August 22, 2024 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, when Charles Burrall 'retired' early from his teaching gig and hitchhiked out West in search of adventure, he never expected he'd sail as close as he did to Siberia...or, for that matter, a Soviet gulag. Here's Charles to tell his story of adventure, how the fishing boat he was on sparked an international incident on a T-shirt run, and the courage he found to share his faith. His book is Captured by the Russians: A True Story
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next a
listeners story from Charles Burrell on a journey a boat,
some Soviets, and a Siberian gulag. Let's get into the story.
Take it away, Charles.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I remember reading Moby Dick, sitting in the classroom and
thinking to myself, I have to do this. I have
to go to sea, not exactly wailing, but at least
get out there and experience it well. I was offered
a job in my hometown at a junior high school,
(00:45):
teaching English at the age of twenty one, and it
was a horrific year. I didn't know what I was doing,
and I kept a journal that year, and in the
middle of November I wrote, in big cap letters in
my journal, am I happy? And whenever you find yourself
(01:05):
asking that question, you know what the answer is. So
I decided I was going to retire. It was early
July nineteen seventy seven. I packed up some old clothes
in a Duffel bag, cleaned out the classroom, parked my
old Beater car in my grandmother's garage, put four hundred
dollars in my pocket, and I headed out on foot.
(01:26):
Figured I could do better hitchhiking than trying to drive
that old beater car that I had, and my plan
was to go out west for about three months. What
I wanted to do more than anything else in my life,
I wanted to write. I wanted to find out who
I was and write about it. After three months, my
(01:47):
money ran down. My four hundred dollars ran out, actually
after a month and a half, and I decided that, well,
I'm going to keep on going. I got a job
in a Best Western lodge just outside of Yellowstone Park,
Cook City, Montana. And during that time I met a
guy by the name of Gordon Lucas. He lived outside
(02:10):
of Yellowstone. He lived in a teepe. He had a
big four wheel drive truck. He'd been to Alaska, and
he said, kid, if you want some adventure, go out
to Alaska and work on the fishing boats. That's where
the adventure is. You want something to write about. I
took him up on it, and I took a Greyhound
bus out to Seattle and hitchhike the rest of the way.
(02:30):
I arrived on the tip of the Kenai Peninsula Homer, Alaska,
five or six thousand miles from home, only to find
out that I missed the fishing season, and so I
got a job at a restaurant and working as a
night cook. At the end of the Halibit fishing season,
a good friend of mine told me that there was
(02:50):
a freighter down at the boat harbor that needed a cook. Now,
these are the boats to go out for weeks, months
at a time, and I thought, yes, this is what
I'm looking for. This is the kind of adventure that
I want. And so I went down to the boat.
And I always believed in going to the top dog,
so to speak. So I got out there and a
(03:13):
guy came out about my age. So what can I
do for you? I said, Uh, well, I want to
talk to the captain And he said, uh, what can
I do for you? And I want to talk to
the captain and he said, look at you're wasting my
time here. I always said, okay, okay, all right, figure,
I wasn't getting anywhere that way. So I said, I'm
looking for a job as a cook. I heard you
(03:33):
need a one. He said just a minute, and uh
the captain came down and I was I was stunned.
I was shocked. I expect an old man with a
gray beard like fresh off the Titanic. This guy was
younger than me, tab toms, do you look like? He
was barely out of high school. He came up to me,
he said, what can I do for you? I said,
I heard you. I'm looking for a job as a cook.
(03:54):
He said, well, you ever worked before as a cook?
I said yeah, And he said, okay, come back and
clock in the morning and we'll try you out. I
came back. He showed me all the food. He said,
go ahead cook breakfast and I said, okay, any in
particular you want. He said, yeah, food. I said, okay,
(04:14):
the food you want. Food, you'll get bacon and eggs
and ham and hash browns. I put onions and green
peppers for crowing out loud of those hash browns, and I,
you know, all kinds of juices and coffee. And I
put a spread out on the table and called the
crew in and stuffed them. Next was lunch, same thing,
then dinner, next day, breakfast, clean up, lunch, clean up, dinner.
(04:39):
I'm cleaning up and the crew is playing rock and
roll music and they're they're hanging out, and the captain
comes down he's rocking out too, and they're all real
you know the captain was in a good mood, so
I figured i'd be a good time to ask, So
I said, Sir, do I have the job? And he
kind of laughs. He pointed to me in front of
(05:00):
the crow and he started to laugh and he said,
can you imagine this guy looking for a job on
my boat? And I thought, well, it was a good try.
I gave it my best. And then he got serious
and he said, you gotta be kidding me. He said,
that's some of the best food I've had in a
long time. Pack your bags. We're leaving in three days
for Bristol Bay. And I went back to where I
was renting a place, a cabin, and I'm pumped. I
(05:25):
said yes, and I told the landlord I'm all excited.
I got to leave in three days. I'm heading for
Bristol Bay on a boat. And he said, oh gee,
I'm so sorry. Without two weeks notice, I'm going to
have to keep your two hundred and fifty dollars deposit.
There was no sense in trying to cause any trouble,
so I just said, sir, you can keep the deposit.
(05:48):
I'm gone to see I'll never forget The day May thirty,
first nineteen eighty two. We left the port of Homer, Alaska,
and halfway out the bay, seven thirty in the morning,
I'm making breakfast down there in the galley, and the
captain comes on the loudspeaker and he says, whales, whales,
(06:10):
Everyone on deck, And so we went out. We ran
out on deck, and we looked and looked, and nothing
was out there, just the wide open blue. And we
looked and looked, and we kept on waiting, and we're
just about ready to head back down, thinking it was
a false alarm, and I saw two huge white bluga
whales breaching completely out of the sea, two of them together,
(06:33):
like slow motion, primordial, magnificent, and crashed into the ocean.
And I thought, what a way to begin our travel.
