Forty Days at Kamas (42 page)

Of all the places along the camp's perimeter, this point was closest to where the enemy loudspeakers most often directed would–be deserters to make their exit. Today I wanted to draw the least possible attention by slipping out in the first moments after the gate opened. So I sat back under the broad eaves of the warehouse and waited for the loudspeakers to crackle into life.

The afternoon was dry and warm and a fresh breeze stirred across my face. Occasionally I dozed off and then awoke when someone passed nearby. I lost track of time. It was probably after three o'clock when I heard the first sputter of static from the loudspeakers. The static served as prelude to a medley of Sousa marches that faded into a recorded speech by the President–for–Life. But it wasn't until I heard the voice of George Perkins, former commissioner and highest–ranking Kamas deserter, that I came fully to my senses.

Perkins was the Tokyo Rose of today’s broadcast, regaling us with reasons to be discouraged about our plight and excuses to throw in the towel. For the first three weeks of the revolt, Perkins had kept up his pretense of support for our cause. For another week after deserting us, he had held his tongue. Now, at last, he could give free rein to his defeatism and could reproach the hard–liners for seizing the freedom he never wanted for himself. As if torn between vindicating his principles or his actions, Perkins's speech called both for collective surrender and individual desertion.

"Some of your leaders," he began after making his introductory remarks, "have decided that freedom can be won only with the help of sabers, pikes, and Bowie knives. In their arrogance and lust for revenge, they would doom all of you to a violent death.

"There is still time to bring the hard–liners back to their senses. But the way is not by preparing for violence. Let there be no mistake: if fighting breaks out, this camp will be wiped off the face of the earth, and any prisoner who survives the event will spend his last days digging in the frozen tundra.

"Why should you pay for the sins of these gangsters? Remove them now and elect new leaders who will negotiate in good faith! And if they refuse to step down, then why not take steps to save yourselves?

"This afternoon the camp authorities will again receive any prisoner who wants to leave camp. If you want to surrender, go now to the east gate of Division 2. The gate will remain open for the next thirty minutes. When the time has expired, anyone approaching the perimeter will be shot on sight…"

While Perkins delivered his speech, I watched the faces of prisoners in the yard. All listened with rapt attention and quite a few seemed on edge, as if weighing the pros and cons of taking up the offer. But on most faces I saw distaste, then anger, and then fury at this brazen attempt to talk us into discarding our hard–won freedom and trading it in for a well–worn yoke.

Suddenly there was a rush of prisoners into Division 2. Within seconds, a semicircular cordon formed some ten meters behind the barricades. I took a place as close to the front as I could reach. Across the buffer zone that separated the barricades from the perimeter wall, scores of black–helmeted troops in plastic riot armor massed behind the east gate as it swung open. On both sides of the buffer zone, all appeared to be waiting for the first deserter to step into the open.

My mind was in turmoil. On one hand, I had resolved to leave at the first opportunity. Reineke had urged me not to delay and Perkins had left no doubt that this thirty–minute window would be the last chance to escape. If I didn’t seize it, I might not ever see my family again.

But to be the first one to take up Perkins's odious challenge–to flee under the baleful gaze of hundreds of fellow prisoners–would be high treason and a mortal disgrace. Even if I succeeded in escaping from Kamas and returning to my family, what value would my life have after betraying both principles and friends? My mind was paralyzed and my feet would not budge.

Seconds went by while I confronted this appalling dilemma. Suddenly a pair of vandals shot out from the right side of the cordon, vaulted over the low inner wall and sprinted to freedom. An angry murmur rose from the crowd and a handful of men leapt forward to intercept them, but without success. The riot troops fanned out now in front of the gate and stood motionless while the vandals ran between them and through the open portal. Neither cheer nor curse was heard.

A few seconds later, another vandal made his break, followed a fraction of a second later by a limping political, and then by a stoutly built thief. But this time a pack of vigilantes set off to intercept the deserters and a melee broke out just short of the wall. Our defense troops, crouching behind sandbag bunkers, watched the brawl but obeyed their standing orders not to intervene.

