Missing The Boat: War Stories of Thomas Alan Dirkin

24 Papillon A prisoner’s life is many things: frustration and anger dancing with anxiety and depression. Sometime, I am guessing in late 1941, my dad was being herded from one corridor to another and being prodded and pushed by a German guard. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but it was a bad day to prod my dad. In what was mainly a reaction rather than a premeditated act, he turned and punched the guard. Unfortunately, the guard fell backwards down a staircase and broke his arm. This incident was not viewed well by his captors! My father spent months in solitary confinement as a result. I thought he said fourteen months, not sure, but at least half a year. Yes, he was on the proverbial bread and water diet. Dark, stale, moldy eastern European bread to be precise. To pass the time he played chess against himself. Days and weeks passed by, running into months. He would find himself dreaming about playing chess. Eventually, he was unsure if he was awake or dreaming. At a point of uncertain consciousness, he realized he was losing his mental grip. He decided very systematically, not to play chess, making a step to reverse his decline from reality. He succeeded. Following his decision to stop playing a game that he had enjoyed since his youth, he never played chess again. Once again, the game was perhaps a trigger for memories best forgotten. In the 1970’s I went to see the movie, Papillon, starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. McQueen played Papillon (French for butterfly) a prisoner in a penal colony in French Guiana. There were prolonged scenes of Papillon managing his existence and survival in solitary confinement. Following the movie, I remembered the fragmented story of my father’s solitary confinement experience. I told him about how Papillon ate centipedes, crushing them in his tin cup. “It is amazing what you will eat if you are hungry enough,” my father told me. Rats, worms, maggots: the food sources of survivors.