Later that night, I finished my watch at three o'clock
in the morning, and instead of going to sleep, I
was wide awake, right into my journal, trying to describe
how those whales looked when they breached completely out of
(06:55):
the sea together. So here I am, and then, well
you can call it ship of dreams, I guess. I'm
on the free decay of one hundred and fifteen foot
landing craft heading down the schelikof Straight for a new Adventure.
Now there's something that happened that first winter that is
essential to the story. I met a Native American Indian.
(07:17):
His name was Glenn, and he came into work and
he was always cheerful. And one day I asked him, Glenn,
why are you always in such a good mood? Don't
you ever have a bad day? Knowing the history of
Native American Indians and the tremendous poverty and hardship they
have experienced, Glenn, what is your secret? And he said
(07:41):
to me, it's no secret. I'm a Christian. My faith
is in Jesus Christ, and he sees me through He
gave me a Bible to read. So, having no other
friends in Tom but Glenn at the time, I took
that Bible and cherished it, and I read the Old
Testament in the morning before going to work, and the
(08:02):
New Testament in the evenings after work. And I realized
when I got to the part about Jesus Christ describing
those going to heaven and those going to Hell, I
realized that I did not fit the description of those
going to heaven. And I bowed my head and I
prayed to Jesus Christ for him to forgive me of
(08:23):
my sins and to take over my life. And I
became what I like to call a genuine Christian that day.
Others might call it being born again. I became a
genuine Christian that day. That part of the story is
critical for when I would later be captured by the
(08:46):
Soviets and taken to Siberia.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And you've been listening to listener Charles Burrell tell us
the story of his own life. He'd been journaling, and
he wrote a question in his journal, am I happy?
And then of course answered that question to himself. If
you find yourself writing that question, you already know the answer.
So he packed his bags headed west on the border
of Yellowstone, and then from there headed further west and
(09:11):
north looking for real adventure on fishing boats in Alaska.
By the way, if it reminds you of another writer's journey,
this is Melville's journey. He said, my college was disease,
My college was the ships, and out of it came
Moby Dick. So this is one of the great traditions
of writers, whether you're a memoirrist, whether you're just writing
(09:33):
for fun. To write your own story, you have to
have some adventures, and he was looking for him. When
we come back, more of Charles Burrell's story from teacher
to writer and more here on our American stories, and
(10:09):
we returned to our American stories and with Charles Burrell's story.
When we last left off, Charles had arrived in Alaska,
become a born again Christian and had gotten a job
on the freeda k a boat run by mostly twenty
somethings that would provide a wonderful job opportunity running supplies
to seismology vessels far out in the Bering Sea. They'd
(10:31):
be on their third trip doing this when trouble arose.
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
We were running ahead of schedule. He was an adventurer
and he wanted to go into there's an Indian village
on the west side of Little Diamian Island. Tolms wanted
to go and get t shirts like I survived Diabe
that kind of thing. Now, at that time, nineteen eighty four,
there was a reef that we would have to go
around to get into the village. The noase ships that
(10:59):
would there. They didn't know how big that reef was.
It was too close to the Soviets they didn't go
in there. And we spot a gray ship off the
starboard bow, the Russia side. It had no markings, no flag.
We thought it was a fishing traller. You know, we
had encountered in our travels over the two years I
worked on the ship, we had encountered Japanese, Korean, never
(11:23):
any Russian trallers. But we would always pull up. We
would always trade, and we never encountered any Russian ships.
But you know, there's always a first time. And we figured,
look at we were all we were all in our
Our ship's engineer was eighteen years old, the rest of
us were all in our twenties. We were thinking naive
as we were. We were thinking, hey, listen, we're so
(11:45):
far west, they're so far east, so what if they're Soviets.
We'll pull up, we'll get information about this reef, we'll
do some trading with him, and we'll move on. We'll
head on. Well, we pulled up. There was one man
that came out on deck. He was making a signal
with his hands that to us indicated come alongside. So
(12:05):
we did. We came alongside. We threw up our lines
and Captain Tolmes went out on deck with a pencil
and paper in his hand, and he wanted to communicate
with the other captain and ask about this reef, but
there was nobody on that ship. So we waited, and
after about ten minutes or so, we saw all these
heads popping up all along their rail and they're looking
(12:26):
down at us, and we're looking up at them, and
they have an expression like, what are you guys nuts.
After ten or fifteen more minutes, I looked behind me
and I saw all these soldiers boom boom, boom, coming
over onto our deck, full uniforms, boots, knives, ak forty
seven machine guns. They stormed the boat, They surrounded us,
(12:49):
they grabbed the captain, and their officials disconnected all of
our radio equipment, so we had no contact with anybody
in the United States. For all they knew, we dropped
off the radar. And the authorities that were there, one
of them, speaking broke in English, presented papers in the
(13:10):
wheelhouse to Tomes that were written in Russian. They wanted
Tomes to sign these papers. They wanted him to record
his latitude longitude and then sign it. But he recorded
our numbers and then he asked the officials, what do
the papers say. The officials responded by saying, we cannot
tell you what they say, but you must sign well
(13:32):
what happens if I refuse, then you will be taken
to Siberia. Tomes stepped away and he walked to the
edge of the wheelhouse where there was a door. He
opened the door, cupped his hands, and he shouted in
order to the crew that I will never forget sign nothing.
And so it was decided that they would put us
(13:54):
under tow, toe us to Siberia for thirty hours. They
towed us the night, all the next day into the
following night. But uh, I need to back up for
a second now and tell you what happened during that
first night. It's somewhere in the middle of the night
Tate Tomes, the eighteen year old ship's engineer, and the
(14:17):
younger brother of Tabtomes, the captain and Mark help in
the first mate, twenty years old. They wanted to try
to activate the EPERB, the emergency position indicating radio beacon.
