Chatham Correctional Institution was a punishment camp.  They called us "rabbits" because all of us had previously attempted an escape before getting there.  When I first heard this I thought it was a poor choice since it reminded us what we'd once been, before they broke us.  And break us they did, through a combination of constant hard work, just enough food to survive, little sleep, and no medical care for the injuries caused by everything else.  When I first arrived the first thing I noticed was how thin and beaten down every convict was.  Few had a spark left in them.  Chatham CI would be considered unconstitutional today.  It wasn't legal then, but they got away with it.  Their stated mandate was to punish rabbits with hard labor.  Hard labor was part of their security plan.  A man who'd been worked to the point of exhaustion six days a week doesn't have the time or energy for planning and executing an escape.  There were only three ways to get out of the work: 1) die, 2) try to escape, which would mean death if you failed, and 3) cut your Achilles tendon with your shovel.  There had been numerous suicides, no escape attempts in four years, and dozens of cut Achilles tendon.

They call it the "rubber chain gang".  Those pesky federal courts had made actual chains on a chain gang illegal, so Georgia came up with an effective solution.  They didn't allow a chain gang member to have shoes, only over-sized heavy boots that came above the knee.  It's difficult to walk in such boots, impossible to run in them.  Which was the point.  Convicts were worked hard in the wet and muddy areas of South Georgia swampy regions.  The strategy was to work us on the border of a large swamp, always placing a chain gang crew down in a ditch, a ditch that was required to be deep, wet, and thick with mud.  The rules were that we couldn't come out of the ditch until ordered to do so and we couldn't remove our boots until after our return to the prison at the end of the long day.  Taking off your boots in the rubber chain gang was the same as removing your leg iron in the old post-civil war area chain gangs.  The boot was your tether.  Removed the tether and you were trying to escape.  Try to escape and you'd be shot without warning.

Aside from the fact that the rubber boots prevented a convict from running, they were tortuous when used as they were.  The boots were issued several sizes too large, they were old, the rubber hard and cracked.  They leaked.  The only good thing about the boots is that they were thick enough to protect you from snake bites, and there was never a shortage of snakes in those deep ditches boarding the swamp.  We were given one pair of thin socks, which we were required to wear.  After an hour in the ditch the socks were soaked from the leaky boots, and half of your foot, which made things worse, especially since you couldn't pull off the boot to pull your socks up.  The feet of every convict on the rubber chain gang were torn up from infected blisters.  Every man walked with a limp.  He'd better walk with a limp because if he didn't they would think  you weren't worked hard enough, something they would correct immediately.  Forget medical care, there was none.  If you had a problem serious enough to require an emergency room visit they'd take you, but there were few medical conditions deemed that critical.  Blistered and infected feet were considered normal wear and tear, not a medical problem.  All part of their carefully planed punishment and escape prevention technique.  It was a brutal, but effective system.

The problem with operating a chain gang full of proven "rabbits" is that they had to take the rabbits outside of the prison to work.  They overcame this problem with a combination of location and overwhelming force.  They understood well that their rabbits were born to run, so they were fully prepared when it happened.  Each chain gang had ten convicts on rubber tethers, two armed guards, and one trustee who drove the van and ran errands for the guards.  Each of the two guards had a holstered .38 revolver and a Remington 870, 12 Gage shot gun loaded with double 00 buckshot.  Most important from the rabbits point of view, the guards were well trained.  Throughout the day one guard was positioned on each side of the chain gang crew of twelve convicts.  The guards kept the gang close together as we worked and never allowed us to get close to them.  This was wise as each of us had a shovel to dig with.  If one of the guards had to go to the bathroom they had us lay down our shovels, then would march us to the truck and lock us in it.  At that point one guard would watch the truck while the other took a leak in the ditch we were working in.  When we had to take a leak we did it where we stood, in the ditch we worked in.  They were good and rarely made a small mistake, but they never made a big one.

