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File: 120596_aaczf_12.txt12 thick and it was brick all around so there was no way to talk between cells or anything. The door was solid steel and it had a little window that they would open up when they wanted to pass the food to you. There was a window on the other end of the room. But it was about 12 feet off the floor and real thin and it had bars on it and louvers so you never got any direct sunlight in the room. So in that prison, communication was just about impossi- ble. What guys tried to do was...when they would come around and take roll, which they did periodically...was to try and say names as loud as possible so if somebody else was listening they could tell other Americans were there. I knew other Americans and Allies were there because I'd transferred with them from the first prison. Some of the guys who had been shot down later said they never knew anybody else was in the prison because they could never hear anybody. So for them, it was probably worse to be there because they didn't know what was going on. Q: Was there enough time for a SRO {senior ranking officer) to be established? A: In the first prison: Colonel Eberly was the senior rank ing officer. We had talked about it in the first prison when we could communicate; but again, once we were in the second prison there was no communication. It was just about impossible. It would have been impossible for him to get messages out; it would have been almost impossible to have any sort of chain of command or anything like that. On the night of 23 February, we were actually bombed out of the prison; it showed up as a target and was hit by four laser guided bombs. They transferred us to another prison and they obviously were not ready for that contingency, because 11 of us were put in one cell for a night. That was about the first communication we had had with other prisoners for about a month. At that point, it was determined Colonel Eberly was the SRO and that word did get out. I think if we'd have had an opportunity to communicate, and if our stay had been longer, it would have worked out...everyone was aware of that requirement and there were no problems with it. Q: Did they provide you with any recreational facilities? A: No. Q: What about reading material? A: Nothing. We were never let out of our cells except to be interrogated. Q: And how long did the interrogations usually last?
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