Francis Powers - Operation Overflight

The group did not engage in sabotage. Its primary functions, apparently, were to provide intelligence from behind the Iron Curtain and to form a nucleus of partisans that could be of assistance in the event of war.

Though in the Latvian underground for over a year and a half, he did not attempt to contact his parents. Erroneously, he had been reported killed in Germany. Not wanting to endanger them because of his activities, he had allowed them to believe that he was dead.

In summer his group had camped in the forests. Winters were so severe, however, that they had to have shelter. The underground hid them on a farm. One night they received warning that the secret police were closing in on the transmitter. A guide arrived, to take them to safety. After walking some distance, he left them by the side of a road while he went for a transport.

Since he had the radio strapped to his back and didn’t want it to be seen, Zigurd had left the others, retreating into the woods about one hundred feet, out of sight of the road, where he sat down on a log.

That was the last thing he remembered. On opening his eyes, he found he was staring at the checkerboard pattern in a wooden floor. He had been nearly frozen; now he was warm. Only then did he discover that he was bound to a chair in an interrogation room.

Though he had thought about it often, he was not sure how many hours or days had passed since his capture, nor exactly how it had occurred. He was sure he had been betrayed, however, and suspected the guide had been an informer. That he had been picked up so far back from the road, moments after arriving at the spot, indicated the secret police had been lying in wait.

After what he described as a “farce of a trial”—he was allowed no defense, the judge simply listened to the charges, then gave him the maximum prison sentence—he had been held in solitary confinement for almost three years, while they attempted to break him and make him identify others in the underground. Failing in this, they had transferred him to Vladimir.

When he arrived, his jailers had suggested that he write to his parents, giving them his new address. He had refused to do so. Rather than have them live under the stigma of a son in prison, he preferred that they believe him dead. But the Russians had written for him. His parents had come all the way from Latvia for a visit. And now they sent him letters and packages regularly.

That was Zigurd’s story, as he first told it. Not until much later would I learn how much he had left out.

He apologized for his rough English. There had been more than five years since he had had an opportunity to use it.

We made a deal: I’d help him with his English if he would teach me Russian.

Several times during our talk I had heard tapping from the adjoining walls. Was it a code? I whispered. He nodded. What were they saying? “They’re asking, ‘Is Powers there?’”

Zigurd hadn’t replied to the tapping. Not sure whether the cell was bugged, I didn’t question him further. I guessed that having spent three years in solitary he was not willing to risk being returned there for a minor infraction of the rules.

Only on going to bed did he remove his beret.

There was another difference between Lubyanka and Vladimir. Here, after ten P.M., when the lights changed and the radio went off, you weren’t allowed to remain up or to read.

Zigurd fell asleep almost immediately. I lay awake for several hours, thinking about my new world, wondering when, or if, I would ever adjust to it.

Insofar as first impressions went, I liked my cellmate. As he told it, his story sounded believable. But I knew I couldn’t risk trusting him. There was always the possibility he was a Soviet “plant.”

At first everything was strange. Within a few days it became routine, then, all too soon, monotonous.

At six A.M. the squawk box blared the musical call sign of Radio Moscow. I started to get up, but my cellmate told me to remain in bed. He had to do his exercises and needed the floor space. These completed, he swept the cell. I offered to do it; he insisted it was part of his exercises. In prison, I soon learned, work of any kind is coveted. Though it required less than two minutes, Zigurd retained the right to sweep the floor, and no matter how many times I protested, he refused to let me do it.

Once dressed, we were escorted to the toilet, taking along the bucket, which Zigurd emptied and then rinsed with a strong disinfectant. Only two trips to the toilet were allowed each day; in the interim there was the bucket. Zigurd insisted on carrying and washing it; this too was part of his exercise, he said. On this I stood firm. We reached a compromise, he taking it one trip, I the next.

The toilet was located at the far end of the cellblock. On opening the door, the smell was almost overpowering. The window was left open permanently in an attempt to air the room. It was not successful.

The toilets were of the Asian, that is, bombsight, type, consisting of open holes in the floor. Learning to squat over them took some getting used to.

There was only one washbasin, with Spartan cold water. Following my cellmate’s example, I stripped to the waist and washed myself thoroughly. After that I was wide awake.

When we returned to our cell, I sorted out my new impressions. There was only one door to the cellblock, located midway down our row. There was also, for the whole cellblock, only one guard, who didn’t wear a gun.

About seven o’clock he brought the chaenek, filled with hot water. We used part of it to shave. I was surprised to find Zigurd not only had a razor but also a small piece of broken mirror. With the rest of the water we made tea.

Between seven-thirty and eight, breakfast was served. We received the same food as the other prisoners, soup or porridge, ladled out of the huge kettle. There were two kinds of soup, one smelling strongly of fish and the other made primarily from dried peas. We received whichever kind was available that day. When porridge was served, it was one of several varieties—manna (similar to Cream of Wheat), boiled oats, barley, millet, or buckwheat. I liked the manna best. I couldn’t stomach the fish soup; even when I held my nose, it smelled bad. At breakfast we were also issued our bread ration for the day: a good-sized piece of black or rye bread, about five inches long and three inches thick. Occasionally a lighter whole wheat was served instead. Delicious, fairly fresh white bread could be purchased from the commissary, as could margarine and, on rare occasion, butter. These extra items were available to anyone with money to buy them. Fortunately, before leaving Moscow, Barbara had left twenty-six hundred rubles (about $260) on deposit in my name, to cover such purchasable items, postage, and duty on packages. I was not too fond of black bread and usually gave Zigurd my ration.

There was a labor camp connected to the prison, with about 150 prisoners. Their barracks—which also housed the cooks and other service personnel—was one of the buildings I’d passed on the way from the administration building, and from the window I could see its upper floors, as well as the tops of the buildings in the work area itself. At eight each morning I’d peek through the crack in the window to watch some sixty to eight of the prisoners as they were marched through the arched gateway, around our building, and—on the other side, out of sight—through another gate into the work camp. Most wore prison-issue clothing, gray coat and pants, but some wore combinations of prison issue and their own.

I knew nothing about their life, and only a little about their work—apparently they worked with lumber, possibly making boxes or something similar, as I could hear a sawmill and hammering—but I envied their being outside and having something to do. I had already counted my time. It would be fifteen months before I could apply for transfer to a work camp, and even then there was no assurance the request would be granted.