By Tommy Guns
I remember it as if it was yesterday. It was Tuesday, May 11th, 1971, the day I woke up in the Brig, my hands and legs tightly shackled to the bars at the head and foot of the rack on which I was laying. Most of all, I remember the smells. I was laying in my own waste, dried blood and vomit staining my ripped uniform blouse, and a tear at the knee on the left leg of my uniform trousers. There were the smells of despair and hopelessness, and the scent of cold, hard, oily steel, mixed with way too much pine cleaner.
But I still don’t remember much of the three days that preceded that May 11th, or what had brought me to that place, on that memorable day, in the disreputable state I was in. But I do remember what happened after my rude awakening by the sound of a nightstick being banged against the solid steel door of my cell.