Every ship has one. Our EPERB was a cylinder that
was mounted in a styrofoam case on the back of
(14:40):
the wheelhouse roof. If the ship goes down, the EPERB
will float and a signal will be released showing where
the ship went down. Mark wanted to activate that EPERB
and send a signal to the United States that we
were in distress, and naturally we thought they would come
and get us. Twenty year old thinking. But Mark needed
(15:02):
permission to go up on the wheelhouse roof. So he
goes up into the wheelhouse and there's the captain surrounded
by Soviet officers and armed guards, and there are armed
guards throughout the boat, and Mark says to the captain, Sir,
I need to go up on the wheelhouse roof and
fix a broken spotlight. And Tom's said to Mark, Mark,
(15:28):
here we are being towed to Russia and you're worried
about a broken spotlight, Sir. The spotlight is very expensive.
We need to turn it upside down. And their mind's
met and Tom said, yes, we need to do that.
Tom's got permission from the Soviet officers. So Mark climbs
(15:53):
all the way up, goes out onto the roof, and
he goes to the spotlight, but a Soviet soldier followed
him up. So Mark starts to take apart the back
of the spotlight and realizes that it's not going to
work with the Soviet soldier up there. So Mark goes
all the way back down. He says, Tate, it's not working.
They're following me up there. Tate says, okay, hold on,
(16:13):
take your time, slow down, wait a little bit. Mark's
excuse the first time up there is he forgot his
channel axe. So Tate says, here's your channel acts. So
Mark goes back up there with his tools like before,
and the Soviet soldier follows him up again. So mark' say, man, shoot,
this isn't working. I forgot my wirecutter. So he goes
back down again. Tate, it's just not working. Tate says, okay,
(16:35):
all right, all right, let's pray. So they prayed, and
they finished praying, and Tate says, go on up. So
Mark goes on up again, climbing up that long ladder,
and no soldier follows him. There was no guard up there,
so Mark had to stay low, so he crawls on
his belly across the wheelhouse roof and Tate had arranged
(16:57):
at a pre arranged time that Tate would created diversion
by activating the engineable alarm. So Mark was looking at
his watch. He could see the lights of a Siberian
port in the distance, and the wind was cold up there,
and Mark is shivering. He crawls up to the EPERB
and right at the pre arranged time, bamp, bamp, bamp.
(17:20):
There's pandemonium on the boat. Soldiers are running everywhere. The
door of the wheelhouse slams open. Mark grabs the EPERB.
He flips it upside down and stuffs it back into
the case and he back pedals quickly. He puts some
grease on his hands to make it look good. He
climbs back down, thinking he's in the galley. He goes
back down to the galley where I was. He is
(17:40):
sitting there, He's smiling like a cheshire cat, thinking, ah,
I can see it now. Headlines first Mate activates eperb,
rescues crew. About fifteen minutes later, the Soviet communications specialist
comes into the galley with the EPERB in his hand.
(18:00):
He dismantles it in front of Mark's face and puts
the parts on the galley table. And Mark, he could
have called, he could have dug a hole and crawled in.
He was so embarrassed. The Soviet port that we had
been passing picked up the signal and radioed back to
(18:21):
the destroyer that a signal has been emitted in their area,
a distress signal, and that's how they discovered. As far
as we know, the United States never do a thing.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And you've been listening to listener Charles Burrell tell his
story again. We always want to hear your stories, and
adventure stories are a big part of our show. Heck,
we just did Lewis and Clark, We've done the Wright Brothers.
You want to talk about an adventure that was a
heck of an adventure out in Kitty Hawk, all by
themselves testing out planes, the world's first test pilots, Hemingway,
(18:53):
Jack London to build a fire. We told the story,
and of course, my favorite, we haven't done the story yet.
My favorite adventure stories is Sebastian Younger is the Perfect Storm.
And it's such a part of American literature, but moreover,
it's a part of American life. Young men and women
seeking adventure, heading west, heading north, heading south, and my goodness,
(19:16):
these young men in their twenties, mostly even younger, now
in a jam. When we come back, what happens next
on the Free Decay here on our American story and
(19:38):
we return to our American Stories and with a final
portion of Charles Burrell's story. When we last left off,
Charles and his fellow crewmates aboard the Free Decay were
captured at gunpoint by the Soviet Union and will be
put under tow and brought to a Siberian gulag. You'll
hear a name at the end of this story, Harry,
(19:59):
for future reference. That was the Soviet translator. Let's return
to the story.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
I remember the moment I set foot on Siberian soil.
I had one of those moments, one of those epiphanies
where I thought, man, seven years, It's been seven years
since I left home. I was going to leave for
like three months to get a few stories, and here
I am a captive in Siberia. If I ever get
(20:25):
out of this, this is my story. It got pretty serious.
They separated us into two rooms and they started the interrogation.
They would interrogate you at any hour. There was no
such thing as day or night, and they would take
you one at a time. They would shine a bright
light in your eyes and they would ask you every
(20:47):
question imaginable about your life, your family, your education, your girlfriend,
if you had one, the color of your girlfriend's eyes.
I meant nothing out the whole time. Their purpose was
to get us to sign the papers. They had crossed
(21:08):
our latitude longitude numbers off and put in their own,
and their goal was for us to sign the paper.
At one point, the captain asked if we refuse to sign,
what could happen, and they said, you could get up
to thirty years in prison. All right, give me thirty years,
(21:28):
but let the boat and the crew go. This was
unacceptable to them. I mean it was intimidation, is what
it was. They'd be pointing their finger into your chest
and asking these questions. They were trying to intimidate us
into signing. And at one point, I tell you I
was about ready to sign, just to get them off
my back. But when I felt myself at that ready
(21:49):
to sign, I would just like like a turtle. I'd
go into a shell and just refuse to answer you
more questions, and they would just get me out of there,
get him out of here, and they would tear you
ate the captain when they took him in. When they
took Toms in for questioning, because I knew they were
going to be hardest on him, I got on my knees,
and I prayed till he came back. I don't care
how long he was there. I prayed till he came back.
