Forty Days at Kamas

by Preston Fleming

  Outside I found hundreds of prisoners on the barracks roofs watching a troop of young vandals climbing over the twelve–foot stone wall into the Division 2 yard. Some climbers used homemade ropes made from blankets and bed sheets while others stacked crates and furniture to make it to the top.

  I spotted some makeshift wooden handholds someone had nailed onto the sides of Barracks C–14 and used them to climb onto the roof. From there I could see vandals and young politicals forming a loose skirmish line under the direction of leaders still perched atop the wall. On the leaders' command, the line charged across the Division 2 parade ground toward the far wall, beyond which lay the Service Yard. Most of the 2,000 prisoners in Division 2, which included many foreign–born politicals and POWs, watched cautiously from the edges of the parade ground. But a few of the younger and bolder prisoners from Division 2 joined the column and followed it toward the gate.

  I asked some men on the roof what the vandals expected to accomplish. Some believed it was to plunder the food warehouses, while others were convinced that the attackers would not stop until they had reached the women's camp and satisfied their long–denied lust for the opposite sex.

  The column came to a halt outside the sliding metal gate to the Service Yard and dissolved into small squads that searched for tools and materials with which to force the gate or create a breach in the wall. Several attackers set to work with long–handled crowbars in an attempt to remove the rails from a disused railroad spur that led to one of the storage buildings. Others scoured a junkyard in the far corner of Division 2 for a steel beam to use as a battering ram. Still others went to work forcing padlocks off tool sheds.

  Meanwhile, the warders of Division 2 had been alerted and were assembling at the division's eastern gate. Outside the gate warders outfitted themselves with helmets, plexiglass shields, and long wooden staves. At the same time, warders were circulating among the barracks in Division 3 and urging politicals to rally to their aid.

  I watched Grady and Mills approach Barracks C–14, run inside to deliver their appeal, then re–emerge crestfallen to address those of us on the roof.

  "Listen up!" Grady barked. "The thieves are on their way to break into the women's camp! It could be your wife or sister they're after! Come on, we've got to stop them!"

  "Go to hell! Can't you see we're busy!" shouted a thief who watched the events from the edge of the roof.

  "Go there yourself and bend over for them if you're so worried about saving the women, you lousy prick!" another yelled.

  Several naïve politicals stepped forward to aid the warders but were quickly pulled back by others who reminded them that a treaty was a treaty.

  A few minutes later the eastern gate of Division 2 slid open and a platoon of warders and security troops in riot gear swarmed into the yard. Jack Whiting directed them from behind, shouting orders through a bullhorn. The troops advanced on a squad of prisoners who had found a steel I–beam and were ramming it rhythmically against a portion of the stone wall in an attempt to force a breach. As soon as the troops closed within a few paces, the prisoners dropped the beam and fled back toward the Division 3 wall.

  The warders then intercepted the remnants of the original column. The vandals dispersed without attempting to defend themselves, relying on the rear guard sitting atop the dividing wall to cover their withdrawal with volleys of stones and brick fragments. The riot–clad troops and warders seemed content to stay beyond missile range and let the thieves clamber back over the wall.

  The entire spectacle lasted little more than a half–hour before the last vandal was safely back in Division 3. As soon as the skirmish was over, the exterior gate of Division 2 reopened to discharge the security troops, leaving the division back in the hands of the warders and prisoners. But to our surprise, none of the warders made any attempt to punish those who had scaled the wall.

  Never before at Kamas had prisoners attempted so audacious an act without paying dearly for the attempt. Since the attackers were thieves rather than politicals, the authorities seemed prepared to dismiss the episode as high–spirited mischief. In keeping with this new attitude, the warders maintained a low profile and dinner was served in the mess halls on time.

  After dark the administration had scheduled a feature film to be shown in each of the two men's divisions, as had been the custom every Sunday during April and May. This had been one of the few promised concessions that the Warden had actually delivered. In Division 3, the film was to be the Depression–era classic,The Grapes of Wrath.We all assembled at the south end of the parade ground near a section of the wall that had been whitewashed to serve as a projection screen. The Joad family had scarcely made it across the border into California, however, when the distinctive hoots and shrill whistles of the vandals sounded behind us. One by one, we saw the flood lamps at the northern end of the yard wink out. I followed a rush of prisoners across the yard to find out what was afoot and decided to watch the events, as before, from the roof of Barracks C–14.

  Now the sound of broken glass could be heard along the perimeter fence as the thieves used homemade slingshots to put out the floodlights that illuminated our end of the camp. From my rooftop vantage point I could see swarms of thieves and young politicals climb the stone wall and drop into Division 2 to resume their attack on the Service Yard. Vandals with slingshots shot out the perimeter floodlights to hinder the tower guards from seeing what was happening below.

  With no riot troops stationed in either of the men's divisions, the warders seemed to have calculated that the odds ran against them and remained on the sidelines. Seeing they were unopposed, one group of vandals took up steel rails and crowbars to force open the gate from Division 2 to the Service Yard while others used an I–beam as a battering ram to create a new breach in the wall. As soon as the vandals penetrated the Service Yard, their lead group went to work on the gate to the women's camp while others broke into food warehouses.

