Priorities

At Christmastime we received a present, I think.  At the time I wondered about it, why this generous gesture, but I didn’t connect it with Christmas because, as I have said, we had no idea what the exact date was.  Our cell door opened one day at an unusual time.  We stood up and waited with some concern to see what was going to happen.  This time a guard came in and put five candy bars on our shelf near our cans.  He turned and left without saying anything.  That is when we grabbed the candy.  It was chocolate, delicious looking even though there were worms in the candy.  If you are hungry enough, you can overlook many things.  I ate my bar slowly pushing the worms away.  I really considered eating the worms thinking there might be some protein value, but I couldn’t do it.  I still wasn’t that hungry.

Twice we were hurried out into the hall under guard during our stay in this jail cell and ordered to sit down on stools with guards holding guns standing over us.  Then a fellow who looked like a prisoner too shaved us one after the other.  It was very painful.  I had a week or so of growth each time, and the guy was using a straight razor which wasn’t sharp, and this dull razor pulled at the hair.

Back in the cell my friends looked cleaner, and I guess I did too.

Once while we were in this prison we were hurried down several flights of stairs under guard and taken into a room where there were several shower heads along a wall and drains in the floor.  We were ordered to strip and put our clothes on the floor.  We were even given soap, and the water was warm.  I washed my hair and lathered my body all over when suddenly the water was turned off.  We all still had not rinsed of the soap.  We didn’t have any towels, and because we were being rushed, I just shook myself like a dog does and then put on my trusty heavy underwear over the soap and water.

We got back to our cell, and good old Gotty produced a French newspaper.  I was the only one who could read French.  I read some of it, but France was a captured country, and the news was all German and only what they wanted to print.  The paper was old so we had no way of knowing the date or how old the paper was.

We decided to make playing cards out of the newspaper.  One fellow carefully tore out paper about playing card shape, and Gotty produced a pencil he had found.  We could always depend on him. We passed some time with these cards.  Because they couldn’t be shuffled, they had to be laid out on the floor and picked up randomly.  Also they had to be laid on the floor to play with.  They had no body and unfortunately wore out soon.

We exercised under heavy guard three times while we were at that jail, always threatened with death if we spoke or looked at each other; and you can bet we obeyed.  On our last exercise trip, when we got back, Gotty showed us a cigarette and a match which he had been lucky enough to get from a guard.  And, as usual, Gotty had a plan.  We were to sit in a circle.  He would light the cigarette and take a puff and pass it to the guy on his right and so on until everyone had had it.  He insisted that no one wet the tip, and only one puff on the cigarette at a turn was allowed with no long draw.  I still had smoked very seldom simply because I couldn’t really get to enjoy smoking.  But in this place and with one cigarette, I joined the group; I enjoyed the camaraderie.  It was fun.  We obeyed Gotty absolutely.  We were all proud of him; he had come up with such nice surprises and we were grateful to him.  We passed the cigarette until it was gone, really gone, almost to the end.  I never heard the heavy smokers complain about the lack of cigarettes.  They, like me, had other things to worry about of more importance.

One thing that bothered me a lot was that Sam made a lot of unnecessary noise when he ate.  I tried to ignore it, but it bothered me so much I found I disliked him at times.

But we had some laughs with our pants off after the door closed at night.  Standing in our heavy underwear, we were certainly a funny sight.  We all had worn the same underwear for over a month now and the crotches were so stretched, they hung way down almost half way to our knees.

By the time we guessed it was February from the number of days we had been in our jail cell, we had become accustomed to our routine, and we were surviving.  We had managed once to see M. Titron through our little window.  He was walking in a circle of prisoners in a far-away court; so we knew he was still alive.

We had not been out of our cell for about a week when about an hour after our morning bread and our pants and shoes had been returned, we heard the cell door opening, and we were ordered out into the hall. I saw that we had an unusually heavy escort, all with guns, and we were hurried down the stairs with “Rausch, Rausch.” We were warned not to talk and we didn’t. I thought of our dog. I couldn’t remember if he was in the cell, and we hadn’t had enough time to even speak of him and remember the company he had given us.

©Joseph H. Harrison 1999