While the three deserters struggled to break free from their pursuers, a half dozen others stepped out from the line and made a run for the gate. Now scores of pursuers ran after them, dragging them down and beating them senseless. And as they did, two more deserters shot out of the crowd and called upon the government troops to protect them. Only when the runners were overtaken from behind and tackled to the ground did the black–helmeted troops step forward with batons in hand to rescue them.

These few steps forward were all it took to spur our defense forces into action. An attack upon non–deserting prisoners had now occurred inside the perimeter wall. Such an attack released our fighters from their orders not to intervene. They began by hurling a volley of fist–sized stones and brick fragments at the helmeted troops, then charging at the ones located furthest forward, wielding heavy wooden fighting staves whose massive impact knocked the armor–clad troops clean off their feet. Over the next few moments, rebels succeeded in dragging most of the would–be deserters back behind the barricades for additional punishment.

Thus the battle escalated to an ever–higher pitch, driven by passion and pride. With rocks and bricks flying, I took shelter behind the nearest barricade. At this stage in the skirmish, it might still have been possible for each side to withdraw from the buffer zone with its pride intact. But this was the moment when Pete Murphy arrived with a company of reinforcements from the Service Yard, where he had been spending the day secluded in a dispensary bed. It was June 18, the day he had dreamed would be his last in camp.

Still a bit disoriented, Murphy assumed that the enemy's objective was to capture our defenders, as they had tried to do in many earlier probes. Accordingly, he led his entire company of fifty men in a ferocious charge across the buffer zone. Unencumbered by helmets or armor, they quickly overtook the government troops, pushed them back, and forced them to release their grip on prisoners still within the buffer zone. The government troops were now vastly outnumbered and their nightsticks were no match for the swords, spears, and fighting staves of the attacking prisoners.

The commander of the government troops, apparently fearing that Murphy’s reinforcements might cut off his own men’s retreat, ordered the watchtowers to open fire with .30–caliber machine guns on any prisoners remaining in the buffer zone. In an instant, Murphy's company was trapped in a ferocious crossfire from the two eastern watchtowers. Any fighters who found themselves within reach of the barricades now jumped back to seek cover. Those in the open crawled toward shelter. But their movements soon drew the attention of the machine gunners, who fired at anything orange that stirred inside the buffer zone. As the seconds ticked by, the machine gunners found their targets and, one by one, the orange fighters lay still.

I watched Pete Murphy crawl on his stomach through the dust, dragging behind him the inert body of a slim teenage fighter. A .30–caliber round hit Murphy in the leg but he kept on crawling. Another round grazed his wrist. He writhed in pain for a moment, then maneuvered his legs to the other side of the boy's body, grasped the boy's collar with his good hand, and continued to crawl. He was still crawling when the firing stopped and the black–helmeted troops re–emerged to rescue their injured comrades from the yard and take them back to safety. While they moved about, Murphy lay still. A few minutes later, the government had evacuated its casualties and left the orange–clad prisoners for dead. The buffer zone was silent. Our own men still dared not venture out again for fear of the machine guns.

I ran to the sandbag bunker closest to where Murphy lay. Our platoon and squad leaders were calling out from behind the barricade to find out if any of their men remained alive. I peered over the sandbags and thought I heard a low voice as Murphy's head rolled slightly onto its side.

"Did you hear that?" I asked the man next to me.

"I did," he replied. It was the rancher, Earl Cunningham.

"Will you help me bring him out?"

"Let's do it," he said.

We each rose slowly behind the wall of sandbags, raised our hands over our heads to show that we were unarmed and, with our hearts in our mouths, edged slowly around the sandbag wall into the open. Murphy lay on the ground no more than five yards away. His eyes were open and he was looking straight at us, but his life appeared to be ebbing away.

As we advanced, both of us pointed toward Murphy's body to show enemy sharpshooters that our sole aim was to bring him back to safety.

"Can you hear me, Pete?" I asked.

No reply.

"Do you hear me?" I asked again, louder.

"Don't let them take me," was his reply. "Not today. Please, not today."

