Francis Powers - Operation Overflight

After washing our breakfast dishes with newspapers, not a very sanitary method but all we could manage, there was about an hour and a half before our walk. We usually spent the time reading. Zigurd was as happy as a child at Christmas when he saw all the American paperbacks I’d brought from Lubyanka. Otherwise, we’d study Russian. Finding it hard to concentrate, I was a slow pupil, but Zigurd was patient. In a remarkably short time, just from our conversations, his English improved greatly. He had a natural flair for languages and had given up the study of French only because, having no one to practice it with, he was afraid of developing bad pronunciation habits. It wasn’t long before he had thoroughly indoctrinated me in one of his beliefs: every child in every country should be taught Esperanto. With all people able to converse in a common tongue, he was convinced that many of the world’s problems would disappear.

About ten o’clock we were taken out for our walk. And I made some additional discoveries, negating those made earlier. Although our guard had keys to all the cells, he did not have a key to the door connecting our cellblock to the rest of the building. This had to be opened by a guard on the other side. So, even should we succeed in overpowering our guard, there still remained the problem of getting out of the cellblock.

The green, red, and white light arrangement wasn’t used at Vladimir. But chance encounters were prevented by taking out only the occupants of a single cell at one time. According to my cellmate, this was of greater concern in our building than in others, because it housed political prisoners, that is, conspiring types. Some of the political prisoners had cellmates; many didn’t. Those who did were carefully paired in order to prevent their spending their time plotting. In the work camp, there were five to seven men in each room.

Our cell faced east. The walk areas were on the opposite side of the building, at ground level. To reach them we were taken downstairs, then out and around the building. Set some distance away from the building, up against the wall, there were about seven of these courtyards. From his guardwalk, one man could watch them all.

Our courtyard measured twenty by twenty-five feet. It took ten seconds to make a complete circle. To break the monotony—we had two hours—we would sit in the sun and do pushups. Feeding the pigeons we enjoyed most of all. It wasn’t long before I had several favorites and would watch for them each day.

From our courtyard we could see the windows of some of the cells on the west side of our building. Prisoners were forbidden to stand on their beds and yell out at those in the courtyards below. Some ignored the injunction. Zigurd would translate. For the first several days the messages were all the same.

“Is that Powers?” they would ask.

“Yes,” Zigurd would yell back.

“Give him our best wishes.”

I had wondered how other prisoners would react to the presence of an American spy. They were friendly, and curious.

They weren’t the only curious ones. Cadets studying to be prison officials would visit Vladimir for practical experience. Often we could hear them outside the cell, whole classes lining up for their turn to look through the peephole at the American.

We could always tell when the building superintendent was making his rounds. The Little Major, as we dubbed him, was so fat that his belt buckle scraped against the door.

There was even less privacy than at Lubyanka. However, whenever we heard a sound outside—someone yelling, or, on one occasion, a gunshot—we devised a way to look out the top of the window without being observed. One of us would stand in front of the door, the back of his head covering the peephole, while the other looked out. It had to be quick, because if the guard looked in and saw the peephole blocked, he’d immediately open the door.

Lunch was the best meal of the day, consisting of an excellent soup and a plate of either cabbage, noodles, rice, manna, or mashed potatoes. We were also given two hundred grams, or about half a tin cup, of milk. This was a special privilege, Zigurd informed me; milk was usually reserved for convalescent patients in the hospital. Possibly it was due to the fact that I was still having some stomach trouble. On warm days the milk was usually spoiled, but by letting it stand until it turned to clabber and mixing in a little sugar, we made a passable yoghurt.

We were accorded still another special privilege, although several days passed before we were informed of it. I would be allowed to keep my hair, and since we were in the same cell, Zigurd would be allowed to grow his again. This pleased me as much as it did him, although for quite different reasons. The hair rule appeared to be arbitrary. Of those prisoners I could see from my window, most had their hair clipped short, but a number didn’t. Among the latter, however, were apparently those shortly due for release. It was a small thing, perhaps entirely meaningless, but letting me keep my hair seemed to indicate that there might be some possibility of an early release. Of such fragmentary hopes are a prisoner’s day made.

Actually, in retrospect, I suspect letting me keep my hair was intended less as a privilege than because it suited Soviet propaganda purposes. When, later, pictures were taken of me, which I was actually urged to send to my family, I looked healthier and far better-treated than would have been the case had I been scalped.

Masters of propaganda, the Russians carefully considered such things.

The afternoon passed slowly, and was spent in napping, reading, or studying. Supper, the worst meal of the day, was invariably potatoes or cabbage. After supper we took our second and last trip to the toilet. The evening was spent in much the same manner as mornings and afternoons.

One night we decided to test how far our “privileged state” extended. Using cardboard from a package, we made a shade for the night light, to keep it from shining directly in our eyes. Our privileged state didn’t extend that far. Yelling “ Nyet! ” the guard rushed in and made us take it down.

Usually I would not fall asleep until after the changing of the guard, at midnight. Often much later. This was the very worst time for me. It seemed that the moment I was ready to go to sleep my mind would be filled with thoughts I couldn’t suppress. During the day our conversation served to hold the most depressing of these in abeyance. In the still of the night they would sometimes rebound with nightmare intensity.

Nearly all concerned Barbara. Hopes, worries, and fears, and when I’d face up to it, thoughts about her, about me, about our marriage.

Through sheer willpower I’d nearly always succeed in suppressing such thoughts. But never for very long. I needed to trust my wife, but there was no reason to suppose that just because I was locked in a prison cell her pattern would change.

When sleep did come, it was often troubled.

This was my routine.

Fortunately, for our sanity, there were variations.

About once a week we were given a small cube of meat, usually thumbnail size. This was our sole meat ration, and we looked forward to it with a longing out of all proportion to what we actually received. We were starved for fats. There was margarine available from the prison commissary, but it didn’t satisfy the body’s craving.

Also about once a week the doctor or nurse came around to see how we were feeling, asking if we needed pills for constipation or aspirin for headaches. Oddly enough, the nurses were known as “Sisters,” a lingering vestige of more religious days.

Zigurd told me a story relating to these visits. A former cellmate, a young boy arrested for painting posters satirizing Soviet leaders, had developed a crush on one of the nurses. There was no indication that his feelings were reciprocated, but he talked of nothing else, counting the days, hours, minutes, until her next visit. One day, while Zigurd was napping, he tore apart his tin plate and swallowed the pieces, knowing the doctors would have to operate to remove them and that he would remain in the hospital, within sight of her, while recuperating.