Chapter 5

The Commandant liked to put baldy wounded or dying men in with the Officers to lower their moral. They had been kept isolated from the enlisted men to deny them any leaders. The Commandant would put the wounded men in with the Officers forcing them to share their food and beg for medical assistance. The first man had died without regaining consciousness. Whether it was from a beating or crash landing they didn't know. It greatly disturbed them that they never could get the man's name. They tried to memorize any features still intact. Since it was a mystery what the guards did with the bodies, the Officers felt it was their duty to someday be able to report what happened their fellow soldiers, just as they hoped someone would do for them.

The second man put in with them was a "rat," A soldier that cooperated with the enemy without resistance, even informing on his prison mates. The Officers could immediately spot one. Seldom did they have the typical interrogation wounds. They would fake injures and just exhibited a different kind of fear than the average prisoner. The Officers would not help them or even talk around them. Knowing they were wise to the rat the guards would take them away the next day. The Officers also memorized these men's names and faces since some of them were responsible for beatings and even deaths of other prisoners.

They had seen the new inmate brought in and since there wasn't the usual screams and pleas for mercy coming from the torture room they figured him for a rat. They were stunned when West was brought in and dropped at their feet.

"This guy's a real mess!" Lieutenant Corso said. West head was caked with blood he was covered with bruises and all manner of filth from the ditch. "He must have really pissed them off, dislocated shoulder too." Corso noted. It was a common injury to prisoners that were interrogated. "Maybe we ought to put it back while he's still out" he suggested. The Lieutenant held West down while the Captain forced the shoulder back into its socket. West gave an agonized catch in his labored breathing and writhed. "Were so sorry, we didn't want to hurt you!" Captain Ross told him. West lost consciousness again. The Officers lifted him onto the rude benches that served for bunks and covered him up with their mildewed wool blankets. Taking note of his features in case he didn't make it thru the night. All they could tell was that he had blond hair, blue eyes and was average height.

When West awoke again the Lieutenant gave him some water he choked on at first. "Soldier," the Captain said, " Were going to help you, can you tells your name?" West refused to speak to them either. "It's all right if you don't want to talk." Captain Ross thought perhaps the soldier was in mental shock. The Lieutenant said, "He's got a head injury, it would be terrible if they did this to him because he couldn't talk." They helped West get cleaned up and into some prison clothes. Later the guards brought a meal of foul smelling rice. You must want to live pretty bad to eat this stuff West thought. He managed to gulp some down. He learned later that if it had maggots in it the men considered them extra protein. It brought to mind the time he and his friends found a case of candy bars behind a store. They'd run to hide in the subway and divide their booty only to find the chocolate was crawling with worms. They had flung the candy away in disgust. What a feast that would have been in this place!

He watched as the gaunt bearded men went about there mundane days. In the morning the guards brought a can of swill that served for food. Then they would spend the day playing chess with crude figures they'd made, talking about books they read, movies they'd seen, talking about the camp, their pasts or their family's. West's facial bruises healed a little and they could see how young he really was. They left him alone since he didn't want to talk. Just shared their food with him. They could see the light of intelligence in his eyes as they followed them around the cell. West was trying to sort things out in his aching mind. What he had seen made the St. Valentine's Day massacre look like a picnic. Only one thing happened to witnesses were he came from. He didn't want to tell the men that helped him about it, possibly endangering them too. He didn't feel that telling them his name mattered. There was no one at home worried about his fate. He would just see what the lay of the land was before he said anything.

When the next mealtime came Captain Ross decided to warn West about what might happen. "Son, they might come back for you. There's nothing you could know that could be of any use to them. Try to give them what they want so they leave you alone. The important thing here is that they've tried to divide us into "Progressive's" and "Reactionary's," Progressives collaborate with the enemy. They rat on fellow prisoners. It's how they turn us against each other. They will offer you all kinds of things to do it. Just act stupid if they pull the ideology stuff on you" West already knew he would never cooperate, not because he was a particularly patriotic American, but more personally because they'd shot his friends and beaten him.

Sure enough the next day a couple of goons came for West. "Don't take him he's only a kid, he doesn't know anything!" The Captain Ross plead, powerless to stop them. "You're going to kill him!" West recalled his mother screaming those exact words when his father was administering particularly vicious beating. Not because she cared about him but because she didn't want the cops coming. He guessed that if he had succumbed to the abuse they would have just hid him in the trash and said he went to live with the grandparents. When he was gone Lieutenant Corso said, "Sheesh! Did you see the look on that kid's face. They ain't gonna get nothing out of him."

The Chinese had sent special interrogators to obtain propaganda films of confessions from the Officers. They had been brought close to death to get their signatures and filmed confessions. The films had to be scrapped because the men refused to follow scripts were too obviously under duress. When nothing more could de obtained from them the Commandant was ordered to keep them alive for now. That did not mean they couldn't be terrorized. They were the soft types that cared about others suffering, always demanding humane and equal treatment for the enlisted men. He'd taken account of how distressed they would get when he threatened to execute them in front of each other. This private was of no value and thus fair game. He had specific plans for the private, he would make it allot harder for the Officers to care for him. When the war was over he planned to sell the remaining prisoners for slave labor or just add them to the mass grave behind the camp. He never intended any of them would ever leave this place.

When the guards brought West in they tied his legs together and hands behind his back. The Commandant put his foot on West's back and forced him down until his victim screamed. Besides the burning pain in his shoulder West felt something give way in the small of his back accompanied by unbearable pain. The Commandant kicked him a few times in the back to boot. West later awoke in a solitary confinement cell unable to move. He was always was a loner so solitude didn't frighten him but the cold dark floor was all to familiar. He never really thought much about his early childhood. He had set out to be the rottenest punk on the street so no-one would ever treat him that way again. He'd done some pretty bad things but it all seemed like a million years ago.

As he lie there he remembered one Christmas when the grandparents had sent toys and books instead of money. His father had gone into a rage, the gifts were immediately taken out and sold. Then it was the closet for little Artie that night while his parents went out. He had been told the neighbors were listening and would tell if they heard any crying. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Artie would sit there cold and hungry. Sometimes his parents forgot him until the next day. They must have really resented that the grandparents cared about me he thought. The irony was not lost on him that he could have avoided all this by being murdered in a nice clean (compared to this) American jail. West decided that if he saw the Officers again he would risk telling them about what happened to his unit. He looked around the room to see a rats eating the plate of rice that he couldn't get to anyway. When the guards saw he hadn't moved all day they threw him back in with the Officers.