(22:12):
Days went by. I have to backtrack for a second,
because during the days that we were there, we were
there for a total of eight days, we had a
very significant exchange with the highest ranking military man in
that part of the world. He was the lieutenant colonel
in charge of the Eastern Frontier Guard. Throughout the time
(22:35):
of our confinement, we had interactions with the Russian guards
who are our age. They were clearly fascinated with these Americans.
About half of them, you can tell, really wanted to
communicate with us, but they were not allowed to speak
with us. We always had to be escorted by a
(22:56):
guard to an area that we called the pit, which
is where we had to relieve ourselves, which was two
holes in the floor. I'll spare you the details, but
there was one guard in particular who seemed to be
particularly interested, and I wanted to share with him my
faith because I knew that the Soviets taught their school
(23:19):
children that there is no God. So I wrote him
a letter. It took me several days to write the letter.
I had to revise it several times to keep the
English as simple as I possibly could. I printed it
out on these yellow sheets of paper that I had.
We were told to write our story numerous times. What happened,
(23:40):
and so I wrote him on this paper that we
were given. I shared the message of the Bible as
simply as I could, from the Garden of Eden in
Genesis chapter three, all the way through to the time
of Christ. But at the last paragraph I encouraged him
to put his faith in Christ. And in the last paragraph,
(24:03):
there's a prophecy in the Bible Ezekiel, chapters thirty eight
and thirty nine, that talks about a nation from the
uttermost north that will invade Israel in what the Bible
calls the latter Days, and it would be a horrific battle,
and this army would be supernaturally defeated. Anyhow, I put
(24:25):
that in there as a warning, and then I signed
the letter. Now, when I finally got it finished and ready,
I asked him to accompany me to the pit. I
did not want anyone else seeing an exchange between us.
When we got there into the pit, there's a barrel
on the right hand side, and we're standing next to
(24:46):
the water barrel, and I pulled out the letter neatly folded,
and I handed it to him, and he turned away.
He couldn't take it, and he crossed his arms and
turned his head and shook his head. He can't take it,
and so in frustration, I left the letter on the
lid of the water barrel and went back to my quarters.
Waited two hours, and went back. The letter was gone.
(25:10):
I asked him where's the letter? Do you have it?
And he patted his breast pocket and nodded his head.
And I was excited. I was happy. I was sure
that if he didn't understand English, one day he would
have this letter in my naivety and he would be
able to read it. Well. Time went by, and finally
(25:31):
a man arrived. This was the Lieutenant colonel. At first
he was very very kind. Later in the last meeting
we had with him, he was not kind. He was
very very You could tell he was very upset, he
was very controlled. We knew that something had happened in
the interval that I had given this letter to the guard.
(25:52):
Something had happened, something serious. And the lieutenant colonel asked
Tolmes if he was familiar with Eastern geography, Middle Eastern geography,
and tom said, no, I'm not familiar with Middle Eastern geography.
And then the lieutenant colonel, to my shock, he pulled
out my letter and he put it on the table
(26:15):
and he said to the captain, do you realize that
this letter talks about the Soviet Union? You have brought
on behalf of one of your crewmen, propaganda of war
into our country, punishable by a prison sentence. The man,
my heart started a pound and I leapt up and
I shouted, this is the word of God. He didn't
(26:37):
want to talk to me, he didn't want to talk
to the cook. He just dismissed me. He wanted to
talk to the captain. And Tom's said to him, let
me see the letter. And so the lieutenant colonel carefully
pushed the letter across the table, and Tom's turned it
right side up so he could read it. And it
was like he was treating a letter like it was
(26:59):
some kind of a like it might explode, like it
was a grenade. So Toams leaned over the table, put
his elbows on the table, and he studied the letter.
He read it, and it must have been five minutes
ten minutes. Everyone's quiet, and it is tense. You could
have cut. And when Tom's finished reading the letter, he
looked up at the lieutenant colonel and their eyes lacked,
(27:22):
and he said, Soviet Union. Where does it say Soviet
Union here? Because what I had done in the letter
when I wrote it, I quoted Ezekiel. All he wrote
in that prophecy was a nation from the uttermost north,
which is what I quoted, will invade with allies the
(27:43):
land of Israel, and God will supernaturally end that conflict.
And the lieutenant colonel looked back at the letter, and
there was nowhere to go from there, and he said
thank you. The officers behind him rose to their feet.
Thoms rose to his feet, and the rest of us
we all stood. It looked like it was going to
(28:05):
be sentenced time. And the lieutenant colonel said, you and
your crew on behalf of your actions had been declared
unfriendly to the Soviet state. And he wheeled around about
face and he left the room, and the officers left
the room. Tolm's turn, he said to me, I thought
(28:26):
I told you not to sign anything. I said, oh, yeah,
Tab you did. I'm so sorry. Edge And he said,
do you think God led you to write that letter,
and I said, yes, I do, and Tom said, okay,
no problem. About a day later, at two o'clock in
the morning, one of the hostile officers banged on our
(28:51):
door and he told us to get up out of
our bunks, and he said, Moscow has decided to release
you into the custody of the United States Coast Guard.
You have twenty minutes to get your things. And I
remember Mark talking to Harry, and he was fascinated with
the United States. He was fascinated. He was fascinated with
(29:14):
the state of Florida. Right then, he says to Mark,
what is it like living in the United States? I mean,
he started to get honest. Mark said, we're free. I
can do anything I want to do. I can fly
anywhere I want to fly. We're free. And Harry said
to him, we are free too in our country. I
(29:35):
can have anything I want in my country, including your God.
And Mark responded and said to him, no, you're not.
You don't know what freedom is. They left it at that.
