II
Farnworth wasn’t a prison of high walls and cells. It was a prison of chains,
sharp-shooting guards and savage dogs.
If the days were terrible, the nights were worse. At the end of each day, seventy-seven stinking, unwashed men were herded like cattle into a
bunkhouse fifty feet long and ten feet wide with one small barred window
and an iron-studded door. Each man was shackled to a chain that circled the
bunkhouse. He was shackled in such a way that whenever he moved the other
men were jerked awake by the communal chain tightening.
After a day in the burning sun, working until every bone in your body ached,
the slightest irritation became intolerable. Often when a man was restless in
his sleep and jerked the chain, his neighbour struck at him, and vicious fights
were continually breaking out in the stifling darkness.
Once we were locked in the bunkhouse, the guards left us alone until the
morning. They didn’t care how many fights broke out, and if anyone got
murdered, it meant just one less for them to bother about.
There were only twelve guards to look after the prisoners. At night they went
off duty with the exception of one man. This man, Byefleet by name, was in
charge of the dogs. There was something so savage and primitive about him
that even the dogs were scared of him.
The dogs were kept in a big steel pen during the day and they were kept short
of food. They were as dangerous as tigers.
At seven o’clock each night, the prisoners were chained to their bunks and
the guards went off duty. It was then Byefleet, a giant of a man, fat, with the
face of a pig, came into his kingdom. Carrying a baseball club, he would go
to the steel pen and let the dogs out.
No one except this pig of a man dared to move into the open before half-past
four in the morning when the dogs were herded back into their pen and the
guards came on duty.
Night after night I lay sleepless in my bunk while I listened to the snarling of
the dogs as they walked around the buildings that made up the prison farm.
Before I could escape from this hellhole I knew I would have to find some
way of fixing those dogs.
From the moment I stepped inside Farnworth prison I had made up my mind
to escape. I had been in this prison now for ten days, and already they were
ten days too many. If it hadn’t been for the dogs, I would have crashed out after the first night and taken my chance of being shot down.
Neither the lock on my ankle chain nor the lock on the bunkhouse door presented any
difficulties.
During my first terrible night in the bunkhouse, I had managed to loosen a piece of wire from the grill that served as my mattress, and after a struggle
that left my fingers bleeding, I had succeeded in breaking off a strand some
three inches long. With that and a little patience I could fix any Farnworth
lock.
It drove me half-cr@zy to know I could escape from this stinking bunkhouse if
it hadn’t been for those snarling dogs out there in the darkness. Somehow I
had to dream up an idea to fool them.
During the days that followed, I came to the conclusion that an escape
attempt in daylight was out of the question.
Every morning we were marched to the fields, guarded by sot guards armed
with automatic rifles and on horseback.
The road to the fields was as bare of cover as the back of my hand. Long
before I could reach the distant highway or the river, I would have been shot
down by one of the guards who would come after me on his horse.
If I were to escape, the attempt would have to be made at night, but first I
would have to think of a way to fool those dogs.
So during the day, while I toiled in the fields and most of the night as I lay in
my stinking bunk, I wracked my brains as to how I could lick those dogs, but
nothing came up that was of any use.
Each morning as we paraded for the roll call, I passed the dog pen. There
were ten dogs in the steel cage: massive brutes, some Alsatians, some wolf
hounds. A man on his own attempting to escape wouldn’t stand a chance
against those ten dogs.
They would concentrate on him and tear him to pieces
before he got twenty yards from the bunkhouse.
The problem baffled me.
It wasn’t until I had been at Farnworth for close on a month that I solved the
problem.
I was put on kitchen fatigue: a job every prisoner dreaded.
The food dished up for the prisoners was practically uneatable. The invariable
diet was potato soup in which floated lumps of half rotten meat. Working in
the kitchen in the heat and the ghastly stink of rotting meat was an experience
to turn the strongest stomach.
To disguise the taste of the meat, the cook used a lot of pepper, and it was
this pepper that gave me the idea of fixing the dogs.
For the next three days when I returned to the bunkhouse I brought back with
me a pocketful of pepper which I hid in a flour sack in my bunk.
I was now two steps forward in my escape plan. I had the means of opening
the door of the bunkhouse and I had a quantity of pepper to throw the dogs
off my scent once I reached the river.
But if the dogs spotted me, no amount of pepper would save me. The pepper would only serve a purpose if I could get out of sight of the dogs, and they
then came after me, trying to follow my scent.
But how was I to reach the cover of the river before the dogs spotted me?
If I could solve this problem, I was ready to go.
For the next four days I concentrated on the sounds going on outside the
bunkhouse. These sounds gave me a picture of Byefleet’s routine, and I needed that.
At seven o’clock in the evening, when it was still light, Byefleet took over
from the guards. The prisoners were checked and driven into the bunkhouse
where one of the trusties fastened on the chains while Byefleet watched.
Then the bunkhouse was locked up and Byefleet went over to the dog pen and let the dogs out. Then he went to a hut where there was a bed and lay down: maybe he even slept. With ten dogs doing his work there was no reason why
he shouldn’t sleep.
At a quarter to four in the morning, he left the hut and went over to the
kitchen to collect a couple of buckets of meat scraps for the dogs. He carried
these buckets into the steel pen and the dogs followed him in. From the noise
and the sudden yelps of pain, I guessed he stood over the dogs, supervising them, this took a little time. Then at twenty minutes past four, he locked up
the pen and walked over to the steam whistle. He gave it a couple of long,
ear-splitting blasts. This was to wake the prisoners and tell the guards the
dogs were back their pens.
This routine never varied. I decided my only chance of escape was to crash
out as soon as the dogs began to feed.
I would only have a small margin of time to get to the river: a distance of a
mile across completely flat ground. I was in good physical shape and I was
fast on my feet. I could reach the river in under six minutes, but they could be
hectic minutes. Only there I would begin to use my store of pepper to blot out
my trail.
I would keep going until they came after me, then I would hide somewhere until they got tired of looking for me. From then on I would move only at night. I would head for the railway which was about twenty miles from Farnworth. I then planned to jump a train that would take me to Oakland, the biggest town in the district, where I could get lost.
There was one more thing to worry me. It wouldn’t take a second or so to
unlock my ankle chain, but it would take me longer to open the bunkhouse door. While I was doing this, would one of the trusties raise the alarm?
If one of the trusties started yelling, Byefleet might hear him, then I would be
sunk.
Having got so far with what looked like a nearly foolproof escape plan, I
decided I wasn’t going to leave anything to chance if I could help it.
There is always one man in a prison camp more feared than the rest. At
Farnworth this man was Joe Boyd.
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