required, for at least one of them was searched every time they left and entered. the camp, often having to remove one or both boots, and to stand there in the numbing snow. If they were caught with anything on them it meant three days without food.
go As the weeks went by, Wladek's leg started to become very stiff and painful. He longed for the coldest days, when the temperature went down to forty below zero, and outside work was called off, even though the lost day would have to be made up on a free Sunday when they were normally allowed to lie on their bunks all day.
One evening when Wladek had been hauling logs across the waste, his leg began to throb unmercifully. When he looked at the scar caused by the Smolenski, he found that it had become puffy and shiny. That night, he showed the wound to a guard, who ordered him to report to the camp doctor before first light in the morning. Wladek sat up all night with his leg nearly touching the stove, surrounded by wet boots, but the heat was so feeble that it couldn't ease the pain.
The next morning Wladek rose an hour earlier than usual. If you had not seen the doctor before work was due to start, then you mi,~sed him until the next day. Wladek couldn't face another day of such intense pain. He reported to the doctor, giving his narne and number. Pierre Dubien was a sympathetic old man, bald - headed, with a pronounced stoop, and Wladek thought he looked even older than the Baron. He inspected Wladek's leg without speaking.
'Will the wound be all right, doctor?' asked Wladek.
'You speak Russian?'
'Yes, Sir.'
'Although you will always limp, young man, your leg will be good again.
But good for what? A life here dragging wood.'
'No, doctor, I intend to escape and get back to Poland,' said Wladek.
The doctor looked sharply at him. 'Keep your voice down, stupid boy. You must realise by now that escape is impossible. I have been in captivity fifteen years, and not a day has passed that I have not thought of escape. There is no way; no one has ever escaped and lived, and even to talk of it means ten days in the punishment cell, and there they feed you every third day and light the stove only to melt the ice off the walls.
If you come out of that place alive, you can consider yourself lucky.'
'I will escape, I will, I will,' said Wladek, staring at the old man.
The doctor looked into Wladek's eyes and smiled. 'My friend, never mention escape again or they may kill you. Go back to work, keep your leg exercised and report to me first thing every morning.'
Wladek returned to the forest and to the chopping of wood, but found that he could not drag the logs - more than a few feet, and that the pain was so intense he believed his leg might fall off. When he returned the next morning, the doctor examined the leg more carefully.
'Worse, if anything,' he said. 'How old are you, boy?'
'I think I am thirteen,' said Wladek. 'What year is it?'
'Nineteen hundred and nineteen,' replied the doctor.
'Yes, thirteen. How old are you?'asked Wladek.
The old man looked down into the young boy's blue eyes, surprised by the question.
'Mirty - eight,'he said quietly.
'God help me,'said Wladek.
Tou will look like this when you have been a prisoner for fifteen years, my boy,' said the doctor matter of factly.
'Whyareyou here at all?'said Wladek. 'Why haven't they let you go af ter all this time ?'
'I was taken prisoner in Moscow in 1904, soon after I had qualified as a doctor and I was working in the French Embassy. Tley said I was a spy and put me in a Moscow jail. I thought that was bad until after the Revolution when they sent me to this hell - hole. Even the French have now forgotten that I exist. Few have been known to complete their sentence at camp Two - O - One so I must die here, like everyone else, and it can't be too soon.'
'No, you must not give up hope, doctor.'
'Hope? I gave up hope for myself a long time ago, perhaps I shall not give it up for you, but always remember never to mention that hope to anyone; there are prisoners here who trade in loose tongues, when their reward can be nothing more than an extra piece