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By Root 636 0

he was hailed by Stroud. Bob Stroud yelled across the smoke-filled cellblock to Bergen, who was pitched low for cover. Stroud pleaded with him to stop the bombing before someone was needlessly killed. He swore to Bergen that there were no guns in D Block and insisted that the bombardment was senseless. As he made his plea, he offered to strip his clothes off and stand in the middle of the cellblock floor, where he could be used as a hostage for barter. Bergen had always seen Stroud as a “homicidal maniac,” but nevertheless, he believed that the prisoner was telling the truth. Bergen got this message to the Warden, and the shooting finally ceased. Bergen yelled to the inmates that the shooting would not resume, but warned them to stay in their cells and not to wander along tiers. Quillen would later recount during an interview, “Most respected Bergen; he treated inmates fair, but several of the men didn’t dare move from behind their barricades since they thought it was a trap. Bergen had yelled all night to surrender the rifle so a lot of the men didn’t move since they thought no one was going to believe what Stroud told them.” Walter Bertrand, the Warden’s secretary, had been working non-stop, attempting to answer all of the phone calls and Teletype inquires that flooded the office. Amid the smoke in the aftermath of the battle, the United States flag was brought down to half-mast, and reports were now delivered to the mainland that various areas of the prison had been secured.

Amid the smoke in the aftermath of the battle, the United States flag was brought down to half-mast in honor of the officers who lost their lives during the siege.

Marine Major Albert Arsenault is shown describing the events of the battle into a microphone.

Officer Joe Steere

Then at 6:55 p.m. Officer Joe Steere was fired upon while passing the C Block utility corridor and quickly took cover. The bombardment of gunfire started up again, and Buckner made his way back up to the roof with more small explosives. Ed Miller and an armed team of officers approached the access door and swung it open, and each fired several rounds into the darkness. There was no detectable movement, and no voices responded to Miller’s demands for surrender. It seemed evident that the inmates where now trapped within the corridor, so Miller rapidly closed the door and locked it. The correctional staff started implementing plans to move the inmates from the recreation yard back into the cellhouse, housing them all in A Block. Extra mattresses were moved into A Block so that inmates could be assigned two per cell, and guard staff from San Quentin, Atlanta, McNeil Island, Folsom, and Leavenworth helped to ready the cells as quickly as possible. The prison’s locksmith, Earl Waller, was summoned to fix the jammed lock in the door to the recreation yard.

The inmates who had now been trapped in the recreation yard for more than twenty-four hours were ushered down to A and B Blocks. The East and West Gun Galleries were both heavily fortified with officers ready to fire at anything that posed a potential threat. Once all of the inmates had been secured, the guard staff started delivering boxed meals to those who had been locked up for over twenty-four hours. Buckner resumed dropping explosives with increasing accuracy into the dark passage of the narrow utility corridor. Heavy utility lights were aimed at the top of the corridor of C Block from the Galleries, blinding any inmates who might be there. The corridor had become more difficult for the inmates to navigate and climb, as the barrage of explosives had severed most of the piping. Each time Buckner prepared to drop an explosive device, an officer would pass the muzzle of the Springfield .30-06 through the drilled cement hole and fire blindly into the corridor. The movements of the inmates in these final hours are unknown. Perhaps the last sight their eyes were to register before death was a small grenade slowly being lowered on a black spun string, or the muzzle flash of a rifle the split second before the concussion