Handcuffed
Transporting prisoners wasn’t unfamiliar to me. In 1959, a soldier had gone AWOL from Ft. Bragg, and the police in Philadelphia had arrested him for liquor law violations and requested that the Army take custody of him. Sgt. Smith, a veteran squad leader in our company, and I were chosen to escort the prisoner back to Ft. Bragg. It was our company commander’s way of giving us long weekend passes as we both were from the Philadelphia area.
The first step was my introduction to the Army’s idea of an incentive plan. After Sgt. Smith and I drew our handcuffs and sidearms from Division Headquarters, we were required to sign a document agreeing to serve our prisoner’s sentence if he escaped. No frills, but very effective.
Three days later, after Sgt. Smith had visited his parents in Allentown and I’d visited mine in Chestnut Hill, we were driven in a car from the Navy Yard to Moyamensing Prison where we picked up Private First Class Ernest R. Williams.
When we arrived at Moyamensing, the desk officer seemed startled by our dress uniforms — a blue infantry cord around our right shoulders and a red and green French Fourragère around our left; highly polished jump boots; and webbed pistol belts holstering our .45s and handcuffs — and yelled over his shoulder, “Williams, your pretty boys are here to get you.”
Once outside the prison, Sgt. Smith patted Williams down and handcuffed him to my left wrist, where he remained for the next eleven hours.
Everyone turned to look at Williams and me as we entered the cafeteria at 30th Street station. There was no question that the sight of two young men, one Black, wearing a tee-shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers, handcuffed to the other who was white wearing a showy military uniform and armed, was attention-getting if nothing else.
We sat at a remote table, Williams and me with our backs to the other diners to avoid their stares. We ordered sandwiches and Cokes, and I seemed to calm a bit when I felt someone pull on my holster. I chopped at the hand and missed and whirled to confront its owner, pulling Williams to his feet with me. A boy of five or six stood with his hands at his sides, staring up at me, wide-eyed and terrified. A murmur spread through the cafeteria, followed by an eerie silence. I waited for the boy’s parents to say something or grab their son, but they were speechless and seemingly rooted in their chairs. No one moved; no one made a sound. I didn’t have the presence of mind or the maturity to say something comforting to the boy and, after an uncomfortable moment, returned to my sandwich as though nothing had happened, me eating with my right hand, Williams with his left.
Once on the train, we were shown to a private compartment. Williams sat between Sgt. Smith and me, my.45 holstered on my right hip, Sgt. Smith’s on his left. I had expected Williams to be challenging, surly, and purposefully uncooperative, but for the eight-and-a-half-hour train ride, he was relaxed and polite. Occasionally we talked about his growing up in West Philadelphia, how his mom struggled to make ends meet, and how he’d joined the Army to help her out. Finally, not far from Fayetteville, I asked what he was going to do when this was all over.
He said he was going to join the Airforce.
I jerked our handcuffs lightly and said he had to be kidding, that going AWOL and being arrested would lead to a dishonorable discharge, and after that, no other branch of the service would take him.
He asked if I was sure. When I said I was, he shook his head and mumbled, “Oh man, I’m in deep shit.”
Shortly, a conductor slid the compartment door open and said we’d be arriving in Fayetteville in ten minutes. Ten minutes more, and Pfc. Ernest R. Williams would no longer be handcuffed to me, would no longer be my charge. In ten minutes, I’d return to my unit, and he’d be on his way to a place like the correctional facility at Fort Leavenworth, not understanding how he got himself into this fix. In the spirit of Faladé’s story “Lone Star,” I felt sorry for Williams and something more. Something wasn’t right, but I just wasn’t sure what. It was clear that Williams needed help, but I had no way to give it to him. He wasn’t only handcuffed to me but to a system that never granted a second chance.
