Francy Powers Jr. - Spy Pilot - Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 Incident, and a Controversial Cold War Legacy

I must admit that I was very angry. That is putting it mildly. There is no excuse what-so-ever for her not writing more during this period of time. It only takes a few minutes to write a letter and let someone know that a person is all right.

Not counting the two letters I received before she came to Moscow in August I have received nine letters from her. Total I have received eleven that is an average of one a month. If the number of letters are any indication of the amount of love she has for me then we should have been divorced long ago.

Speaking of divorce, I am at the present time firmly determined to divorce her when I return to the States. It should have been done in fifty seven but for some reason I did not do it then. I don’t know why now that I think back on it. I thought at the time that I loved her too much to let her go but now I don’t know. I have never liked divorces and I hate the thoughts of getting one but I know that I can never make the kind of life I want with any woman who, while drawing her husband’s pay which he has sacrificed several months of his freedom, so far, does not have enough consideration for him to write a few letters which takes very little time when one considers the fact that she is not working and has nothing to do.

I do not mind her enjoying herself while I am here as long as she conducts herself as a wife should. That is all right but I did not expect her to become so engrossed in seeking pleasure and forgetfulness that she forgets that she had a husband.

She has caused me since January, extreme mental suffering. Several times I became so nervous that my hands shake so much that my cell mate wanted to call the doctor. I wouldn’t let him and it would pass after about thirty minutes. The things she has done since we have been married and which now I have plenty of time to remember and think about have made this last year almost unlivable. There have been numerous times that I have thought about stopping all these thoughts for good.

I can never have a future with her because the past will always be between us. I fooled myself for a while but I can not do so in the future. I want a happy home with children. I can never have it with her. There is nothing else to do. I only hope I am able to be firm about this when I am free. I cannot do anything at the present time because I foolishly left her with complete power of attorneys and she can take all I have. 45

By the time these anguished words first assaulted me, I was a grown man who had known love and heartbreak, and I was able to experience my father’s despair over his dying relationship as someone who understood the urge to try to save something that was dying. After all, love is a powerful emotion that affects people in different ways. In prison, Dad needed the emotional support of his wife through correspondence. But Barbara was having a difficult time handling the stress, notoriety, and front-page headlines, so she dealt with it in her own self-destructive way. Reading the letters and the journal, I could see how Dad was trying to convince himself that things would work out, but eventually he came to the realization that he could not repair the damage that had been done.

Rumors apparently concerning the pilot’s troubled marriage reached his superiors long before the shoot-down, which the Prettyman inquiry addressed. A man whose identity was redacted but who had direct oversight of Powers, which may have been Colonel William M. Shelton, said, “I am confident in my own mind that this did not affect his flying.” 46

Trying to occupy his time with reading, rug-making, and following the moves of an important chess tournament in the Soviet media, Dad frequently played chess against Zigurd, who tutored him on the finer points of the game. “He beat me one time blindfolded,” he said on his tapes. “Would sit with his back to the chess board and say, move such and such to here [and] I’d tell him where I’d moved. Still beat me.” 47

Prison life required many adjustments and offered few distractions, but Dad quickly learned that he could have had it much worse.

US Interrogator: From what you saw in the prison, would you say you were treated better, worse, or about the same as the other prisoners?

Powers: Well I thought better. But I asked them about this. I told them I didn’t want to be treated any better than anyone else, and they said that they have three—what they call—three regimes, a severe regime, a normal regime, and a light regime. And they said that I was on the light regime and they treated all the prisoners who were on the light regime the same way. Now I don’t know whether this was true or not. But supposedly the prisoners on the light regime receive better food, but you couldn’t prove that by me. Two hours’ walk a day instead of one, get to keep your hair, they didn’t shave your head every 10 days or clip it all off, and you could shave daily if you had your own razor blades—and they let me keep razor blades in the cell, which surprised me. I heard that on the severe regime the people get 30 minutes’ walk a day—well, it’s a punishment—this severe. The normal prisoner received one hour[’s] walk a day, their hair was shaved off every ten days, the food was supposedly worse, but I really don’t know…. 48

In a journal entry, he explained his daily routine:

It is the rule for all prisoners; get up at six o’clock in the morning. I haven’t been a good keeper of this rule because I do not get up unless someone wakes me and it has been very seldom that anyone has awakened me in the mornings. I am usually up between six and seven but have sometimes slept longer. I don’t like to do this but if they want me to get up all they have to do is say so. I suppose the reason I sleep late in the mornings is that most of the time I have a lot of trouble getting to sleep at night. It seems that the minute I prepare for sleep it is an indication for my mind to become filled with thoughts. There have been many times that I do not get to sleep before two or three o’clock in the morning. The average time I get to sleep would probably be around midnight when the guards change.

My cell mate does not wake me up. He lets me sleep and usually takes advantage of my being in bed and his having more room to move about in, to do his morning exercises. He also cleans the floor which takes two or three minutes. I feel bad about this because he does it all the time but even when I wake up he tells me to stay in bed so I won’t be in his way while he is cleaning the floor. He says it is part of his exercise and won’t let me do it even if I am up.

Depending on the time, we either go to the toilet before or after breakfast. Most of the time it is before. There is only cold water there and that wakes me up completely. I wash from the waist up each morning in the ice cold water.

Usually we do not have time to shave before breakfast and if we do we usually do not get hot water until breakfast so most of the time we shave after breakfast.

Breakfast is served usually between seven-thirty and eight o’clock and consists of either a soup or a porridge. There are usually two kinds of soups for breakfast, either fish soup or a vegetable soup made primarily from dried peas etc. There are several different kinds of porridge, cream of wheat, barley, millet, wheat, and oats. Each morning we are offered one of the above mentioned items. We also receive the bread ration for the day. I only take half my ration because I do not eat bread as much as everyone else seems to do here. I am also able to get a better bread occasionally from the commissary. There are two kinds of bread given each day, rye and whole wheat.

After breakfast and washing our dishes we usually have about one hour and one-half before walk. We shave and I either spend the time until the walk reading or studying Russian. Many months went by when I was so down hearted that, I am sorry to say, I did not study at all, I only read. Lately since July I have been spending an average of more than two hours a day on my studying but haven’t made a tremendous amount of progress. I used to be a fairly good student but since I have been in prison I cannot seem to concentrate and have a lot of trouble in remembering the words which it is necessary to remember in order to learn a language. I do not only have the trouble in Russian but many times when I am reading unless it is an exceptionally good book I sometimes have to reread pages more than once for my mind wanders to other things and I completely lose the meaning of the words that I am reading. Prison in my case is not conducive to good studying.