The Long Walk

One other priceless article I made in the ski shop was a fine three-inch-wide and foot-long knife. It was originally a section of broken saw blade which I heated in the workshop stove, hammered into shape and ground on the grindstone. The handle was two pieces of shaped wood tightly thonged together by long strips of deerskin. As Kolemenos became the keeper of the axe, so did I take over the custody of the knife. These were perilous possessions inside the camp. The discovery of either would have wrecked the whole scheme.

The problem of making fire was one we already had the answer to. Here, where matches were counted a luxury, there existed an effective, if primitive, method which made use of a thick fungoid forest growth which the Russians called gubka, literally sponge. It could be tugged off the trees in sheets. It was then boiled and dried. The fire-making equipment was completed with a bent nail and a piece of flintstone. The dry gubka, a supply of which we all carried stuffed into our jacket pockets, readily took the spark from the flint and could be blown into a red smoulder. We all became experts in its use.

The word reached us that in a week’s time it would be Easter Sunday. It fell in 1941 on 13 April, I have since discovered. The Sunday before, 6 April, marked the end of our preparations. Our escape wardrobe was then complete with the making of seven balaclava caps of fur with an extension flap down the back which could be tucked into the neck of our jackets. We were all tense and ready to go, worried about our valuable new possessions — the skins, the axe, the knife, the store of dehydrated bread — and fearful that at this point some of them might be stolen.

And on that day Ushakova sent for me and said, ‘My husband has gone to Yakutsk. That is why he did not attend the parade today. I have made seven bags out of provision sacks. You will have to take them out one at a time.’ She was perfectly calm. My heart was hammering with anxiety. When she handed me the first of these bags I saw that she had provisioned it, too, and I wondered how possibly we could hide it. I tucked the bag under my arm inside my jacket, stuck my hands in the deep pockets and walked back to the prisoners’ lines hunched up and bending over like a man in deep thought. Six times more in the next few days I made that hazardous trip, knowing each time that if any Russian discovered what I was carrying disaster would be sudden and complete. We made pillows of them, covering them with bits of animal skin and moss, and every hour that we were away from the hut we sweated in apprehension.

We acquired in those last few days a discarded and worn soldier’s sheepskin jacket. I told the others of an old poacher’s trick in which a sheepskin was dragged along behind to put the gamekeeper’s dogs off the human scent. We could try the trick ourselves, I suggested. The others agreed.

We watched the weather, so essential a part of our escape plan. We wanted snow, big-flaked, heavy-falling snow, to screen our movements. Monday was cold and clear. On Tuesday there was wind-driven, icy sleet. Mid- morning on Wednesday a lead-grey and lowering sky gave us the boon we sought. The snow thickened as the day went on. It began to pile up round the untrodden no-man’s-land between us and the wire. At the mid-day break the seven of us met briefly. The word went round. ‘This is the day.’ At about 4 p.m. I left the ski shop for the last time with my fufaika bulging with my hoard of bread and the knife-blade cold against my leg in my right boot. We drank our evening mug of hot coffee, ate some of the day’s bread issue and walked back to the hut in ones and twos.

There were frequent walks to the latrines as we tensely talked over the final plans. It was Smith who advised that we must not start our break too early. The camp must be allowed to settle down for the night before we moved. Midnight, he thought, would be a reasonable time to run for it. Meanwhile we must try to keep calm. And the blessed snow kept falling in big, obliterating cotton-wool flakes, covering everything.

Zaro it was who had the preposterous idea of attending the Politruk’s Wednesday evening indoctrination. We laughed at first and then Makowski said, ‘Why not?’ So we went, all seven of us, leaving our precious, moss- camouflaged bags on our bunks and telling ourselves that now, on this last night, nothing could go wrong. We sat ourselves at the back and the Politruk beamed a faintly surprised welcome at us. We smiled right back at him and tried not to fidget.

