Chapter Eight
The bed was hard, but McBride fell asleep almost immediately, an old soldier’s trick.
He was awakened by the sound of a key turning in the door. He opened his eyes and watched without moving. The room was not completely dark, the compound lighting filtering in the uncurtained windows. The guard who stealthily entered was tall and overweight. He wore his greatcoat, and walked slowly across the room towards the ablutions. A loud moaning sound came from the separate bedroom at that end. It had been a noise he had heard all evening, and one of the prisoners had sat with the old man until lights out.
The sick man’s door was opened by the guard. He entered leaving the door open. McBride saw a flash and heard the pistol shot. The moaning stopped.
The guard came out, closed the door, walked out of the main door, locking it after him. That was one way, but McBride hoped he didn’t get sick while he was here.
Every prisoner was now awake, muttering to each other, as shocked as McBride.
At eight o’clock the next morning the barrack room was unlocked. Two guards came in and removed the body; now wrapped in a blanket.
Breakfast had been served an hour earlier, potato soup, and every prisoner was clad in their black denim uniform. Once the door was open, they filed out into the compound yard and formed two lines facing their hut. From behind their hut more men arrived, and formed two further lines. McBride estimated that there were about one hundred in total. They all stood at ease, enjoying the hazy sunshine. After a few minutes the officer who had checked McBride in the previous evening, came pounding down the outside metal staircase from the upper floor of the barracks. He was followed down the staircase by three other guards.
McBride now understood the course of the events of the night before. The Russians slept immediately above them. Their sleep had been disturbed by the dying man’s cries of pain. Somebody’s anger had got the better of him. That didn’t in any way excuse the atrocity.
The officer arrived at the bottom of the steps. He moved right and one of the guards marched straight up to the waiting prisoners.
“Smeer-nah!” shouted in an army style command. McBride didn’t speak Russian, but he automatically came to attention, exactly in time with the others. The officer walked forward to stand at the side of the guard.
“Votstnah.” The prisoners stood at ease. McBride was again in time.
The guard started to count heads. One of the other guards came up to validate the results. The two conferred, looking at a clip-board. They wrote quickly on it, passed it to the officer, who signed.
“Razoydis.” The prisoners broke ranks sauntering away a few paces, speaking to each other in small groups. McBride was not quick enough, and a guard took hold of his arm, and that of Ben.
“Special duty,” said the guard, in English with a bad accent. One of his colleagues had hold of another two prisoners. They were marched off to the single storey hut in the corner of the compound near the gates. Above it, the watch tower, a rickety wooden structure. McBride gazed upwards, and then turned round to see what other towers there were. Just one, at the farthest end of the compound. Outside of the chain link fencing, barren ground, grass and small shrubs, nothing large enough to give cover. Maybe half a mile, and then the pine forest. Further away still, blue-grey hills. The only sounds: the murmuring of the prisoners and the boots of the guards ringing on the concrete. Up in the blue sky, a plane’s vapour trail.
The guard ahead of them opened the door of the hut, disappeared inside, returned with two shovels. McBride realised what task lay ahead.
One of the guards opened the main gate just wide enough for the four prisoners and the other two guards to leave the compound. Whilst the guard closed the gate behind them, the two guards held their rifles across their chests.
Two of the prisoners held the spades. One guard paced off thirty steps diagonally from the compound, turned round and beckoned to the prisoners. He grabbed the shovel from McBride’s hand and marked a faint rectangle in the grass. Then he handed the spade back to McBride, mimicking a digging action.
McBride, with the spade in his hand, looked round but now was not the time to make a break. He didn’t know the strengths or weaknesses of Ben, and they had no topcoats with them. It was too far to run to the forest if the guards were anything like marksmen. It needed to be done under cover of darkness. All these thoughts went through McBride’s mind in only seconds as he brought the spade sharply to the ground, putting his weight through his foot on to the spade. The earth was surprising yielding, the spade sinking nearly a spit deep. As he dug, he glanced to where Ben had started digging at the other end of the trench. When they had dug the grave two feet deep, they were told to give the spades to the other two, and McBride and Ben stood back wiping sweat from their foreheads, and watched the others digging. The guards stood close to the grave and eventually gave the signal to stop. McBride could see the sides of the hole glistening; mostly yellowish clay less than a foot down from the surface. Total depth not much more than four feet. He hoped that wild animals wouldn’t dig the body up. He looked across the rough grass and saw that there were more graves, or so he supposed, marked by single short posts, and tell-tale mounds. Well, the others hadn’t been dug up.
