The Life of a Screw: Life on the Inside. Everybody Has a Desire to Learn What Life Is Really Like on the Inside of a Correctional Facility. the Life of a Screw Gives the Reader a 10 Year Span of One Man’S True Events While Serving with the Department of Corrections.

By Douglas E. Arch

Did you ever see a Man "Hanging" from the Gallows, ever wonder what it would be like to have to cut another man down who had enough of life, or even mop the floors covered with the blood of a co-worker?

Youll get to hear one officer recount stories of the ghost who has roamed the jail for many years, stories that no one can explain, but on numerous occasions all the corrections officers witnessed, as well as the inmates who made this all possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 23, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450270656

Douglas E. Arch

Doug Arch Worked in the Department of Corrections in the Province of New Brunswick, Canada for 10 years. After retirement of an additional 25 years with Department of Motor Vehicle for the Province of New Brunswick, and until the present time I worked for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as a Police Guard as well as the Woodstock Police Department. While in Department of Motor Vehicle I reaced the rank of Deputy Chief Driver Examiner for the Province of New Brunswick. In addition to the above career with the Province. I served 14 years in the Military in the Reserve army.

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by Douglas E. Arch

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN; 978-1-4502-7064-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-7065-6 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 11/10/2010

Sitting with a rifle in West Germany, 1973, not fully knowing whether this part of the world was truly at peace, all I ever heard on the news were stories about German people trying to escape from the East and getting shot by the Russians. Some would try underground tunnels, which the Russians would blow up. Many brave people simply wanting to be free were dying all the time, and what could people in my part of the world actually do about it? Nothing …

So there I was, sitting on a gun locker, drinking a warm as piss German beer (it seemed the Germans liked warm beer as opposed to the cold stuff we like in my homeland of Canada). I was listening to my gun sergeant, who had just returned from Vietnam and Cambodia where he’d served as an army adviser—hey, isn’t that the term that the American politicians gave to the American forces who served there?—and who kept talking about all the death and destruction that he had witnessed. Yep, Sergeant Stanley Ross was the man who had been there and done it all—you know, everything that you sign up to do when you join the army.

A few short weeks before this talk with the sergeant, I was just a reservist with a sense of adventure. How was I to know then that all of a sudden a trip to West Germany would come my way? Six months away from my little town in New Brunswick, getting paid a sergeant’s wage with danger pay as an added bonus—how could you not love it? A group of my closest friends, nine of us altogether, were off on the trip of a lifetime … or so we thought. First we had to go through the medical check-up procedure including harsh physical testing. It was tough, but I managed to get through the exams with flying colors. Next we had to qualify on our personal weapons usage skill tests with such weapons such as .50-caliber machine guns, .30-caliber machine guns, 9-millimeter machine guns, and the basic pistol. After this we trained with plastic explosives and hand grenades and even shoulder-to-air rockets—yes indeed, real killing machines.

I remember when the commanding officer of training, one night during roll call, read out all the opportunities that were available for our employment for the upcoming year. Trips to the United States Marine training base for fifteen people. Trips to the Far East on a peacekeeping mission for twenty who were private and corporal ranks. There were thirty positions for stationing at CFB Gagetown, New Brunswick, for any ranks. And then there was the jackpot: fifty positions in CFB Lahr, West Germany, for any rank willing to volunteer. All of the above positions were to relieve existing Canadian Armed Forces Personnel so they could take their periods of leave or to go away on other courses. What an excellent opportunity for a bunch of young bucks looking for adventure and a chance to get out downtown Woodstock, New Brunswick, for a few months.

My time stationed in Germany was very eventful. It let me travel all over Europe, with vacations in France, Switzerland, and Holland. But Amsterdam was my favourite. Amsterdam was a great vacation spot with many great sites to see. We didn’t partake in the drug scene, though a man once asked my brother and I if we wanted to buy some coke. My brother said, Sure, so the man said, Come with me! Not really understanding, my brother declined and said he would just grab some at the store.

There were some down sides of that time period serving in Germany. I remember the first day when we arrived and all the new troops were marched into the base theatre for a very important meeting with the base commander. We were all very tired from the six-hour flight, and adding to the jet lag, night had turned into day. We arrived at base in Germany at 0800 hours, having left CFB Ottawa at 2300 hours (11:00 pm) the day before—wow, what’s a young man to do with this change of pace? But exhausted as we were, there we were nonetheless. The base commander went over a lot of boring procedures and so on before he got to the juicy parts.

First he warned all the troops that when we went on exercise and stayed in barracks or even just had to walk anyplace on an American base, we were to travel in groups not smaller than six Canadian soldiers. I couldn’t believe this stupid order; the Americans were our friends and allies, so what was the deal? Well the commander went on to advise us that over the past few years Canadian soldiers had been beaten up and killed while on American bases. Seemed that a lot of the American soldiers who were serving in Germany were there as a result of all the tough years in Vietnam and Cambodia. All those lads were heavy into marijuana, cocaine, LSD—everything, so they could be unpredictable and rob Canadians to buy drugs. Our commander explained that the Americans as a nation did not want to see their soldiers come home, so it was best for the military to hide them in faraway lands, away from the public eye.

The commander went on to explain some other goodies, such as the fact that the Russians had licensed spies working in the town of Lahr, Germany. Part of our job was to be able to recognize them and know the procedures to take when we spotted one. The fifty or so registered legal spies were only allowed to travel in certain types of cars with certain license plates, color coded and numbered to make them easy to detect by the armies of the west. However, in addition to these legal spies, the Russians of course employed illegal spies who were not supposed to be in or anywhere near a NATO army base—as many as two hundred of them. As a matter of fact, you could look up into the vineyards and see them watching our movements through their binoculars, any day of the week. If we saw any spies, we were to report them to the military police so their location and activities could be tracked, even the legal spies.

In addition to the spies, the reality was that we were serving with the United States, the Dutch, the British, and other NATO troops, who were all playing war games together in Europe. The sad part is that, of course, people die when you play war games, and Canadians were no exception. Canada had their death toll just the same as other countries, but nobody said anything much about it to the public. It seemed the media was always around looking for domestic stories back in Canada, so everything happening abroad was hush hush; we were of course sworn to secrecy.

I can tell you about one exercise we were on, though. We were leaving a gun position very late at night, all vehicles traveling along a tree line. All of a sudden a German soldier who had been observing our movements and strength came out of the trees. He drove a motorbike in front of one of our armoured personnel carriers. With very little or no lights, the APC ran over him and made him into a pancake. We stopped just long enough to get out and see what had happened before jumping back into our vehicle and moving on. So after about a hundred more vehicles running over his remains, there wasn’t much left of the poor guy.

I have many other stories, but we are not allowed to talk about them …

So this leaves me with my return to Canada and my time to face the real world of employment. I will bypass some of my short employment opportunities, such as my