We never did sign the papers, and now you know what,
we never didn't get those T shirts from Little Damian Island.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
I had a great job on the editing by Monty Montgomery,
and a special thanks to Listen to Charles Burrell for
sharing his story and what a story about faith, What
a story about courage, and about so much more. The
story of Charles Burrell captured by the Soviets. Here on
our American Stories
And we returned to our American stories. Up next a
listeners story from Charles Burrell on a journey a boat,
some Soviets, and a Siberian gulag. Let's get into the story.
Take it away, Charles.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I remember reading Moby Dick, sitting in the classroom and
thinking to myself, I have to do this. I have
to go to sea, not exactly wailing, but at least
get out there and experience it well. I was offered
a job in my hometown at a junior high school,
(00:45):
teaching English at the age of twenty one, and it
was a horrific year. I didn't know what I was doing,
and I kept a journal that year, and in the
middle of November I wrote, in big cap letters in
my journal, am I happy? And whenever you find yourself
(01:05):
asking that question, you know what the answer is. So
I decided I was going to retire. It was early
July nineteen seventy seven. I packed up some old clothes
in a Duffel bag, cleaned out the classroom, parked my
old Beater car in my grandmother's garage, put four hundred
dollars in my pocket, and I headed out on foot.
(01:26):
Figured I could do better hitchhiking than trying to drive
that old beater car that I had, and my plan
was to go out west for about three months. What
I wanted to do more than anything else in my life,
I wanted to write. I wanted to find out who
I was and write about it. After three months, my
(01:47):
money ran down. My four hundred dollars ran out, actually
after a month and a half, and I decided that, well,
I'm going to keep on going. I got a job
in a Best Western lodge just outside of Yellowstone Park,
Cook City, Montana. And during that time I met a
guy by the name of Gordon Lucas. He lived outside
(02:10):
of Yellowstone. He lived in a teepe. He had a
big four wheel drive truck. He'd been to Alaska, and
he said, kid, if you want some adventure, go out
to Alaska and work on the fishing boats. That's where
the adventure is. You want something to write about. I
took him up on it, and I took a Greyhound
bus out to Seattle and hitchhike the rest of the way.
(02:30):
I arrived on the tip of the Kenai Peninsula Homer, Alaska,
five or six thousand miles from home, only to find
out that I missed the fishing season, and so I
got a job at a restaurant and working as a
night cook. At the end of the Halibit fishing season,
a good friend of mine told me that there was
(02:50):
a freighter down at the boat harbor that needed a cook. Now,
these are the boats to go out for weeks, months
at a time, and I thought, yes, this is what
I'm looking for. This is the kind of adventure that
I want. And so I went down to the boat.
And I always believed in going to the top dog,
so to speak. So I got out there and a
(03:13):
guy came out about my age. So what can I
do for you? I said, Uh, well, I want to
talk to the captain And he said, uh, what can
I do for you? And I want to talk to
the captain and he said, look at you're wasting my
time here. I always said, okay, okay, all right, figure,
I wasn't getting anywhere that way. So I said, I'm
looking for a job as a cook. I heard you
(03:33):
need a one. He said just a minute, and uh
the captain came down and I was I was stunned.
I was shocked. I expect an old man with a
gray beard like fresh off the Titanic. This guy was
younger than me, tab toms, do you look like? He
was barely out of high school. He came up to me,
he said, what can I do for you? I said,
I heard you. I'm looking for a job as a cook.
(03:54):
He said, well, you ever worked before as a cook?
I said yeah, And he said, okay, come back and
clock in the morning and we'll try you out. I
came back. He showed me all the food. He said,
go ahead cook breakfast and I said, okay, any in
particular you want. He said, yeah, food. I said, okay,
(04:14):
the food you want. Food, you'll get bacon and eggs
and ham and hash browns. I put onions and green
peppers for crowing out loud of those hash browns, and I,
you know, all kinds of juices and coffee. And I
put a spread out on the table and called the
crew in and stuffed them. Next was lunch, same thing,
then dinner, next day, breakfast, clean up, lunch, clean up, dinner.
(04:39):
I'm cleaning up and the crew is playing rock and
roll music and they're they're hanging out, and the captain
comes down he's rocking out too, and they're all real
you know the captain was in a good mood, so
I figured i'd be a good time to ask, So
I said, Sir, do I have the job? And he
kind of laughs. He pointed to me in front of
(05:00):
the crow and he started to laugh and he said,
can you imagine this guy looking for a job on
my boat? And I thought, well, it was a good try.
I gave it my best. And then he got serious
and he said, you gotta be kidding me. He said,
that's some of the best food I've had in a
long time. Pack your bags. We're leaving in three days
for Bristol Bay. And I went back to where I
was renting a place, a cabin, and I'm pumped. I
(05:25):
said yes, and I told the landlord I'm all excited.
I got to leave in three days. I'm heading for
Bristol Bay on a boat. And he said, oh gee,
I'm so sorry. Without two weeks notice, I'm going to
have to keep your two hundred and fifty dollars deposit.
There was no sense in trying to cause any trouble,
so I just said, sir, you can keep the deposit.
(05:48):
I'm gone to see I'll never forget The day May thirty,
first nineteen eighty two. We left the port of Homer, Alaska,
and halfway out the bay, seven thirty in the morning,
I'm making breakfast down there in the galley, and the
captain comes on the loudspeaker and he says, whales, whales,
(06:10):
Everyone on deck, And so we went out. We ran
out on deck, and we looked and looked, and nothing
was out there, just the wide open blue. And we
looked and looked, and we kept on waiting, and we're
just about ready to head back down, thinking it was
a false alarm, and I saw two huge white bluga
whales breaching completely out of the sea, two of them together,
(06:33):
like slow motion, primordial, magnificent, and crashed into the ocean.
And I thought, what a way to begin our travel.
Later that night, I finished my watch at three o'clock
in the morning, and instead of going to sleep, I
was wide awake, right into my journal, trying to describe
how those whales looked when they breached completely out of
(06:55):
the sea together. So here I am, and then, well
you can call it ship of dreams, I guess. I'm
on the free decay of one hundred and fifteen foot
landing craft heading down the schelikof Straight for a new Adventure.