  A small band of prisoners actually succeeded in breaking through to the women’s division by the time we saw the sky light up with flares. Within moments after the first flare, a detachment of shock troops in helmets and body armor entered the Service Yard firing long bursts from their submachine guns, then shorter bursts as they pursued their quarry at shorter range. Strobe–like muzzle flashes erupted all over the yard. As fast as the troops drove the prisoners back toward Division 2, the prisoners scrambled through the wall carrying or dragging their wounded comrades behind them.

  As soon as the guns fell silent, an orange signal flare soared into the sky and gave the cue for the shock troops to fan out in pursuit of any remaining prisoners. We watched with horror as they stopped to finish off every orange–clad figure they found. Then they opened the gate to let in a pair of flatbed trucks laden with sandbags. With the shooters standing watch, a dozen warders stacked sandbags into waist–high bunkers opposite the breaches in the wall. When their work was done, they withdrew and the gate closed behind them, leaving the troops in the Service Yard with the bodies of more than twenty fallen prisoners.

  While the warders busied themselves building sandbag bunkers in the Service Yard, the vandals lost no time constructing their own barricades in Division 2, set back a few yards from the breaches they had created. They brought cinder blocks, stones, lumber, sheet metal, and whatever else they could find that might stop or deflect the submachine guns’ small–caliber bullets. By the time the warders' sandbag bunkers were complete, so were the prisoners' barricades.

  Divisions 2 and 3 were now interconnected. No warders remained in either division, having fled earlier to the safety of the Service Yard. As for any thieves who might have succeeded in making their way into the women's camp, their fate remained unknown to us. The wall separating Division 2 from the Service Yard had become the new confrontation line.

  As the hours wore on, the camp slowly fell silent. Any prisoners not manning the barricades returned to their bunks. One after another the lights of each barracks blinked ou
t except for the barracks in Division 2 where Georg Schuster set up an impromptu surgical theater that operated throughout the night.

  CHAPTER 24

  "Never, never, in a single instance, have our soldiers resorted to physical violence. Never have our revolutionaries resorted to torture."

  —Fidel Castro, Cuban dictator

  MONDAY, MAY 20 (MORNING)

  DAY 2

  Despite having remained on the roof until well after midnight to watch the standoff at the Service Yard wall, I was wide awake the next morning at the usual hour of five o'clock. There was a palpable excitement in the air that was as confusing as it was exhilarating. Had we really taken over the Service Yard? Had the guards actually opened fire on their working–class allies? Were we now on strike for a third time, without warders to assemble us at roll call or drive us off to our worksites? How would the warders respond to such a colossal provocation? I made my way to the latrines past huddled prisoners sitting on barracks doorsteps, posing the same questions to each other in low tones.

  I decided to visit the barricades to see for myself. Entering Division 2 through the gap where the sliding iron gate had been torn off its tracks, I moved along the perimeter toward the wall that divided Division 2 from the Service Yard. As I passed the last row of barracks, I could see the shadowy outlines of barricades that the prisoners had erected opposite the gate to the Service Yard, now manned by squads of drowsy youths wielding picks and shovels and axe handles.

  A few dozen prisoners still kept vigil on the rooftops of the Division 2 barracks closest to the Service Yard. I climbed a makeshift ladder onto the roof of one of the huts and found several acquaintances there, among them D.J. Schultz and Kevin Gaffney. Schultz was peering at the women's camp through binoculars that were among the booty liberated from the guards the night before.

  The submachine gunners remained at their posts in the Service Yard, the tops of their helmets barely visible in the darkness behind sandbag bunkers. I counted twenty–seven orange–clad bodies sprawled throughout the yard amid dozens of orange caps with sewn–on number patches. In the watchtowers at each corner of the yard, guards glared at us from behind belt–fed machine guns.

  From time to time a prisoner would shout a curse or an insult at a guard on the other side of the wall. Sometimes the guards shouted back. As the darkness slowly turned to dawn, more prisoners joined us on the rooftops and the taunts grew more heated. Several of the prisoners flung stones over the fence or sniped at the submachine gunners with slingshots. One gunman, narrowly missing being struck in the face, fired a warning burst over our heads.

  A few feet away from me, a toothless prisoner with silvery stubble covering his cheeks rose and waved his cap at the soldier who had fired the shots.

  "Come on, you butcher! Shoot an old man! Come on, shoot your fathers and uncles! Finish us off!" He unzipped his coveralls to the waist and pulled up his filthy gray undershirt to reveal his emaciated ribs.

  A younger man popped up from behind the barricade and repeated the old man's gesture. Someone else lobbed a brick over the wall and another submachine gunner fired a warning burst into the air. I heard a shouted command behind me and spotted a squad of vandals moving forward to reinforce the barricades. Tension was building on both sides of the wall.

  I heard the sound of hammering and sawing somewhere behind me and noticed a team of prisoners dismantling bunks to create shields from the mattresses and boards. At a maintenance shed along the western wall other prisoners fashioned spears from rakes and long–handled shovels.

  As I watched them, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was D.J. offering me his binoculars.

