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.
We knelt down along the edge of the dry moat and looked across to the loom of the first tall wooden fence as Kolemenos slithered in and braced himself against the steep-sloping near side. We used him as a human stepping stone, and as we clambered over him he took our feet in his linked and cupped hands and heaved us one by one on to the ledge at the base of the twelve-foot palisade. More vital minutes were lost in pulling Kolemenos out of the ditch. By standing on his shoulders and reaching out at full stretch, we were able to haul ourselves over the top, and standing on the lateral securing timber on the other side, lean over and help up the later arrivals.
Anchor-man Kolemenos again posed us a problem. Straddling the top of the fence, our legs held firm, Makowski and I leaned head downwards and arms outstretched to haul at him, one arm each. Three times we got his fingers to within inches of the top and three times we had to lower him down again. We paused, trembling with exertion and near-despair, and tried again. His fingers scrabbled for a hold on the top, gripped. To our straining he began to add his own tremendous strength. He came up, up and over.
To beat the coiled wire at the foot of the fence we threw ourselves outwards, landing in a heap in the deep snow. One or two failed to leap quite clear and were scratched as they pulled themselves away. We were in the patrol alley now between the two fences and time was running out. If I had heard the sound of the sledge dogs announcing the start of a patrol now, I think I might have been physically sick.
We ran the few yards to the outer fence and this time shoved Kolemenos up first. We were probably making little noise, but it seemed to me the commotion was deafening. This time I was last up and it was Kolemenos who swung me up and over. In a final mad scramble we leapt and tumbled over the last lot of barbed wire at the foot of the outer fence, picked ourselves up, breathlessly inquired if everyone was all right, and, with one accord, started to run. Round my waist was tied the old sheepskin jacket. I tugged it free, dropped it and heard it slithering along behind me attached to the thong looped on my wrist.