Louie soon learned a critical rule of conversation: Never use a guard’s real name. Guards who discovered that they were being discussed often delivered savage beatings, so the men invented nicknames for them. The sluggish, quiet camp commander was called the Mummy. Guard nicknames included Turdbird, Flange Face, the Weasel, Liver Lip, Fatty, and Termite. A particularly repugnant guard was known as Shithead.
