Terry Waite got pretty good at this apparently...
But during the first seven days, the Westerners were not allowed to speak
to one another, although Bingham and McAllester, in adjoining cells,
devised a crude code system of knocks on the wall.
''It was basically just a way to say: `Are you there? Are you OK?' '' said
Bingham, who was in Baghdad on assignment for Esquire magazine, along with
journalist Nate Thayer.
She credited Thayer, who was questioned and released the same morning of
her incarceration, with raising the alarm. ''Nate Thayer saw me taken off
and said, `I promise I will do something,' '' said Bingham, who served as
photographer for Al Gore during his presidential campaign. ''It was bad
being led off at 4:45 in the morning by men with guns. Knowing that someone
knew I was missing was all that gave me hope.''
Abu Ghraib is the largest prison in the Arab world and is infamous as the
place of torture and murder of enemies of the Iraqi regime.
Full...
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/093/nation/Journalists_tell_of_captivity_in_infamous_Iraqi_prison-.shtml
With practise, we would carry on conversations or hold "literary" evenings,
and even pray together. It was our lifeline in prison, and I made sure I
taught it to everyone I met. We were on the second floor and communicated
by knocking on walls, on the floor and ceiling, and even pipes, so that a
network was established throughout the whole prison in which messages were
conveyed through intermediaries. Prisoners were thus able to locate friends
or relatives and share information from the outside or about prison
developments.
http://www.polandsholocaust.org/memoir10.html
Isolation and torture were the name of the game. Communication compromised
was a guaranteed trip back to the torture ropes where anything went and
death was not an option except by accident. Later we found that 95% of the
men captured in North Vietnam had been tortured, mostly for propaganda less
for military information. To lead was to be tortured. Communication was a
de facto sign of leadership. Yet communication was the life blood of
resistance and survival.
In the middle of the night in between the rounds of the guard patrol I
heard a knocking on my wall. It started with a series of taps with the
rhythm of " Shave and a Hair Cut". The rest was unintelligible. Was it a
trap? Was it for real? I struggled back 12 years all the next day to dredge
up the Morse code learned in the Naval School of Preflight to be ready for
the next night. It started up again in between guard patrols. The incessant
tapping still did not make sense.
One two man cell was let out twice a day to clean up out sanitary pots and
soup bowls which tasks were accomplished in one of the end cells that had a
spigot of water piped in through a high window. These would talk out the
window as if talking to each other attempting to contact the solitary
confinement cells.
One day it finally dawned on me what these guys were doing at great risk to
themselves and listened in with rapt attention.
"Hey new guy in cell number six. Listen up. Cough once for yes, twice for
no. Spit for I don't know."
http://www.geocities.com/talesofseasia/army-navy.html
The first series of taps gives you the line in the five by five box. The
second series of taps gives you the letter within the box.
Tap-tap/tap-tap-tap, tap-tap/tap-tap-tap-tap says "Hi". A "Shave and a
haircut" rhythmic rap answered with an immediate "two bits" - two quick
taps is a call up the communists never figured out or were able to
duplicate. A rapid series of bumps were the erasers. A loud thump was the
danger termination sign. The normal termination was GBU acknowledged by two
taps. The sound is distinctive enough to reverberate along a cement pad or
wall over a hundred feet long without alerting a guard.
We could tap faster than sending Morse Code, we could flash our hands under
the cell doors in tap code, we could punch holes in paper in tap code, we
could sweep brooms in tap code, and we could cough, hock and hack in tap code.
Up through 1968 the Navy classified the tap code as secret and guys were
told in survival school they had no need to learn it as we would teach it
to them when they got there!!! This code was first mentioned in literature
at the turn of the century in Arthur Connan Doyleís "The Sign of Four" and
was featured in "Darkness At Noon" in 1942. European and American miners
have used it to communicate during mine disasters. We thought we had
invented it in prison.
