o on 11 May I was escorted back to the camp and next day I had to go to work. That day, a nasty blizzard blew and I got frost-bite on my face. After a long time in hospital, my face had lost much of its resistance to cold. That night I went to see the "lekpom" and he gave me some mixture of surgical spirit and glycerin to put on it, and after a few weeks it began to heal.

We were staying in that camp for some time yet, cutting firewood for locomotives before we were moved again further North.

In the next camp we had to build an embankment to support bridge timbers over a deep river. The sand was blasted with explosives by the Russians and we had to break the big lumps of frozen soil into fine pieces and ram it against the timbers of the bridge. But we were putting as many big lumps as we could and covering them up with loose sand, so that when it melted, it would collapse and loosen the timbers. This worked all right, as we heard later that the bridge had collapsed when a train was on it. One day after a heavy snow fall, newly made rail track and "lezniovka" were blocked and we had to clear the snow.

While I was working, a man came over to me and asked whether I was a communist or a democrat. I just said that it was a very unusual question for a Russian to ask. I am not a Russian, I am a Canadian. There were three of us and we committed an offence in Canada and decided to run away to Russia. We went to Alaska bought a pack of dogs, a rifle, some provisions and made our way to Russia. After some time we ran out of food, so we ate our dogs and shot some wolves, then while crossing the Baring Straits we were picked up by Russians. They interrogated us for six months, and as we were engineers we were set to work in a factory to teach engineering work to the local people. Once they thought that we had taught them all we knew, we were all arrested and sent to slave labour camps and I never saw my friends again. I would do anything to be back in Canada, even if it meant being in a Canadian prison. I do believe that he was really a Canadian as he described Montreal and I found that to be correct when I was there in 1956.

Soon after we were moved to another camp. This time the camp was on the bank of the river Piechora. Next to the camp was a small sawmill where they were cutting railway sleepers. Timber was floated from up the river, probably from the Altay mountains in Siberia. We had to pull it out of the river, cut it up to size and roll it to the mill, where it was cut for sleepers.

It was here that we first saw Eskimos with their children and reindeers.

In this camp there were many young Russians. Often they were singing songs like "Zaboleyesh tovarishch tsyngoiu, poletsiat tiebie zuby tvoye" (You shall fall ill with the scurvy and out will fly your teeth) and "Z'daleka iz Kallymskago kraya napishu ja k'ciebie pisiemko, kak zhiviosh ty maya daragaya, napishy poskareye atviet" (From far away Kolyma land I shall write a letter to you, how are you living my darling, write me an answer soon), or "Cishynu narushayut v'palatkie, huliganskiye piesni poyut" (They disturb the silence in the tent singing hooligans' songs). And sometimes the braver of them would sing a forbidden song: "I nami tsurmy nabivayut, pod sud voyennyi podayut, no my magilly nie boimsia i nam nie strashen pulemiot" (They fill the prisons with us, put us before a military court, but we are not afraid of the grave, and machine-guns do not frighten us). This song was forbidden by the tsar before the revolution, and by Stalin after the revolution.

Young Russians "hooligans" were stealing everything they could lay their hands on. If they couldn't steal behind your back, they would try to take it by force. One of them came to me and demanded that I give him my dish of soup. I quickly drank the soup and rammed the dish in his mouth. He went away with his mouth bleeding. I knew he would come again, so I got a stick ready and that night he came over as I was lying down, so I gave him a few strikes and he went away holding his ribs and he didn't try again.

My cousin Edward too had an encounter. One Russian started to push him about, so Edward pushed him right back, and in a flash he was surrounded by soldiers who grabbed him, took him to the guard room, stripped him naked and put him into a hole, especially dug out for torture by freezing. Being just a walking skeleton, he was almost lifeless in next to no time. They pulled him out, and rubbed him down with snow to revive him. They told him that because he didn't know who was the man he had pushed, he had been let off lightly.

There was a Russian soldier from the Soviet - Finnish front (1939-40) who was wounded. He had concussions and now was suffering from epilepsy. While in hospital he was talking about his unit's losses. He was telling how the Fins had mined lake Ladoga and when the Russians were transporting an armed division across it, the Fins detonated the mines and the whole division got drowned. And how the Fins would swoop down the mountain on skis, strafe them with machine guns and were gone as if they came from nowhere, "kak nie chistaya silla" (like the evil spirits) and scores of Russians would bite the snow. He was sentenced to 25 years of slave labour camps being accused as "the enemy of the people" for such criticism of the Soviet Army.

We stayed in that camp waiting for the ice to melt on the river Ust Usa and when it did, we were loaded on to barges and sailed up the river Piechora and then up Ust Usa.

We crossed the arctic circle and could see nothing but open tundra and to the East the blue shadows of the Ural mountains. The barges stopped at night and we were allowed to come out for a while. In one place we could see a lot of bones showing through melting snow. Some of the Russians were saying that these were the remains of eight hundred slaves and their escort, who were marched on foot to Vorkuta when an arctic storm struck and the entire convoy was frozen. Only the escort commander who had a pack of dogs, managed to get away.

Being young, the dreams and hopes of survival never abandoned us. We started to plan an escape. We would break a crosscut saw and use the pieces for making cutting tools and to make a magnetic needle. It was my job to steal a battery and some insulated wire from the telephone line between the camps, to shape and magnetize the needle. Once the tools were ready, we would bribe the cooks for some pepper to elude the dogs and make a run for it to the sea. There we would cut some dwarf birch and willow; tie it into bundles and make a raft, make a small mast of drift wood and use some cloth for a sail. We would sail only in poor visibility to avoid Russian patrols and try to get to Scandinavia. We would have gathered eggs of some wild foul and perhaps some birds for food. We would sail near the shore, so as to be able to replenish fresh water.

In the meantime we were sailing to Vorkuta, where we were marked to die of radiation in uranium mines. Men were dying of malnutrition daily. The Russians were telling us that we should be glad to be there and get some food as those who are free didn't have even that and were eating corpses to survive.

The Russians showed us some photos of three men who escaped some time before. Before they escaped, they persuaded one of the Polish Jews to run away with them, but he was not with them in the photo, as they had eaten him before they themselves died of starvation. This was done to show that escape means death and that the fourth fellow was taken as a reserve food.

On 21st June 1941 Germany attacked Russia; they overran Ukraine, Byelorussia and were approaching Moscow. It was then that general Sikorski from the Polish Government in Exile in London, with help from Britain and America, made an agreement with the Russians securing the release of all Polish citizens.