Earl looked past me toward Jimmy Vega, who had started paying attention to Earl when his speech became impassioned.
"So, Jimmy boy, what do you say?" he asked the Mexican. "Do we go again?"
"You bet," Jimmy replied. "We took them twice. We can take them again."
Little more was said among the three of us until they brought us our soup, bread, and tea at about seven o'clock. When we had finished our food and were waiting to be released, Earl turned to me one more time.
"Paul, do you think this country can ever go back to what it was before?"
"Someday," I replied. "It may take another generation, but I think we can get over Unionism, given enough time."
Earl shook his head and pressed his lips together.
"Well, I don't. I used to think so, but not anymore."
"Fortunately, civilization is a renewable resource," I said. "It just doesn't look that way right now because there’s such a shortage of it."
"And the Unionists are doing their best to stamp it out," he countered.
"Let them try," I said. "They're not that strong."
I was already back in my bunk when the rest of the prisoners returned from work. They had been held at their worksites a half–hour longer than usual and had not objected to being herded straight to the mess hall for dinner. Nor had they given it much thought when they were escorted straight from the mess hall to their barracks, where the doors were promptly padlocked.
But some had seen the repairs around camp and word had traveled fast. The meeting, the concessions, the cajoling, had all been a ruse to enable the DSS to get us out of the camp long enough to beef up its physical security. The crackdown had already begun.
Ironically, it was the thieves who expressed the greatest outrage at the bosses’ treachery. For the next two hours the vandals huddled in their corner of the barracks plotting their counteroffensive. Some of the more hotheaded young politicals joined them. As soon as the time came for lights out, the group sprang into action.
The vandals' first act was to remove our barracks door from its hinges. Within moments we heard the thieves' long–drawn whistles shrilling throughout Division 3. Then came answering whistles from Division 2. Before long the whistling turned into a blood–chilling chorus. The warders who patrolled the camp in threes or fours took fright and ran for the gates. At first the guards refused to let them out, but when they noticed the warders being pursued by packs of savage prisoners, they relented. Within an hour after lights–out, no warders or guards remained anywhere inside Divisions 2 or 3. The prisoners swarmed into the camp yards but this time it wasn't just the thieves who raised the battle cry.
Still, the same problem faced the vandals who had originally faced them on Sunday: a wall divided their forces in two. The first time they scaled the wall the guards had tolerated it. But now, when the first wave of rebels approached the newly marked prohibited zone, the tower guards loosed a torrent of machine gun fire upon them. The gunfire killed a half dozen vandals and left at least as many wounded.
The vandals wasted no time in responding. They aimed their slingshots at the floodlights as before. With better planning and more practice, they needed even less time to knock out all the floodlights within their range. The towers responded by releasing illumination flares. The tower gunners had also taken the precaution of alternating one tracer round with every five conventional machine gun rounds to better guide their aim.
But the prisoners had an answer to this as well. They had discovered a pair of uniformed escort guards left behind in Division 3 and tied them to a mess hall table. They then pushed the table toward the wall flanked by other mess tables while the guards screamed to their comrades not to shoot. The firing ceased.
Meanwhile, the prisoners severed the barbed wire surrounding the boundary zone and used shovels that they had concealed about the camp the night before to dig a trench under the wall. Working both sides of the wall at once, they shoveled in relays, then formed teams to scrape away the loose dirt and stone with kitchen knives and mess tins. By the time the guards had sought and received permission to resume firing, the trenches were deep enough and enough tables were stacked around those who were digging to shield them from view. By now, the prisoners also had the advantage of enlisting scores of seasoned combat veterans who were accustomed to digging trenches even under heavy fire.
In little more than an hour, the first trench connecting Divisions 2 and 3 was complete and a second was underway in the semi–darkness. Both entrenching teams now began the task of burrowing their way into the Service Yard, which was held once again by a platoon of Tommy gunners with support from machine gun crews in the watchtowers. To help cover their mates, the prisoners kept up a barrage of slingshot fire against the towers as well as a hail of stones and bricks tossed over the wall at the Tommy gunners. Before long, the prisoners had three separate trenches in progress along the wall and were distributing knives to those who waited to attack the submachine gunners from the completed trenches. A staff team of experienced infantry officers and non–coms planned the assault while the troops deepened the trenches.
As it happened, no assault was required to dislodge the Tommy gunners. The bosses, apparently having weighed the likelihood that prisoners might overrun the troops and turn their captured weapons against the watchtowers, ordered the tower guards to hold their fire while the troops withdrew from the Service Yard.
I watched all this from the same barracks roof in Division 2 where I had sat two nights before. As soon as the east gate shut behind the submachine gunners, we let out a great shout that spread throughout the compound. For there was hardly a man or woman in the Kamas camp who was not involved somehow in supporting the action or who did not cheer it on from the sidelines. A single orange cap tossed into the air became a swarm of caps. When the caps hit the ground, we tore off the number patches from front and back and trampled them in the dust.