"It's Paul and Earl," I replied. "You'll be safe with us."

We approached to within a foot of him and slowly bent down to grasp him under the shoulders. The moment we reached for him was the moment the machine gun opened fire. The first three–round burst landed in Murphy's upper back and the second burst sent a slug into the back of Earl Cunningham's head. I didn't wait to see whether either man was still alive. Without thinking, I jumped back and scrambled over the sandbags to safety. There I lay, gasping for air and trembling from an excess of adrenaline, thinking that Pete Murphy's dream had finally come true.

After a while, Jerry Lee appeared at my side, took my arm, and told me it was safe to stand up now. He led me to a bench where Libby Bertrand sat with a frail–looking woman of about sixty whose pale, angular face I recognized as that of Irene Cunningham.

"Does she know?" I asked Jerry Lee before sitting down between him and Earl Cunningham’s widow.

"We haven't told her," he replied.

But when I took her hand and saw the tears fall from her tired eyes, it was clear that Irene Cunningham knew her husband was gone.

C
HAPTER
40

"What luck for the rulers that men do not think."
—Adolph Hitler

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26

DAY 37

After the massacre in the Division 2 buffer zone the gates no longer opened in the afternoon for deserters. Perkins's voice was not heard again from the loudspeakers. An hour after our attempt to rescue Pete Murphy, government troops allowed us to retrieve our casualties from the blood–soaked yard. Once more, Georg Schuster's surgical team operated on the wounded far into the night. Eighteen prisoners were buried the next day in a newly consecrated graveyard near the Division 4 jail.

The next evening, General Boscov read aloud an order he had received from Corrective Labor Administration headquarters in Washington:

"For illegal striking, for destruction of state property, for sabotage, for use of deadly force against government officials, for advocating the overthrow of governmental authority, for armed mutiny, and for treason against the government of the Unionist State of America, the Director of the Corrective Labor Administration has ordered that its labor camp at Kamas shall be dissolved and evacuated and all the prisoners presently assigned there shall be transferred at the earliest opportunity to the Yellowknife transit facility for onward assignments within the Northwest Territories. End of Order."

Many prisoners kept a silent vigil for the rest of the night, expecting an attack and fearing that they might not live to see the dawn. Colonel Majors ordered our military and security forces on full alert. Yet the sun rose the next morning as before and all remained quiet for the next seven days. Though the very existence of Kamas's 8,000 prisoners hung suspended in mid–air, each new dawn was projected against the backdrop of normal camp routine: bunks made each morning; meals in the mess halls; changing of the guards and sentries; and the daily duty roster.

Why did the bosses let it drag on for so long? What could they have been waiting for? For the food to run short? They knew we had enough for two more months. For more time to work out their plan of attack? It would be like shooting ducks in a barrel. For final approval from Washington? It could never have been in doubt. For a sampling of public opinion? They need hardly have bothered.

Throughout this week of stagnation, we sought solace in more training, further fortifications, and additional preparation for the coming assault. But our minds would not rest and the camp became a hotbed of rumors. Rumors of mass graves being dug outside the camp, of an empty prison train waiting for us on a siding in Heber, of chemical weapons exercises being conducted a few miles away–all these rumors and more weighed heavily on our nerves.

At least once a day a gate opened or a machine gun fired or an enemy platoon entered the buffer zone to probe our defenses. Within seconds, the nearest sentry sounded the alarm and squads of archers, pike men, and swordsmen took up positions behind the barricades. This war of nerves took a toll on our defense troops, particularly the greener recruits. But the officers, non–coms, and seasoned veterans took pains to reassure the younger men and to maintain their fighting edge.

Day and night the Warden's bulldozers drove in circles around the camp, stirring up perpetual clouds of reddish–brown dust. Was it construction or harassment? Or was it a cover for the sound of heavy tractor–trailers ferrying in tanks and armored personnel carriers from the Heber railhead? The nocturnal operations were as annoying as they were baffling and their unfriendly roar made the starless night appear all the blacker. With each succeeding day the cumulative loss of sleep took its toll on us, making us more listless, edgy, and morose.