Now there's something that happened that first winter that is
essential to the story. I met a Native American Indian.
(07:17):
His name was Glenn, and he came into work and
he was always cheerful. And one day I asked him, Glenn,
why are you always in such a good mood? Don't
you ever have a bad day? Knowing the history of
Native American Indians and the tremendous poverty and hardship they
have experienced, Glenn, what is your secret? And he said
(07:41):
to me, it's no secret. I'm a Christian. My faith
is in Jesus Christ, and he sees me through He
gave me a Bible to read. So, having no other
friends in Tom but Glenn at the time, I took
that Bible and cherished it, and I read the Old
Testament in the morning before going to work, and the
(08:02):
New Testament in the evenings after work. And I realized
when I got to the part about Jesus Christ describing
those going to heaven and those going to Hell, I
realized that I did not fit the description of those
going to heaven. And I bowed my head and I
prayed to Jesus Christ for him to forgive me of
(08:23):
my sins and to take over my life. And I
became what I like to call a genuine Christian that day.
Others might call it being born again. I became a
genuine Christian that day. That part of the story is
critical for when I would later be captured by the
(08:46):
Soviets and taken to Siberia.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
And you've been listening to listener Charles Burrell tell us
the story of his own life. He'd been journaling, and
he wrote a question in his journal, am I happy?
And then of course answered that question to himself. If
you find yourself writing that question, you already know the answer.
So he packed his bags headed west on the border
of Yellowstone, and then from there headed further west and
(09:11):
north looking for real adventure on fishing boats in Alaska.
By the way, if it reminds you of another writer's journey,
this is Melville's journey. He said, my college was disease,
My college was the ships, and out of it came
Moby Dick. So this is one of the great traditions
of writers, whether you're a memoirrist, whether you're just writing
(09:33):
for fun. To write your own story, you have to
have some adventures, and he was looking for him. When
we come back, more of Charles Burrell's story from teacher
to writer and more here on our American stories, and
(10:09):
we returned to our American stories and with Charles Burrell's story.
When we last left off, Charles had arrived in Alaska,
become a born again Christian and had gotten a job
on the freeda k a boat run by mostly twenty
somethings that would provide a wonderful job opportunity running supplies
to seismology vessels far out in the Bering Sea. They'd
(10:31):
be on their third trip doing this when trouble arose.
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
We were running ahead of schedule. He was an adventurer
and he wanted to go into there's an Indian village
on the west side of Little Diamian Island. Tolms wanted
to go and get t shirts like I survived Diabe
that kind of thing. Now, at that time, nineteen eighty four,
there was a reef that we would have to go
around to get into the village. The noase ships that
(10:59):
would there. They didn't know how big that reef was.
It was too close to the Soviets they didn't go
in there. And we spot a gray ship off the
starboard bow, the Russia side. It had no markings, no flag.
We thought it was a fishing traller. You know, we
had encountered in our travels over the two years I
worked on the ship, we had encountered Japanese, Korean, never
(11:23):
any Russian trallers. But we would always pull up. We
would always trade, and we never encountered any Russian ships.
But you know, there's always a first time. And we figured,
look at we were all we were all in our
Our ship's engineer was eighteen years old, the rest of
us were all in our twenties. We were thinking naive
as we were. We were thinking, hey, listen, we're so
(11:45):
far west, they're so far east, so what if they're Soviets.
We'll pull up, we'll get information about this reef, we'll
do some trading with him, and we'll move on. We'll
head on. Well, we pulled up. There was one man
that came out on deck. He was making a signal
with his hands that to us indicated come alongside. So
(12:05):
we did. We came alongside. We threw up our lines
and Captain Tolmes went out on deck with a pencil
and paper in his hand, and he wanted to communicate
with the other captain and ask about this reef, but
there was nobody on that ship. So we waited, and
after about ten minutes or so, we saw all these
heads popping up all along their rail and they're looking
(12:26):
down at us, and we're looking up at them, and
they have an expression like, what are you guys nuts.
After ten or fifteen more minutes, I looked behind me
and I saw all these soldiers boom boom, boom, coming
over onto our deck, full uniforms, boots, knives, ak forty
seven machine guns. They stormed the boat, They surrounded us,
(12:49):
they grabbed the captain, and their officials disconnected all of
our radio equipment, so we had no contact with anybody
in the United States. For all they knew, we dropped
off the radar. And the authorities that were there, one
of them, speaking broke in English, presented papers in the
(13:10):
wheelhouse to Tomes that were written in Russian. They wanted
Tomes to sign these papers. They wanted him to record
his latitude longitude and then sign it. But he recorded
our numbers and then he asked the officials, what do
the papers say. The officials responded by saying, we cannot
tell you what they say, but you must sign well
(13:32):
what happens if I refuse, then you will be taken
to Siberia. Tomes stepped away and he walked to the
edge of the wheelhouse where there was a door. He
opened the door, cupped his hands, and he shouted in
order to the crew that I will never forget sign nothing.
And so it was decided that they would put us
(13:54):
under tow, toe us to Siberia for thirty hours. They
towed us the night, all the next day into the
following night. But uh, I need to back up for
a second now and tell you what happened during that
first night. It's somewhere in the middle of the night
Tate Tomes, the eighteen year old ship's engineer, and the
(14:17):
younger brother of Tabtomes, the captain and Mark help in
the first mate, twenty years old. They wanted to try
to activate the EPERB, the emergency position indicating radio beacon.