The guards threw their cigarette ends on the ground, held their rifles aggressively, and motioned for the prisoners to go back inside the compound. The guard who had remained inside opened the gate for them, and shut it behind them. The other two guards led the prisoners back to a wooden lean-to shed attached to the gatehouse. Inside, on a low table laid the body, still wrapped in a blood-stained blanket. The four prisoners each clutched a corner of the blanket, and between them manoeuvred the body out of the shed. Again the guard on the gate let them out, and prisoners and guards went back to the graveside.
The prisoners started to lower the body and were told to stop by one guard. He motioned that they were to lay the head facing out from the camp. McBride knew why. He had heard that prisoners were always laid that way, to indicate that they had been shot whilst escaping. He didn’t think this tricked anyone. The guards had brought two spades back with them, and two of the prisoners started to shovel earth back in the hole. Ben bowed his head and spoke.
“We commit your body to the Lord God. Amen.”
He got a smart kick in the backside from one of the guards, but the other one looked away slightly embarrassed.
“Well, someone had to say something, poor old chap,” said Ben to McBride. McBride nodded, and they all trooped back into the camp.
“What happens now?” said McBride to Ben as they strolled across the parade ground.
“Well, lunch is at one o’clock.” He looked at his watch. “It’s only ten thirty. I usually do a few laps of the perimeter. It helps to keep me fit.”
“Sounds good, may I join you?”
“Of course. But if I’m too slow, please feel free to run on ahead.” He smiled, his face showing embarrassment.
They trotted over side by side to the perimeter, travelling anticlockwise. McBride thought that was strange, he would have gone round the other way if it was left to him. They were running now at a steady jog, and McBride realised halfway round that Ben was quite fit. That was good news he had been afraid that when they broke out Ben might have been a hindrance.
They passed the ends of the two barrack blocks, and turned to go past behind them. The bulk of the camp area was at the other side. Here the barracks were only maybe thirty feet from the perimeter fence. He mentally paced out the length of the block as he ran. 200 feet, he made it.
“There’s about a hundred prisoners here, is that right, Ben?”
“Give or take. Males only. I don’t know if any women were brought to Russia. If there were, they aren’t in this camp.”
“But there are only about thirty or so of us in our barracks, with the guards occupying the floor above? So where are the other sixty or more of us?”
Ben nodded his head towards the block they
were passing. “In there, two floors of prisoners. The Russians only occupy our top floor.”
McBride nodded. Now they had come to the end of the barracks. A large tank on short legs stood on a concrete pad.
“What’s that tank? Surely not water? Is it oil? Don’t tell me there’s central heating?”
Ben smiled and said: “Certainly not. That is for the diesel generator. All the electricity is generated in a room at the end of the block on the ground floor.”
McBride looked at the pipe going through the wall from the tank, and looked up and saw an exhaust pipe and silencer emerging about twelve feet up. He could see black exhaust fumes, and hear the slow throb of a six cylinder engine. Looking again he could make out another exhaust outlet, but no smoke.
“They’ve got two generators, I see.”
“Quite likely. They’ve got a lot of electric lighting for two blocks, and then the perimeter lights, searchlights on the guard tower. And they presumably can run on one generator if the other one breaks down.”
McBride turned his attention back to the fence. He had seen that it was chain-link, supported on concrete posts. At least twelve feet high, and on top of that there were three strands of what looked like razor wire. The chain link was scarred with rust. He bet it would be easy to cut, if you had the right equipment. That was a big if. And then he spotted the porcelain insulators, five of them spaced out on the concrete posts. Wires ran along the camp side of the fence. Electrified fence.
“Hi Ben, is the fence electrified all the time?”
“Don’t think so. Just at night, so one of the other guys told me.”
McBride nodded and looked up at the watch tower on this corner. It didn’t look as though it was in use. In fact, the whole operation looked a bit makeshift, the staff scruffy certainly not soldiers. Too old, for a start, and some of them, including the officer, too fat.
“Has anyone escaped since you’ve been here, Ben?”
“No. They say that there was a breakout a couple of years ago. Then there were fewer prisoners, and the staff were a bit stretched. Apparently after the escape happened the staffing levels were beefed up.”
“How many staff now, do you think?”
“Well they’re working a three shift system. About nine on each shift. But if there was trouble I reckon all twenty seven of them would respond.”
They had not stopped running as they conversed, and were coming up to the other end of the compound. As they turned the final corner they could see the guard house and the main watch tower ahead. They had a good chance to study it as they loped along at a slower pace. They could see one man up in the watch tower, two others smoking in front of the gatehouse, both armed. Presumably they would have a machine gun mounted on a tripod up in the tower.
“Haven’t seen any dogs,” said McBride.
“No, they don’t have kennels, and I’ve never seen any dogs about. I thought that was strange when I came here.”
McBride had seen everything he wanted but was game for another couple of circuits before lunch.