with a barely audible guffaw as he cast a sidelong glance at the warden. Then, on each side of their prisoner, the two MPs led him out of the office, down the corridor to the next door, the holding cell, almost opposite the stairway to the basement’s solitary confinement cells.
As one of the MPs was unlocking the cell door, Peter thought he overheard one
of the MPs say to the other in a low voice,
“The Captain doesn’t like this idea. Earlier, I heard him trying to persuade whomever he was talking to, possibly the head of the Special Unit that moving the three upstairs was a mistake. ‘Best to leave them down in the basement’, I think Hofmeister insisted.”
“Well, it shows who’s boss around here,” the MP unlocking the door responded.
Shoving the prisoner through the door into the holding cell, Peter, in the dim light, laid down on a normal bed, rather than the usual raw boards substituting for typical prison cots.
After resting on what was a surprisingly comfortable mattress, he lifted his head slightly to scan the cell’s contents. Despite the semidarkness, he noticed nearby a number of Army sleeping bags stacked halfway to the high ceiling, several positioned neatly in a row on the floor, a sturdy table, five or six stiff-backed chairs, and a few assorted small pieces of furniture, his eyes, fell, and then focused, upon what appeared to be a body sound asleep in a far corner bed similar to his. He was obviously a Marine and somehow appeared familiar even in the dull lighting.
Almost simultaneously, the man turned over, yawned, stretched, looked around, and peered at Peter, who was smiling at him. Staring squint-eyed, he asked, “Peter is that you? They threw me in there. Someone said you and the other corpsman, Campbell would soon be joining me. Are you okay? I’m fine, but worried. Doing this, putting the three of us up here in what they call a ‘holding cell’ is ominous. I’ve seen it before. Several times. The guy never came back.”
“Sunny, the question is whether you are all right. Let me get over there and we can talk.”
Struggling to lift himself on his elbow, then sit up, Peter managed to get to his feed. In pain, he ambled across the room, using odd chairs, the table, and other furniture as support. Reaching Sunny, who was indeed hurt, Peter gazed for a long moment into his friend’s face. He was shocked. His face was like a fleshless skull with a thin white sheet of paper stretched over it. He was that gaunt. His eyelids were almost black and tired. “How grave and grisly he looks. Why is it I hadn’t noticed these facial features before? It’s only been minutes since I first saw him after our arrival at Camp Elliott,” Peter reflected. This young man now sitting on the edge of the bed, his friend, was in great pain.
Raising Sunny up with his two hands, Peter asked, “Where’s Campbell? Is he all right? And safe? And, ‘almond’! You said, ‘almond’, right? We have much to talk about and quickly. The bastards may separate us again. And, most important of all, we’ve got to escape, if not in the next few minutes, then certainly tonight. I’ve got enough of a rambling admission of murder to court-martial the monster now. But how do we get out of here and make it to the base authorities?”
During that moment of joy, of sheer excitement, the two friends huddled, Peter with his arm around Sunny, who was trembling in pain. Peter, in low whispers, tried to reassure him that help was nearby, that once Corpsman Campbell was in tow, the three would find a way out, that all was really well since his priority now was to return him to the Corps safely. “After all,” Peter smiled, “soon after this damn war is over, I want you and whomever your wife-to-be is to take me on a tour of the beautiful Oregon coast. So, kid, I’ll watch over you.”
Sunny responded sadly, “We must get out. We must. I’ve heard too much screaming, seen too many beatings, know too many disappearances. I was assigned to watch over you, and it turns out you’re going to watch over me. I was supposed to hear from an MP in here, but as yet, haven’t. I have no idea who it is, but supposedly, he knows me.”
Just them, Peter and Sunny heard the bolt in the cell door lock click open and a Marine sergeant entered, followed by two MPs holstered with .45s dragging Campbell in a semiconscious state.
“Not that damn pipsqueak! He’s the night basement sergeant. Everyone in solitary wants to kill him.”
“Yeah,” Peter acknowledged. “I know who he is. They say he’s more of a brute than the Captain. Nothing funny about his nickname. Everyone calls him Pipsqueak out of pure abhorrence and loathing.”
But it wasn’t the 5’4”, pudgy sergeant who caught his attention. He was white, and “…as sergeants go, as ordinary as any floor scrap of paper,” Peter thought. What instantly interested him were the two dark, taciturn MPs, well over six feet, extremely powerful, whose swart coloring and hawk’s features of face. Although at first glance they appeared more like Sioux or Cheyenne, the two were obviously Navajo, possibly part of the Code-Talker contingent.
“The real articles made of real stuff” was the colorful expression that crossed his mind. “How could such honorable men be a part of this murderous travesty?”
“Up!” screamed Pipsqueak. “No time for nonsense. Hurry up!”
