|
Camp Bailey, named after its first and only
commandant, Capt. Alfred Bailey, was sited on the ruins of an
ancient fortress and nearby village on the Astrapsk Canal just
inside the border of the British colony. The one watchtower
was partially restored using wood from a nearby forest.
Several buildings to house prisoners were constructed on the
foundations of the old fortress buildings, and barbed wire fences
were strung atop the remains of the fortress walls. A number
of structures were built in the nearby village ruins to accommodate
the guard force, a telegraph station, and a small supply dump for
forces operating further down the canal.
Shortly after its completion, 200 prisoners were
transferred to the new facility. These were remnants of Legion
"Ferocious" which had been destroyed a few days earlier in a last
ditch effort to blunt the British offensive. Soon after the
prisoners arrived, things began to go wrong.
The prisoners began, as all good prisoners do,
efforts to escape the camp. During the excavation of an escape
tunnel the prisoners discovered a series of cellars beneath the
fortress. What happened next was pieced together from official
reports, rumors, and more than a little conjecture.
A number of prisoners entered the cellars looking
for a passage outside the prison walls. None of them returned,
and it was assumed they had escaped. Capt. Bailey ordered a
search of the compound, which turned up the entrance to the cellars.
He sent a squad of men into them to determine where the escapees
might have come out. After several hours, the captain sent in
a second squad to determine what had happened to the first.
When that squad failed to return, the captain ordered a grate placed
above the entrance and padlocked. He posted a guard with
orders to have the missing soldiers report as soon as they returned.
He then placed the prisoners under lockdown and doubled the guards
on the wall.
Later that evening, when the guard's relief
arrived at the entrance to the cellars, he found the grate and the
guard missing. The grate was replaced, but none of the guards
would guard it, sparking a near mutiny. Finally, the camp's
senior NCO, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Jones volunteered for the duty in an
effort to set an example. According to the
increasingly-garbled reports coming from the camp, Sgt. Jones
disappeared later that night.
Little is known of what happened next. When
relief forces arrived to determine why the garrison had not
responded to inquiries, they found an empty camp in disarray.
|
