48 – Cape Cod, Massachusetts
No buses this time. The 1164th Transportation Company of the Massachusetts Army National Guard pulled up at the loading dock of the Agganis Arena with its entire fleet of 5-ton trucks, plus three of its tractor-trailer units. With barely a half-hour’s notice, the 3,000 people who inhabited the basketball stadium picked up what few belongings they had, mostly items purchased for them by host families in their brief period of freedom, and were loaded into the backs of the trucks.
The job was a simple one for the seventy-five Guardsmen. They were trained to move thousands of soldiers across long distances. This time, their drive was done in an hour and a half.
The camp commander was Army Lt. Col. Ted Dancer, who held the distinction, among other duties, of having served as deputy commander of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba back when the second President Bush stashed 600 suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects snatched from Afghanistan there. After the last truck was unloaded, Lt. Col. Dancer broadcast an announcement over the public address system that there would be an assembly of all detainees on the parade ground at 4:00 p.m. that afternoon.
People interrupted their settling in process to attend the meeting. It was a warm, sunny day. The roar of the breaking surf could be heard above the slight breeze. Children were anxious to explore along the shore. Nearly all the former passengers of the Iliad and the Ionian Star were pleased to have been moved from the oppressive stadium, but they were equally anxious about what would be done with them next.
They noted the rows of freshly-painted barracks buildings, the mess hall, and the collection of buildings surrounded by barbed wire fencing. This facility, which they quickly learned was called Camp Edwards, had a distressing sense of permanency to it.
That fear was driven home by the camp commander.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Lt. Col. Dancer announced, once the meeting convened. “By order of the President of the United States, you have each been declared to be an enemy combatant subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States military. It is the intention of the United States to detain you in this facility, or any other facility the United States so desires, for the duration of the present hostilities, however long they may last.
“You are entitled to all of the rights of persons holding the status of enemy combatants. Those rights include the following:
“You have the right to receive reasonable meals sufficient to maintain minimal good health.
“You have the right to reasonable medical care for life threatening illness and injuries.
“You have the right not to be subjected to life-threatening torture or mistreatment.”
A murmur started up from the rear of the assemblage. A voice from near the front of the crowd began shouting.
“Ah’m not doing shit until ah see ma lawyer,” a man shouted, his Southern accent out of place. “Ah demand to see ma lawyer, now.”
The crowd became louder, others joining the man in the front demanding to meet with their lawyers, not that they actually had lawyers, unless they happened to have stayed at the home of an attorney after they fled from the ships.
BANG.
The crowd was startled into silence by the shot fired into the air from the pistol in the hand of the camp commander.
“Lets get something clear from the start,” he said into the microphone in front of him on the platform. “This is a military camp, a detention camp. You people are military detainees.
“You don’t get lawyers. You don’t go to court. You don’t even dream about suing me or anybody else. You don’t like how we treat you, then tough fucking shit. The President declared you all enemy combatants. He did that because you killed American military personnel. You are enemies of the United States of America. You will be treated like enemies.
“Get used to it. That is how life is going to be. This meeting is concluded. Troops, see that this crowd disperses to their barracks.”
Lt. Col. Dancer stepped down from the platform and walked to his office, accompanied by his second in command. “I thought that went quite well,” Dancer said.
“I was not briefed about carrying firearms, sir,” the second in command said. “It certainly did get their attention, though.”
“There will be no firearms carried by the men. I wanted to make a point, that’s all. We won’t need firearms to keep these people under control. Didn’t carry firearms at Gitmo and we had some tough people there, some of them anyway. We worked things out on our own.” He smiled, almost as if remembering his introduction to detention of enemy combatants fondly. Dancer placed an arm around the young captain’s shoulder.
“Let me tell you about ERFing, Captain. Do you know what ERFing is?” Dancer saw the puzzled look on his assistant’s face.
“A little method we came up with at Guantanamo. E-R-F. Emergency Reaction Force. Pick the ten biggest goons we’ve got. Dress ‘em up in black, from ski mask to boots. Give ‘em body armor, the full suit, and Kevlar shields, helmets, batons. They’d scare the shit out of a sumo wrestler. All ten of them come screaming into one room, waving their batons, clanging on their shields, the detainees shit their drawers, they do.
“That’s ERFing. Pick the men. I’ll train them myself. And if our guests don’t like it, let them cry to the lawyers they won’t be meeting with.”
“Guantanamo, Sir?” the captain said, admiration clear in his voice. “That must have been quite an experience.”
“That’s one way of putting it. But I learned some lessons there. Kind of ironic, though. Arabs there. Jews here. Will be interesting to see if there’s any difference between them. My money is on them all being the same, all the same. But I guess we’ll see.”