As soon as the trenches into the Service Yard were complete, slingshot marksmen sprinted to the safety of the sandbag bunkers to complete the extinction of the surrounding floodlights. Then the vanguard of the entrenching team moved forward yet again and burrowed under the wall to the women's camp while other prisoners set about dismantling the interior gates. Still others broke into the tool sheds and took up picks and crowbars to help finish the job of dismantling boundary fences, reopening aboveground breaches in the interior walls, and deepening the trenches. Within a few short hours, the entire day's labor by the camp authorities and their collaborators had been nearly undone.
The second liberation of the women's camp was no less triumphant than the first. Men and women embraced and searched for loved ones as they had two days before. I saw many couples come together across the division boundaries and linger in the Service Yard as if to prolong that initial sense of reunion.
But the women's camp was not the last section of the camp remaining to be liberated. At the opposite end of the compound, in Division 4, the men's jail was still in government hands. The leaders of the assault on the Service Yard reassembled their men and called on them to follow to the Division 4 gate. After taking the precaution of erecting a barrier of mess hall tables to protect them against machine gun fire from the watchtowers, they set to work dismantling the gate and opening a breach in the wall using steel girders as battering rams.
Seeing the prisoners on the way and concluding that resistance would not be worth the risk, the warders and guards in Division 4 fled out the east gate, leaving the jailed prisoners in their cells. I was among the first non–combatants to follow the assault team into the jail compound and witness the release of the prisoners held there. Among them was Colonel Mitchell Majors, of whom Glenn Reineke had spoken to me some days before. Several Marines who had once served with Majors embraced the Colonel and shared the honor of leading him out of captivity.
Before leaving the jail compound, I also took the opportunity to visit the isolator cell where I had spent the longest week of my life and the i
nterrogation room where Jack Whiting had attempted to recruit me as an informant. Upon entering the isolator cell I had a profound sensation of depression and fear and was surprised at how small the cell appeared to be. After seeing it a second time, I doubted that I could keep my sanity if I were ever sent there again. Later I heard that several former denizens of the isolator went on a rampage that night and wrecked what little could be destroyed in that accursed building.
I stayed outdoors until sunrise, wandering from one end of the camp to the other, observing my fellow prisoners and trying to understand the meaning of this unparalleled fourth uprising in ten weeks.
Three times we had turned our backs on freedom and returned voluntarily to captivity. Why had we treated this rare privilege so casually? And having cast it aside, why had we continued to rebel?
What were we to do now that we had recaptured our prize? Place our faith in the empty promises of authority and be cheated yet again? Or surrender and take our punishment bravely?
One thing was clear: whether we accepted it today or after enjoying a week or a month of freedom, the punishment would be equally cruel. So why not wait and enjoy our freedom a while longer?
CHAPTER 27
"Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue."
—Edmund Burke
WEDNESDAY, MAY 22
DAY 4
Dawn broke over a sleepless and feverish camp. Like many, I stayed outdoors until breakfast and then returned to my bunk for a few hours of sleep. When I awoke, I saw a Kamas that scarcely resembled the painstakingly reconditioned camp of the evening before.
The parade grounds were littered with stones, bricks, number patches, and shards of glass from shattered flood lamps. Overturned mess tables lay scattered on both sides of the interior walls, hiding the tangled strands of barbed wire that only hours before had spanned concrete fence posts. Makeshift banners hung from barracks roofs proclaiming newly coined slogans of the Kamas rebellion.
Prisoners no longer marched in formation or even followed marked paths as they moved freely from one division to another. Some independent–minded souls, having discovered storerooms where the civilian clothes of past and present prisoners were kept, selected colorful new outfits. The dusty brown camp with its overtones of coverall orange took on entirely new colors. Some of the grim faces softened into kind smiles.
I watched men who had been last–leggers only days earlier approach the breaches in the interior walls, look around timidly, and cast questioning glances at those nearby. How could it be that nobody shouted at them and they no longer needed to duck blows or dodge kicks? The sudden changes still felt unreal, as if perceived in a daydream. How often we had been tricked by brittle dreams that shattered when the camp siren wailed or the warder's whistle blew. We repeated the word–freedom– again and again without being able to grasp what it meant.
The sudden relaxation of tension after years of the most extreme suspense made us go slack with relief. Through the outer perimeter wire I could see early wildflowers in bloom. But I had not the slightest feelings about them. I overheard two middle–aged politicals in conversation along the path to the latrines. One took the other aide and said discreetly, 'Tell me, were you pleased this morning?' The other, with an expression of shame, replied, 'To be honest, no!' Those of us who had spent any appreciable time in the camps had lost the ability to feel pleased and we would have to relearn it slowly.
It is man's good fortune, however, that the body has fewer inhibitions than the mind. What prisoners wanted to do most on the day of their liberation was to eat, sleep, and talk. It is remarkable what prodigious quantities a person can eat when his diet has been kept at or below the subsistence level for months on end. Now that prisoners ran the mess hall with no official supervision, they set no limits on how many times a man could pass through the line. Limits also no longer existed on what one could say without fear of betrayal by stool pigeons. On our first day of freedom, some prisoners, feeling an irresistible urge to speak, talked for hours at a time. And, sleep, of course, was something of which we all were in need.