Every ship has one. Our EPERB was a cylinder that
was mounted in a styrofoam case on the back of
(14:40):
the wheelhouse roof. If the ship goes down, the EPERB
will float and a signal will be released showing where
the ship went down. Mark wanted to activate that EPERB
and send a signal to the United States that we
were in distress, and naturally we thought they would come
and get us. Twenty year old thinking. But Mark needed
(15:02):
permission to go up on the wheelhouse roof. So he
goes up into the wheelhouse and there's the captain surrounded
by Soviet officers and armed guards, and there are armed
guards throughout the boat, and Mark says to the captain, Sir,
I need to go up on the wheelhouse roof and
fix a broken spotlight. And Tom's said to Mark, Mark,
(15:28):
here we are being towed to Russia and you're worried
about a broken spotlight, Sir. The spotlight is very expensive.
We need to turn it upside down. And their mind's
met and Tom said, yes, we need to do that.
Tom's got permission from the Soviet officers. So Mark climbs
(15:53):
all the way up, goes out onto the roof, and
he goes to the spotlight, but a Soviet soldier followed
him up. So Mark starts to take apart the back
of the spotlight and realizes that it's not going to
work with the Soviet soldier up there. So Mark goes
all the way back down. He says, Tate, it's not working.
They're following me up there. Tate says, okay, hold on,
(16:13):
take your time, slow down, wait a little bit. Mark's
excuse the first time up there is he forgot his
channel axe. So Tate says, here's your channel acts. So
Mark goes back up there with his tools like before,
and the Soviet soldier follows him up again. So mark' say, man, shoot,
this isn't working. I forgot my wirecutter. So he goes
back down again. Tate, it's just not working. Tate says, okay,
(16:35):
all right, all right, let's pray. So they prayed, and
they finished praying, and Tate says, go on up. So
Mark goes on up again, climbing up that long ladder,
and no soldier follows him. There was no guard up there,
so Mark had to stay low, so he crawls on
his belly across the wheelhouse roof and Tate had arranged
(16:57):
at a pre arranged time that Tate would created diversion
by activating the engineable alarm. So Mark was looking at
his watch. He could see the lights of a Siberian
port in the distance, and the wind was cold up there,
and Mark is shivering. He crawls up to the EPERB
and right at the pre arranged time, bamp, bamp, bamp.
(17:20):
There's pandemonium on the boat. Soldiers are running everywhere. The
door of the wheelhouse slams open. Mark grabs the EPERB.
He flips it upside down and stuffs it back into
the case and he back pedals quickly. He puts some
grease on his hands to make it look good. He
climbs back down, thinking he's in the galley. He goes
back down to the galley where I was. He is
(17:40):
sitting there, He's smiling like a cheshire cat, thinking, ah,
I can see it now. Headlines first Mate activates eperb,
rescues crew. About fifteen minutes later, the Soviet communications specialist
comes into the galley with the EPERB in his hand.
(18:00):
He dismantles it in front of Mark's face and puts
the parts on the galley table. And Mark, he could
have called, he could have dug a hole and crawled in.
He was so embarrassed. The Soviet port that we had
been passing picked up the signal and radioed back to
(18:21):
the destroyer that a signal has been emitted in their area,
a distress signal, and that's how they discovered. As far
as we know, the United States never do a thing.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And you've been listening to listener Charles Burrell tell his
story again. We always want to hear your stories, and
adventure stories are a big part of our show. Heck,
we just did Lewis and Clark, We've done the Wright Brothers.
You want to talk about an adventure that was a
heck of an adventure out in Kitty Hawk, all by
themselves testing out planes, the world's first test pilots, Hemingway,
(18:53):
Jack London to build a fire. We told the story,
and of course, my favorite, we haven't done the story yet.
My favorite adventure stories is Sebastian Younger is the Perfect Storm.
And it's such a part of American literature, but moreover,
it's a part of American life. Young men and women
seeking adventure, heading west, heading north, heading south, and my goodness,
(19:16):
these young men in their twenties, mostly even younger, now
in a jam. When we come back, what happens next
on the Free Decay here on our American story and
(19:38):
we return to our American Stories and with a final
portion of Charles Burrell's story. When we last left off,
Charles and his fellow crewmates aboard the Free Decay were
captured at gunpoint by the Soviet Union and will be
put under tow and brought to a Siberian gulag. You'll
hear a name at the end of this story, Harry,
(19:59):
for future reference. That was the Soviet translator. Let's return
to the story.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
I remember the moment I set foot on Siberian soil.
I had one of those moments, one of those epiphanies
where I thought, man, seven years, It's been seven years
since I left home. I was going to leave for
like three months to get a few stories, and here
I am a captive in Siberia. If I ever get
(20:25):
out of this, this is my story. It got pretty serious.
They separated us into two rooms and they started the interrogation.
They would interrogate you at any hour. There was no
such thing as day or night, and they would take
you one at a time. They would shine a bright
light in your eyes and they would ask you every
(20:47):
question imaginable about your life, your family, your education, your girlfriend,
if you had one, the color of your girlfriend's eyes.
I meant nothing out the whole time. Their purpose was
to get us to sign the papers. They had crossed
(21:08):
our latitude longitude numbers off and put in their own,
and their goal was for us to sign the paper.
At one point, the captain asked if we refuse to sign,
what could happen, and they said, you could get up
to thirty years in prison. All right, give me thirty years,
(21:28):
but let the boat and the crew go. This was
unacceptable to them. I mean it was intimidation, is what
it was. They'd be pointing their finger into your chest
and asking these questions. They were trying to intimidate us
into signing. And at one point, I tell you I
was about ready to sign, just to get them off
my back. But when I felt myself at that ready
(21:49):
to sign, I would just like like a turtle. I'd
go into a shell and just refuse to answer you
more questions, and they would just get me out of there,
get him out of here, and they would tear you
ate the captain when they took him in. When they
took Toms in for questioning, because I knew they were
going to be hardest on him, I got on my knees,
and I prayed till he came back. I don't care
how long he was there. I prayed till he came back.
