This is the first time I have had an opportunity to write you since the awful escape attempt of May second. I am now cold. All of the windows were bombed and shot out, and all of the radiators were broken up by shells. Workmen are laboring to get the place warm again. And I am writing this on a Life news magazine held on my knee.
When that terrible started I was writing a letter to Aunt Amelia. A while later I tore it up because if I didn’t come through all the shooting I didn’t want anyone else to read it. At first the shooting was light. Another fellow and I sat on the floor until he caught a deflected shell in his shoulder. He wasn’t hurt badly. We however grabbed some mattresses and built a barricade at the front of the cell door. Then we stacked all my books up behind that. Things got hotter. The noise of the gun firing was terrific. We crawled under my steel bunk and stayed there nearly all of the time. Those anti-aircraft and anti-tank bombs the Navy and Marines threw into isolation lifted my cell up and crashed into my eardrums with an awful din. I’d lay there and wait to feel the pain from a fragment or a shell. But I never even got touched.
The real close calls scared me. One came at the very first and one at the last. But after I got used to the firing I slept awhile over different periods. I raised up to take a look around the cell block during some of the heaviest firing. The place was truly beautiful. There was a steady stream of brilliant white and red flares casting their lights over everything. Tracer bullets were lancing through the smoke. Actually the worst of the whole thing physically was that pungent smoke from smoldering mattresses. I could hardly breath and my eyes ran a steady stream.
When I wasn’t sleeping or talking I was praying for all if us fellows, the officers I knew were in danger of getting killed, and that the officials and guards would have the courage to come in and capture those who had caused such horror. It was a sheer miracle that so few innocent inmates were slightly wounded. Even the guards couldn’t hardly believe their own eyes when they saw us all walking.
There was a big colored fellow among us who was through the Italian Campaigns during the recent war. He laughed aloud and said that even Italy was never so bad as what we went through.
Yours, with love,
Henri Young 244-AZ
At about 1:10 p.m., Bergen was still in the gallery when he was hailed by Stroud. Bob Stroud yelled across the smoke-filled cellblock to Bergen, who was pitched low for cover. Stroud pleaded with him to stop the bombing before someone was needlessly killed. He swore to Bergen that there were no guns in D Block and insisted that the bombardment was senseless. As he made his plea, he offered to strip his clothes off and stand in the middle of the cellblock floor, where he could be used as a hostage for barter. Bergen had always seen Stroud as a “homicidal maniac,” but nevertheless, he believed that the prisoner was telling the truth. Bergen got this message to the Warden, and the shooting finally ceased. Bergen yelled to the inmates that the shooting would not resume, but warned them to stay in their cells and not to wander along tiers. Quillen would later recount during an interview, “Most respected Bergen; he treated inmates fair, but several of the men didn’t dare move from behind their barricades since they thought it was a trap. Bergen had yelled all night to surrender the rifle so a lot of the men didn’t move since they thought no one was going to believe what Stroud told them.” Walter Bertrand, the Warden’s secretary, had been working non-stop, attempting to answer all of the phone calls and Teletype inquires that flooded the office. Amid the smoke in the aftermath of the battle, the United States flag was brought down to half-mast, and reports were now delivered to the mainland that various areas of the prison had been secured.
Amid the smoke in the aftermath of the battle, the United States flag was brought down to half-mast in honor of the officers who lost their lives during the siege.
Marine Major Albert Arsenault is shown describing the events of the battle into a microphone.
Officer Joe Steere
Then at 6:55 p.m. Officer Joe Steere was fired upon while passing the C Block utility corridor and quickly took cover. The bombardment of gunfire started up again, and Buckner made his way back up to the roof with more small explosives. Ed Miller and an armed team of officers approached the access door and swung it open, and each fired several rounds into the darkness. There was no detectable movement, and no voices responded to Miller’s demands for surrender. It seemed evident that the inmates where now trapped within the corridor, so Miller rapidly closed the door and locked it. The correctional staff started implementing plans to move the inmates from the recreation yard back into the cellhouse, housing them all in A Block. Extra mattresses were moved into A Block so that inmates could be assigned two per cell, and guard staff from San Quentin, Atlanta, McNeil Island, Folsom, and Leavenworth helped to ready the cells as quickly as possible. The prison’s locksmith, Earl Waller, was summoned to fix the jammed lock in the door to the recreation yard.
The inmates who had now been trapped in the recreation yard for more than twenty-four hours were ushered down to A and B Blocks. The East and West Gun Galleries were both heavily fortified with officers ready to fire at anything that posed a potential threat. Once all of the inmates had been secured, the guard staff started delivering boxed meals to those who had been locked up for over twenty-four hours. Buckner resumed dropping explosives with increasing accuracy into the dark passage of the narrow utility corridor. Heavy utility lights were aimed at the top of the corridor of C Block from the Galleries, blinding any inmates who might be there. The corridor had become more difficult for the inmates to navigate and climb, as the barrage of explosives had severed most of the piping. Each time Buckner prepared to drop an explosive device, an officer would pass the muzzle of the Springfield .30-06 through the drilled cement hole and fire blindly into the corridor. The movements of the inmates in these final hours are unknown. Perhaps the last sight their eyes were to register before death was a small grenade slowly being lowered on a black spun string, or the muzzle flash of a rifle the split second before the concussion echoed into silence. As the sun began to rise on the east face of the prison, the shadowy silence was broken only by the occasional cries of airborne seagulls.
The C-Block utility corridor where inmates Coy, Hubbard, and Cretzer made their final stand. All three inmates where eventually found dead inside this area.
At 8:40 a.m., the Associate Warden and several other officers including Bergen and Mowery stood on ready to enter in the C Block utility corridor. Officer Mowery opened the door, shining his powerful searchlight and yelling a warning, but his call was met only with silence, and a harsh stench from the raw sewage still dripping from the severed piping. The guards entered into the dark and eerie silence, and slowly advanced through the flooded passageway, shining their bright flashlights. The first inmate they came across was Coy, who lay nearest the door with his eyes open and glazed over. His body was stiffened with rigor mortis, and the rifle was at his side, loaded and ready to fire. He was wearing Weinhold’s jacket, and still had rounds of ammunition in his pocket. Cretzer was found next to Coy, also stiffened by hours of death, wearing a guard’s uniform and ammunition belt. Hubbard was found at the end of the corridor, still flexible and warm. The bodies were pulled out of the dark passage and examined by Dr. Roucek. He carefully assessed the wounds on each, articulating every detail to his assistant Jesse Riser.