It was the most exciting political meeting I have ever attended, although the element of excitement owed little to the speaker. The Politruk, now the camp’s senior officer in the absence of Ushakov, was in good form. We heard again about the miracle of the Soviet State, about the value of toil, of self-discipline within the framework of State discipline, of the glorious international ideal of Communism. And what did Comrade Stalin say to his comrade workers on the State farms in 1938? An eager soldier leaps to his feet and quotes word-for-word two or three sentences of this epic appeal. The Politruk gave us it all — Soviet culture, capitalist decadence and disintegration and the rest of it. It was, as far as we were concerned, his farewell speech, and we enjoyed it accordingly.

There was about an hour and a half of it before we stood up to go.

‘Goodnight, Colonel,’ we chorused.

‘Goodnight,’ he answered.

Back in Hut Number One the men were beginning to settle for the night. Smith and Zaro, in the bunk nearest the door, were to give us the starting signal. We all broke up and climbed on to our bunks and lay there. Six of us lay wide awake and waiting, but big Kolemenos in the bunk below me was gently snoring.

I lay thinking and listening to the bumping of my heart. I remembered I had not said goodbye to Ushakova. I decided she would not have wanted me to. The hours dragged by. Gradually the hut grew quiet. There was a loud snoring from someone. A man babbled in his sleep. Someone, barely awake, got up and stoked the stove near his bunk.

Smith tapped my shoulder. ‘Now’, he whispered. Gently I shook Kolemenos. ‘Now,’ I repeated.

10. Seven Cross the Lena River

WE SWUNG our bags off the bunks by the rawhide straps which we had fitted for slinging them across our backs. We piled the moss coverings back in pillow form at the head of the beds. ‘Everybody well?’ I whispered. From all around me came the hissed answer, ‘Yes.’ ‘Anybody changed his mind?’ There was no reply. Said Makowski, ‘Let’s go.’

I dropped my bag near the door and stepped outside. The camp was silent. It was snowing as heavily as ever. I could not see the nearest wire. In the south-east guard tower, our nearest danger, they could not have had twenty yards visibility. We could be thankful that in this place of no piped water supply and no electricity, there were no searchlights to menace us.

The inner wire was a hundred yards from the hut door and the success of the first part of the operation depended on the observation that the frost-stiffened coils did not faithfully follow the contours of the ground. There was a dip in the ground straight ahead of us which we reckoned would provide a couple of feet of clearance if we burrowed through the snow and under the wire.

We went out one by one with about a minute’s interval between each. Zaro went first and I prayed he found the right spot at the first attempt. Then the Lithuanian. Then Mister Smith. Then Makowski and Paluchowicz. Kolemenos turned and whispered to me, ‘I hope they’ve made a bloody great hole for me to get through.’ I watched him run off into the night like the others, carrying his bag in front of him, ready, according to plan, to shove it through the gap ahead of him. Then it was my turn, and the palms of my hands were moist with sweat. I took a last swift look round. The men in the hut were sleeping on. I turned and bolted.

When I reached the wire Smith was under it and slowly wriggling forward. Two were through. The rest of us crouched down and waited. Agonising minutes passed as first the Sergeant and then Makowski squirmed and grunted, bellies flat pressed against the earth, under the wire. The big bulk of Kolemenos went head first into the gap and I held my breath. He was halfway through when the barbs took hold on the back of his jacket between the shoulder-blades. He shook himself gently and little pieces of ice tinkled musically down the coils of the wire.

‘Lie still, Anastazi,’ I hissed. ‘Don’t move at all.’ Someone on the other side had pulled his bag through and was reaching through over his neck to try to release him. The minutes ticked by. I was aware that my jaws were clamped tight and I was trying to count the passing seconds on my fingers. Kolemenos lay very still as the hand worked over between his shoulders. Someone spoke on the other side and the big man went forward again. I let my breath out in a long sigh and followed through. The first obstacle was behind us. It had taken a full twenty minutes.