Once at the midday meal in the canteen, I got aware of obviously clandestine gestures of 3 boys at my table, their exchange of silent nods and winks was nothing but some double talk with secret code signs. Clear as daylight – there was some collusion. And me?
So I accosted one of them in earnest until he shared the secret scheme. They conspired to flee the “stiff hour” that day and go to the forest, where one of them knew a spot of such raspberries that had more berries than leaves in their bushes.
The midday meal over, the fugitive boys run stealthily in the direction opposite that to the barrack. I follow them, repulse the leader’s attempt at turning me back to the ward-bedroom, and crawl in the wake of the others under the barbed wire of the fence into the forest.
We arm ourselves with the rifles made of breakable tree branches and walk along a wide footpath among the Pines and shrubs. The leader steers into some glade after which we again enter the forest missing the footpath already. We wander for a long time without finding any raspberries but only the bushes of wolf-berries which you should skip eating because they’re poisonous.
Finally, we get fed up with the useless search, and our leader admits that he can’t not find the promised raspberries, for which news he gets the multi-voiced “eew! you!”, and our wandering thru the forest goes on until we come across 2 threads of barbed wire nailed to the trees, one above the other, to form a fence.
Following the prickly guidance of the camp fencing, we come up to the already familiar footpath and our perked-up leader commands to fall in. Looks like we’re going to play War-Mommy. The order is executed eagerly, we line up along the footpath, pressing the dried boughs of our assault rifles to our stomachs.
But suddenly, two grown-up women—the camp caretakers—jump out from behind a thick bush with a loud yell, “Drop weapons down!” We let our sticks fall and, in the already formed file, are convoyed to the camp gate. One of the captors walks ahead of us, the other closes the formation…
At the evening all-out line-up, Camp Director announced that there happened a disruptive incident at the camp, and the parents of those involved would be informed, besides, there would be raised the question of expelling the escapers from the camp.
After the line-up dispersed, my brother-’n’-sister came to me from their junior platoon, “Now, you’ll sure get hell!”
“Ah!” dismissively waved I, trying to conceal the fear caused by the uncertainty of the punishment for getting raised the question of expelling. That uncertainty nagged me till the end of the week with the Parents’ Day on Sunday…