The convicts themselves were a rough group.  I wouldn't call any of them decent or nice.  They couldn't do anything to the guards who brutalized them so they took their anger out on each other.  It was a rough place after work.  All that said, they were convicts.  I'll have to explain that word's usage in prison vernacular.  There are two basic types of men in prison: an inmate and a convict.  An inmate is a guy who submits to authority, doesn't break any rules, does what he's told, and might just rat the next guy out if he needs to.  A convict never submits, never breaks, will do all that he can to aid another convict against authority, and would never dream of being a rat.  To be called an inmate by another prisoner is an invitation to a fight, to be called a convict is a badge of honor.  The convict code is a bit fluid, but in general terms it's that you don't cooperate with your captors, you never allow anyone to disrespect you, and you fight for your honor, regardless of whether you have to fight a convict or a guard.  A convict can be trusted, an inmate can't.  Chatham CI was full of convicts.  Mostly young convicts because old convicts rarely tried to escape.

I wasn't there an hour before five convicts talked to me one-on-one and told me to forget about trying to escape.  They knew I would want to try by the fact that I was there, so being convicts, they were looking after me by schooling me on the facts.  That fact being that an escape attempt was suicide.  These guys were seasoned escape artist, so they had studied their surroundings and the guard's procedure, looking for any weakness or crack.  They all agreed that there wasn't one.  The sooner I understood this the sooner I would forget about being a rabbit and focus on survival.  They gave me good advice, which I listened to.  I listened carefully because in trying to talk me out of it they gave their professional opinion of the security system I would have to beat to get out.  At first I only listened, but before the night was over I began asking questions.  My questions were answered, but always with a grin or a shake of the head.  A part of this discussion was give and take.  I had to share my relevant past, which consisted of three successful escapes and no failed ones.  No attempts.  Even among this crew three successful escapes bought me immediate respect.  Before lights out of my first night the convicts were convinced I'd give it a try.  By breakfast I'd earned a nick name that would stick with me through my time in the Georgia prison system:  Cool Hand Luke.

Even after all the warnings I received, my first day on the chain gang was a shock.  I was twenty-one and in great shape, but nothing could prepare me for what I had to endure.  The heat, the painful boots, the brutally hard work with no breaks, the stink of the ditch, the constant mosquito bites and even the occasional sound of a shot gun blast as one of the guards shot a snake.  At the end of the first day I could barely walk and I hurt in ways I'd never hurt before.  Part of their procedure was to push a new convict hard until his body was weak and torn up.  They made a good effort at breaking me that first day.  I knew I was going to have to make my move soon.  If I didn't go before my mind and body were broken I'd never go.  Out of necessity I planned on going the first week.

On that first night when listening and asking questions I was looking for a weakness in their system.  That night I didn't find any, but on my first day on the chain gang I found what I needed.  Their weakness, their only one, was that they worked the same convicts together on the same gang with the same guards every day.  So the night after my first work day I developed a plan, which I shared with the convicts on my crew. 

As we worked in the ditch we slowly moved forward, bunched tightly together and in reasonable order.  The lead guard stayed twenty feet ahead of the first convict, his only job to watch us for any signs that we were trying to get out of either our boots or the ditch.  The guard that had the back did the same, only it was his job to make sure no one was left behind, as in a guy hiding in the ditch until after he passed.  It was a boring job.  They were miserable in the heat too, and the mosquitoes favored them over us.  We figured it was because they had sugar in their diet and we didn't.  They didn't work hard, but they were miserable and bored.  The one form of entertainment they had was shooting snakes.

When we came upon a snake in the ditch it was on us to kill it with our shovel.  It was Georgia, so most were country boys to whom killing a snake was no big deal.  It was the few city boys who, tough as they were, often reacted with fear at the sight of a snake.  We had one on our crew who screamed like a little girl.  I doubt the guards cared if we were scared or even bit and died, but they were bored, so when one of them spotted a poisonous snake in the ditch that wasn't too close to us they would shoot it.  The guard at our front liked to shoot snakes with the shot gun, the one at the back with his pistol.  I was told that once there was a snake in front of the gang but too close for the shot gun, so the rear guard broke protocol to come forward and shoot it with his pistol. Combine this with the fact that they were trained to shoot an escaping prisoner with the shot gun, not their pistol, and I had the foundation for my plan.

On my first day in the ditch the front guard shot two snakes, which was rare.  We could go a week without them shooting a snake.  Still, there were plenty of snakes, so we never went a day without having to kill several in the ditch.  Generally the snakes laid still in the mud unseen until we stirred them up with our boots and shovels.  My plan would require that we not kill a few of the snakes we found.  Instead we would use our shovels and boots to push them along with us until the time was right to use them.