(22:12):
Days went by. I have to backtrack for a second,
because during the days that we were there, we were
there for a total of eight days, we had a
very significant exchange with the highest ranking military man in
that part of the world. He was the lieutenant colonel
in charge of the Eastern Frontier Guard. Throughout the time
(22:35):
of our confinement, we had interactions with the Russian guards
who are our age. They were clearly fascinated with these Americans.
About half of them, you can tell, really wanted to
communicate with us, but they were not allowed to speak
with us. We always had to be escorted by a
(22:56):
guard to an area that we called the pit, which
is where we had to relieve ourselves, which was two
holes in the floor. I'll spare you the details, but
there was one guard in particular who seemed to be
particularly interested, and I wanted to share with him my
faith because I knew that the Soviets taught their school
(23:19):
children that there is no God. So I wrote him
a letter. It took me several days to write the letter.
I had to revise it several times to keep the
English as simple as I possibly could. I printed it
out on these yellow sheets of paper that I had.
We were told to write our story numerous times. What happened,
(23:40):
and so I wrote him on this paper that we
were given. I shared the message of the Bible as
simply as I could, from the Garden of Eden in
Genesis chapter three, all the way through to the time
of Christ. But at the last paragraph I encouraged him
to put his faith in Christ. And in the last paragraph,
(24:03):
there's a prophecy in the Bible Ezekiel, chapters thirty eight
and thirty nine, that talks about a nation from the
uttermost north that will invade Israel in what the Bible
calls the latter Days, and it would be a horrific battle,
and this army would be supernaturally defeated. Anyhow, I put
(24:25):
that in there as a warning, and then I signed
the letter. Now, when I finally got it finished and ready,
I asked him to accompany me to the pit. I
did not want anyone else seeing an exchange between us.
When we got there into the pit, there's a barrel
on the right hand side, and we're standing next to
(24:46):
the water barrel, and I pulled out the letter neatly folded,
and I handed it to him, and he turned away.
He couldn't take it, and he crossed his arms and
turned his head and shook his head. He can't take it,
and so in frustration, I left the letter on the
lid of the water barrel and went back to my quarters.
Waited two hours, and went back. The letter was gone.
(25:10):
I asked him where's the letter? Do you have it?
And he patted his breast pocket and nodded his head.
And I was excited. I was happy. I was sure
that if he didn't understand English, one day he would
have this letter in my naivety and he would be
able to read it. Well. Time went by, and finally
(25:31):
a man arrived. This was the Lieutenant colonel. At first
he was very very kind. Later in the last meeting
we had with him, he was not kind. He was
very very You could tell he was very upset, he
was very controlled. We knew that something had happened in
the interval that I had given this letter to the guard.
(25:52):
Something had happened, something serious. And the lieutenant colonel asked
Tolmes if he was familiar with Eastern geography, Middle Eastern geography,
and tom said, no, I'm not familiar with Middle Eastern geography.
And then the lieutenant colonel, to my shock, he pulled
out my letter and he put it on the table
(26:15):
and he said to the captain, do you realize that
this letter talks about the Soviet Union? You have brought
on behalf of one of your crewmen, propaganda of war
into our country, punishable by a prison sentence. The man,
my heart started a pound and I leapt up and
I shouted, this is the word of God. He didn't
(26:37):
want to talk to me, he didn't want to talk
to the cook. He just dismissed me. He wanted to
talk to the captain. And Tom's said to him, let
me see the letter. And so the lieutenant colonel carefully
pushed the letter across the table, and Tom's turned it
right side up so he could read it. And it
was like he was treating a letter like it was
(26:59):
some kind of a like it might explode, like it
was a grenade. So Toams leaned over the table, put
his elbows on the table, and he studied the letter.
He read it, and it must have been five minutes
ten minutes. Everyone's quiet, and it is tense. You could
have cut. And when Tom's finished reading the letter, he
looked up at the lieutenant colonel and their eyes lacked,
(27:22):
and he said, Soviet Union. Where does it say Soviet
Union here? Because what I had done in the letter
when I wrote it, I quoted Ezekiel. All he wrote
in that prophecy was a nation from the uttermost north,
which is what I quoted, will invade with allies the
(27:43):
land of Israel, and God will supernaturally end that conflict.
And the lieutenant colonel looked back at the letter, and
there was nowhere to go from there, and he said
thank you. The officers behind him rose to their feet.
Thoms rose to his feet, and the rest of us
we all stood. It looked like it was going to
(28:05):
be sentenced time. And the lieutenant colonel said, you and
your crew on behalf of your actions had been declared
unfriendly to the Soviet state. And he wheeled around about
face and he left the room, and the officers left
the room. Tolm's turn, he said to me, I thought
(28:26):
I told you not to sign anything. I said, oh, yeah,
Tab you did. I'm so sorry. Edge And he said,
do you think God led you to write that letter,
and I said, yes, I do, and Tom said, okay,
no problem. About a day later, at two o'clock in
the morning, one of the hostile officers banged on our
(28:51):
door and he told us to get up out of
our bunks, and he said, Moscow has decided to release
you into the custody of the United States Coast Guard.
You have twenty minutes to get your things. And I
remember Mark talking to Harry, and he was fascinated with
the United States. He was fascinated. He was fascinated with
(29:14):
the state of Florida. Right then, he says to Mark,
what is it like living in the United States? I mean,
he started to get honest. Mark said, we're free. I
can do anything I want to do. I can fly
anywhere I want to fly. We're free. And Harry said
to him, we are free too in our country. I
(29:35):
can have anything I want in my country, including your God.
And Mark responded and said to him, no, you're not.
You don't know what freedom is. They left it at that.
We never did sign the papers, and now you know what,
we never didn't get those T shirts from Little Damian Island.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
I had a great job on the editing by Monty Montgomery,
and a special thanks to Listen to Charles Burrell for
sharing his story and what a story about faith, What
a story about courage, and about so much more. The
story of Charles Burrell captured by the Soviets. Here on
our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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