Living in the Present

The lights went out.  We had this happen every night.  I think they went out every night at the same time, and we were seldom prepared for it.  In the dark we had to spread our mats out.  The mats took up most of the floor space.  We spread them out with some planning for a clearing to the toilet.  We didn’t have any blankets.  It wasn’t cold or damp in this jail cell so we were all right with just the clothes we wore and, of course, our jackets.

I was surprised at how tired I was and much more surprised when I only woke from the noise of the opening of our cell door.  I had slept all night.

We were shown our pants and shoes and five small loaves of bread all being on the floor next to our cell door.  We had to hurry and pick all this up as we heard “Rausch Rausch,” and the door closed with a bang.  We all pulled on our pants and laced up our shoes.  The pants and shoes made me feel stronger.  I felt well able to get through all this.

Then we turned our attention to the bread.  We didn’t have a knife so we just had to chew our way through.  The bread tasted sour, but remember it was more than 24 hours since we had eaten, and it satisfied us very much.  We had five cans the size of large coffee cans on our shelf and cold water from our sink.

We sat and talked after this breakfast, and one subject was urinating at night.  The toilet had no seat, and the guys sleeping near the toilet were fearful of the splash when urinating was done standing.  A most important rule was made then, and we abided by it all the time.  We had to sit on the cold bowl.  Also, we were to try for bowel movements in daytime if at all possible.  After all, we were living in a bathroom, or very like one, a bathroom without a tub or a shower, and we had to have rules.

This was our first day in a jail.  We had seen all we had in this cell and wanted to look out the window.  It was high up in the wall, and two guys would hold one guy up so he could look out.  We took turns about the same length of time.  All we saw was a dreary cold winter scene, a dirty grey building which I suppose was part of the jail, and open yards.  We knew our room cell.  Now we all wondered, what next.  They wouldn’t bother with food, I was sure, if shooting was next.

In the afternoon our door opened suddenly, and there were two guards with a man standing between them.  He had a wheeled contraption holding a large container.  We were made to understand that we should get our cans, and as we crowded around the door, the man with a ladle filled our cans, but for hungry men he didn’t fill them to the top.  The door closed, and there we were each with a can mostly filled but not completely.

We had spoons given us before the door closed so we hungrily spooned it in our mouths.  We found we had a sort of a cross between a stew and a thick soup.  There was a little meat and some potatoes, but also there was sand in this mixture.  As the days went by we developed a contest to see who had the most sand and the most potatoes because we got this same menu every day.

This was a long day; we talked and got to know each other. We didn’t at any time talk of our future.  It was our past life and our families that held our attention.  We had no way of knowing what to expect, and I guess we just closed our minds to the future.  I wonder now how I could have done that.  I had relaxed and was accepting everything as it came along.

We tried to figure out what the date could be and thought it must be about the 15th or 20th of December.  I decided to scratch a mark on the wall for each day spent in this cell.  I told my friends I had read “The Count of Monte Cristo” and he had done that.  This interested my friends and they wanted to know if I could remember the story well enough to tell it to them.

Night came and the cell door opened.  Two guards demanded our pants and shoes.  This was actually a warning, soon the lights would be turned off.

The rest of December was spent here in our jail cell, and I am sure of January, how much I’m not sure.  We did count the days, but we had no idea of the date of the first day.  Christmas came and went as did New Year’s without our knowledge.  This missed Christmas of 1943 hurt us a lot.  We found solace telling each other of past Christmas’s and in singing hymns that we could remember.  We were particularly fond of “We’ve Gathered Together To Ask the Lord’s Blessing,” and we gave that one our best.  We were loud and, we thought, on key.

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known;
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing;
Sing praises to His Name; He forgets not His own.

But I am getting ahead of myself.  I didn’t know where to put Christmas in this narration so I told you of one of our major disappointments.  There were some highlights to our days.

We had been in our cell for several days when in the middle of the morning the cell door opened.  This did alarm us as it was unusual at that time of day.  With yells of “Rausch, Rausch” we hurried down the stairs and into the courtyard.  There were men there already, walking in a counter-clockwise circle.  We were ordered into the circle in English and told not to speak or look directly at each other.  There were guards with guns who made us very obedient.

These other guys looked terrible, unshaven, dirty-looking clothes.  I hadn’t noticed my companions looking so bad, but they did here in the circle.  I wondered what I looked like.  I hadn’t seen a mirror for a long time now.

We walked and walked in this circle until other guards gathered us up in proper groups.  We didn’t speak until we saw the door close and we were alone again.  Then we all talked of the guys we had seen and wondered if they too were American airmen.

©Joseph H. Harrison 1999