Except for prisoners who had spent only a brief time in captivity, the sexual urge was generally absent. Even among the thieves, there had been relatively little sexual activity at Kamas. Sex did not arise even in our dreams, except in its higher, sublimated forms. But now women looked at men and men looked at women and they took each other by the hand. Some couples, both married and unmarried, who had corresponded inside the camp through ingenious and surreptitious methods, met at last. Religious girls whose weddings in absentia had been solemnized by priests and rabbis on other side of the wall now saw their lawfully wedded husbands for the first time.
For the spiritually inclined, our newly won freedom was particularly significant. For first time in years, no one sought to prevent the faithful from meeting in prayer. The sects most heavily represented in camp felt themselves singularly blessed: Catholics, Orthodox Jews, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Amish, and the various born–again Pentecostal groups that burgeoned during the Events until the President–for–Life began his campaigns of religious persecution. Meanwhile, Buddhists, New Age mystics, and yoga practitioners caught up on their meditation.
It is a paradox of repressive dictatorships and totalitarian regimes that the one place where honest political debate can truly thrive is the penal camp. Kamas was no different. Evenings in any barracks offered continuous discussion of politics, economics, military strategy, and foreign affairs. The only element lacking was campaigning for elective office.
By late morning we no longer lacked for that, either. Colonel Mitchell Majors and his campaign team appeared in Barracks C–14 shortly before lunch while I sat talking with Pete Murphy. We heard the sound of boots on the doorstep, then a loud knock on the door. Majors entered first, followed by George Perkins, Chuck Quayle, and two younger men whom I recognized from among the Colonel’s liberators the night before.
Majors started down the center row of the barracks and reached out to shake hands with each man there.
"Mitch Majors, U.S. Marines," he announced as he fixed each man with a stern gaze from his bold blue eyes.
Majors was a thick–necked bulldog of a man who exuded determination and self–assurance. When my turn came to shake his hand and look him in the eye, my intuitive sense was of a forceful but one–dimensional personality. By now in his mid–50s, he seemed to be one of those men for whom being in charge is more important than the mission itself and for whom being a big man takes precedence over doing big things.
When he had shaken hands with each of us, he stood in the exact spot where Colonel Tracy of State Security had stood two months earlier to evict us and presented his ideas on how to press our cause.
"For the moment," Majors began in a ringing voice that carried easily to the far corners of the barracks, "last night’s revolt has won us certain limited freedoms along with an opportunity to achieve limited reform. But we risk wasting this opportunity unless we decide very quickly on what the direction of the revolt will be.
"In my view, we can improve our lot only if we negotiate with the legitimate authorities to exchange our return to work for their meeting our demands. What should those demands be? That’s for you to decide.
"But let me make one thing clear: the undercurrent of anti–Unionism running through this camp will be our undoing. If we adopt anti–Unionist slogans we’ll be crushed without mercy. If we raise banners and broadcast speeches that reject the regime's authority over us, the regime will justify itself in shooting us like dogs. Our only chance lies in loyalty to the Union whether we like it or not."
In effect, Majors was adopting the political doctrine of the camp's orthodox Unionists. These loyalists condemned any attempts by prisoners to fight for our basic human rights, whether though strikes, revolts, petitions, or reprisals against government informants. They condoned virtually any form of repression, provided that it came from above, and reje
cted any use of force from below. The distinction seems to arise from the loyalists' unconditional acceptance of state power and their rejection of any power residing in the people themselves.
After the Colonel’s brief speech, George Perkins announced that elections would be held after lunch for a new prisoners’ commission. The commission would be charged with negotiating a return to work in exchange for reforms and would govern the camp until state authority was restored. Perkins urged us all to vote. Although he didn't say whether elections would be held for a chief commissioner, it was obvious that this was the real reason behind his and the Colonel's visit.
As soon as Majors and Perkins moved on to the next barracks I asked Pete Murphy to come outside for a walk.
"You're a military man, Pete. Do you know anything about Majors?"
"Not much," Murphy replied. "We both fought in Mexico for a while, but that's about all. We didn't cross paths very often at the Pentagon."
"Reineke seems to think Majors could help us. Now that you've seen him in action, what do you think?"
"He's got drive, all right," Murphy replied. "But from what I hear, Majors was known more as a ticket–puncher than a combat leader. He's the kind of guy who does whatever his commanding officer asks, says whatever the brass wants to hear, and never lets his principles get in the way of a promotion."
"So who do you think he'll take his cues from now?" I asked. "Us or the Warden?"
"We may not know for a while. In public, I expect he'll make all the right moves. But if you're asking me if Majors is capable of selling us down the river, I wouldn't rule it out."
"I doubt even he knows," I said. "But I get the sense that he realizes this could be his last roll of the dice. That could be dangerous."
Forty Days at Kamas Page 22