Peter and Sunny stared at the sergeant blankly. Neither moved. They both sat there for a moment, blinking from the corridor light suddenly illuminating the cell by the open day. Momentarily disoriented, Peter could only muster,
“We’re not moving.”
“The hell you’re not. Stand up!”
Without looking up at him, Sunny echoed,
“We’re still on our hands and knees. Like the Lieutenant says, we’re not moving. We’ve both been slammed in the gut by your MPs waving bullies. We can’t, you f------ idiot.”
The sergeant whispered, “Well, you two and that one my boys are carrying, have thrown us for a loop in our planned escape for you!”
Turning to the Navajo MPs, he ordered, “Drop him. Let these two snots handle him. They can go to the furnace, for all I care. Let’s go.”
As the MPs literally dropped Campbell in a crumbled heap, the three started for the door.
“Wait!” Peter said, hoarsely.
The sergeant stopped, turned, thought for a split-second, the said,
“If you are in that much pain, lie down. When they come for you in an hour or two, you’ll be in a whole lot more pain as they march you to the burning oven.”
“Is this another Elliott Stockade trick, sergeant?”
“While you lurch around trying to decide to follow my instructions, consider this: You, Mad Ghoul colluder, are ‘almond’, and Kid Sunshine there on your lap is ‘Mr. Almond Eyes’. Now who would know that other than a friend. And, this ‘Pipsqueak Hardy’ or ‘Pipsqueak Lou Costello’, or ‘Pipsqueak Gildersleeve’, is all that stands between you, the furnace, and the Death Squad on its way to get you this very moment.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
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On the Run
The Camp Elliott stockade was near-midnight dark when Pipsqueak and his two Navajo MPs led Peter with Sunny’s feeble assistance, carrying Corpsman Campbell nonchalantly out the admissions lobby to the outer entrance gate. Sergeant Murph O’Laughlin, well-known to both Pipsqueak and Campbell, was on duty that night as the main-gate officer.
“Hey, sergeant! Open up!” hollered Pipsquak at the small office sign-in attached to the gate wall and administered by O’Laughlin and two MP guards.
Sliding the sign-in window open, the sergeant poked his head out,
“Are these the guys?” he inquired.
“Yup,” responded Pipsqueak, “going about our business.”
“Well, get back quickly. I want to go have an early breakfast.”
With that, the entrance gate officer pressed an interior button and the large steel double gate swung open. As the outer double gates slammed shut, and the stockade’s light towers atop the battlement walkway engulfing the cellhouse and surrounding yards in bright illumination, Peter stared blankly at Pipsqueak.
Was this half-pint sergeant leading the three prisoners to their deaths?
With his uniform filthy, torn and blood-stained, hair matted, and eyes wide and alert, Peter whispered curtly,
“Who on earth are you?”
“For me to know and you to find out.”
“Huh?”
“Sorry for being so snappish, but no time for proper introductions. You did your duty, Lieuten
ant, and now it’s incumbent upon me to save your asses from the furnace. We’ll be on the run, dodging and deceiving all the way across the ‘boondocks’, through the edge of Camp Elliott itself, past the water supply tanks, the new training areas at Camp Holcomb, across roads and streams, through 15,000 Marines, all the way to Building 6317, at the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar near San Diego, some 20 miles from here. We trust no one, NO ONE. Hofmeister with his Death Squad will stop at nothing to find us. If he doesn’t, at least a dozen of his staff and squad face court-martial murder charges and certain executions. We have a sack of dry bread, biscuits, and cookies, plus cheese and water. We’re headed for an underpass electrical and tool encasement rarely opened about seven miles from here. Now we must get into the fields and travel by night. Any light on us in the darkness will mean death. Let’s go,” Pipsqueak ordered fiercely. “Of all the routes to safety at headquarters, I’ve chosen the only one that will work given they have multi-terrain vehicles crisscrossing the open lands. At daylight, they’ll follow our tracks. More, I’ll inform you about as we go along.”
The following few moments were a strange combination of critical thought and warm emotion, puzzlement and giddiness. A full realization swept over Peter like a powerful surge, inundating him in confusion. Yes, they were free. But to what extent? No arrangements had been made by Pipsqueak to bring them to the ultimate authorities other than to walk some 20 miles to them while being pursued. They were left to shift for themselves in the midst of extreme danger.
Peter, Campbell and Sunny were grateful for having been rescued, even if they had been dumped in their dirty military clothes. Suddenly, they were men again instead of numbered punching bags. Triumph, relief, and fear surged through them. But would their exultations be short-lived? This was the real thing!
Suddenly, there were sounds of confusion back within the walls. Although no sirens or alarms had been sounded, something was underway. All ears were cocked.