  "Paul, take these and check out the action by the eastern gate of the women's camp. Zoom in on the men in orange and tell me what you see."

  I adjusted the focus and saw four tall, strongly built men in orange caps and coveralls being led through the gate into the women's camp along with the same number of civilians carrying what looked like cameras and camera bags. Not far away was a line of six women prisoners, also in orange coveralls, seated cross–legged on the ground while a squad of black–helmeted warders stood over them with truncheons at the ready.

  As soon as the gate shut behind them, the men in orange approached the women at a trot and started pulling them about, ripping open their coveralls and dragging them toward the barracks, while the civilian photographers took flash pictures from every angle. The warders retreated behind the cameramen, leaving the women to their fate, only to swoop down inexplicably a few seconds later with raised nightsticks to defend the women.

  "Here, you take them," I said, handing D.J. the binoculars. "I've seen enough."

  It did not take long to apprehend that the beefy men in coveralls were not prisoners at all but State Security apes dressed up as prisoners so that the camp authorities could stage photographs showing warders defending the women from assault. What better way for Jack Whiting and the Warden to justify their firing at defenseless prisoners than to show how they turned back a raid on the women's camp by a mob of crazed rapists?

  I watched the rest of the cynical set piece without binoculars. The impostors delivered real slaps, kicks, and punches to the women, while the warders pulled their punches against the impostors. The episode lasted two or three minutes and was over the moment the last camera flashed. While the warders and impostors congratulated each other with high fives and hearty slaps on the back, the six women lay motionless on the ground, too dazed, bruised, and terrified to move.

  The warders escorted the photographers and phony prisoners to a waiting van at the gate. No sooner had the van departed than the warders began dragging the bodies of the dead prisoners out the gate and onto a waiting truck. Within a few minutes, the yard was cleared of bodies and the warders and submachine gunners followed the truck out the gate, leaving only a pair of sandbag bunkers and dozens of orange caps behind.

  None of us who observed this odd retreat could understand it. Was it a truck or a blunder? We held our breath while, one by one, the jeeps and vans parked outside the Service Yard's eastern gate started their engines and departed. The shock troops were gone. The Service Yard was ours.

  For about five minutes, the vandals remained silent and distrustful behind their barricades. Then the first handful of curious prisoners approached the gate and peered cautiously into the yard. They saw the same thing we saw from the barracks roof: the darkened patches of dirt where prisoners had spilled their blood, the gaping doors to the food warehouses, the abandoned sandbag bunkers, and the scattered caps with number patches stitched front and back.

  Then came the shouted hurrahs, ecstatic embraces, and crazed victory dances of the young vandals who reclaimed the territory they had abandoned the night before. Soon prisoners poured into the Service Yard from Division 2. Many headed straight for the food warehouses and re–emerged carrying entire cases of canned meats and vegetables. Others picked up crowbars and went to work on the chains and padlocks that resealed the gate to the women's camp.

  Moments later the gate yielded. On the other side the prisoners found not only the throngs of women they had so long dreamed about, but also eight missing vandals who had entered the women's camp the night before and been unable make good their retreat. According to the rescued men, the female prisoners had given them shelter and held off the riot troops who had tried to pursue them. The women continued to resist even when troops had struck them with rifle butts and dragged them off to the women’s camp jail. The troops withdrew without capturing a single one of the men whom the women had taken in.

  For all of us who witnessed the liberation of the women's camp, it was something scarcely to be believed. Some still balked before the gate and before the breach in the stone wall, still fearing to enter this most forbidden of places. At first only a few women ventured out toward the men's camp. Yet all three residential divisions were now in the prisoners' hands. No guards or warders were left anywhere in the Kamas camp save for the jail compound in Divis
ion 4.

  The camp continued to be surrounded by electrified perimeter fences, of course, and by hundreds of armed troops brought in to reinforce the camp's warders and guards. The tower guards also continued to train their machine guns upon us. Escape remained out of the question. But no gunshots were fired at us, even when we hurled taunts and insults at our captors. Within the boundaries of the camp perimeter, we prisoners were now in control.

  The euphoria of victory and the rush of freedom that swept over us at that moment probably cannot be understood by anyone who has not experienced the hopelessness of a corrective labor camp. In an instant, eight thousand slaves who had no sense of fellowship or unity became a single body, united by the act of seizing freedom for ourselves and for each other. After being reduced to the crudest animal selfishness, the brotherhood of man had broken through.

  Opinions varied widely on what we should do next. But none of us raised any objections to having seized our freedom. We had cast off our chains now and, whatever happened, there could be no regrets. One day of freedom had somehow made all the suffering worthwhile.

  CHAPTER 25

  "The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."

  —Adolph Hitler

  MONDAY, MAY 20 (EVENING)

  DAY 2

  The mess hall stayed open continuously from breakfast through dinner. We went through the line as many times as it took to get our fill. Banners crafted from bed sheets bearing all kinds of political and religious slogans unfurled from the mess hall rafters. Spirits remained high into the evening.

  Around seven o'clock, Jerry Lee and I sat talking outside the old dispensary in the Service Yard when we heard a static crackle emerge from the loudspeakers above us. The yard fell silent as we all awaited an announcement.