CONFRONTING THE ENEMY FIRST HAND - IN BASTROP

Probably the last thing someone living in Bastrop, Louisiana during World War II would have expected was to have a Prisoner of War camp located there. Never before in the history of the United States had a large number of foreign prisoners of war been held on American soil, and yet, Bastrop did play host to captured enemy German soldiers at that time.

Thomas "Dugan" Adams well remembers the camp on a dirt road leading off Donaldson Street in Bastrop, because his grandparents, Tom and Angie Adams lived across the street from the facility. He remembers barbed wire fences and Quonset huts, but he also remembers cookies.

"My grandmother would bake teacakes and I'd take them to the men housed there," Adams said. "They really liked her teacakes." There may have been a language barrier, but good homemade cookies were enjoyed, like a smile and a flower, in every language.

How many of this younger generation are aware that by the end of the war, more than 400,000 German POWs had been brought to the United States and were kept captive in 511 camps across the country? More than 150,000 men arrived after the North African campaign in the spring of 1943. Then, each month, between May and October of that year, an average of 20,000 POWs arrived, with the numbers increasing as the war escalated.

It was determined the camps needed to be as far as possible from crucial war industries, located several miles from railroad lines, and be far enough away from populated areas to minimize escapes or sabotage. Bastrop, in the early 1940's, fit the criteria. Two-thirds of all camps in the U.S. were located in the south and southeast.

The first shipment of POWs arrived in July 1943, over 20,000, and were distributed throughout Louisiana, with most of them being housed in "side camps" located near rice, sugar cane and cotton fields. Bastrop fit this category. The first public announcement regarding the Bastrop POW camp was printed in the local paper Aug. 17, 1944, advising it would open about Sept. 1, 1944, house 200 German POWs who would aid in picking cotton. They would be housed in tents with "box floors" and there would be five old dormitories from the Northeast Junior College used as mess halls and kitchens.

There were five base camps in Louisiana (Camp Ruston, Claiborne, Livingston, Polk and Plauche) and 35 to 49 work camps. Camp Ruston was actually the only base camp specifically designed and constructed as a POW camp in Louisiana.

While the war touched everyone to some degree or another, it wasn't until the POWs started arriving in American communities that most civilians came into contact with the enemy up close and personal. Quite naturally there was dissent from some residents at having POWs in their nucleus, but most civilians in small towns, including Bastrop, soon recognized the logic of the POW program when small work camps of 100-300 prisoners were set up.

Because so many of our able-bodied young men were off fighting overseas, America-at-home desperately needed agriculture labor and eventually even the most cynical farmers found themselves pleased to have use of POW workers. While these captives filled a variety of labor-positions throughout the country, in Bastrop, they worked on farms, picked cotton and labored at the pulp mills.

Mike Lytle, who should be credited with suggesting the need for this story to be set down for history's sake, said, "My grandfather, C.V. "Vinnie" Shear, took a position with the Agriculture Department, moved to Bastrop and was the liaison between local farmers and the supply of POW labor. The farmers who desired use of prisoner labor contacted him and he assigned workers."

An account of Shear's appointment as "special official to assist Morehouse Parish farmers in obtaining necessary help" was reported in the March 16, 1944 Bastrop paper.

And that's what Mable Adams recollects - seeing the young men pass by in trucks as they were taken to work in the fields.

"They would smile and wave when they passed by," she said. "One thing I remember, so many of the young men were blond-headed."

Adams moved from Florida to Bastrop to stay with her in-laws, Tom and Angie Adams, while her husband Ted was serving in India.

"We lived on Summerlin Lane - but an extension of Summerlin Lane was later renamed Donaldson Street," she said. "The camp was located back off there - you couldn't see it from the road."

Adams recalls, "My most special memory was one Christmas Eve - we were outside and we heard them singing. They were singing Silent Night. It was beautiful."

Frank Messenger said the camp was located about 1,000 feet north and 1,000 feet west of the Prep Center on Cooper Lake Rd., which put it between Cooper Lake and Donaldson - certifying everyone's memory of the site location.

"The reason we had them here," Messenger said, "was to allow the Germans to see how we operate - so they would want our way of life instead of living under a dictatorship."

Many POWs were allowed to participate in college programs, taking courses and exams, and even received graduation certificates. Messenger said the college was where the Bastrop National Bank drive-in was located (now the Hibernia Bank) - where the Water Company office was. He said it was started at that time, adding, "I believe Arthur McMeans Sr. taught the classes there."

Bobby Abraugh and Thelbert Bunch spent time visiting with some of the POWs when they were bussed to the Wesley Bunch Farm in Jones to pick cotton in the fall of 1944-45.

"One thing I remember, the guard had an automatic rifle with what looked like a huge clip and lots of bullets," Abraugh said. "We'd stand around the cotton trailers and talk to the guard and to some of the prisoners. They wore POW uniforms. Some spoke broken English. They'd studied English in school as a second language."

Abraugh also said, "The news stories about the war taught us how bad the Germans and Japanese were, but our actual contact with these POWs changed our attitude about them. They were mostly just kids - teens - a long way from home and lonesome."

"I was in the military when the camp was there," Duke Shackelford said. "But they did pick cotton on our place and on others in the territory around Jones and Bonita. It was better for them to have something to do, earn a little money, than just sit around doing nothing - and with so many folks gone in the military, it was helpful to the area farmers as well."

It is reported in the Aug. 17, 1944 Bastrop paper that enlisted men, who performed this mandatory labor, were to be paid $1.50 per day by the farmer. From this, our government gave the POWs 80-cents and kept the rest.

George Mallory Patton said in the late 1950s he worked at International Paper Co. Bag Pak Division in Camden, Ark., and met a man there who had been a guard at the POW camp in Bastrop.

The guard, Patton doesn't recall his name, told him some years before the Second World War, a prisoner named Charlie King came to the United States from Germany.

"He married an American girl and they lived in south Louisiana. They had some children. For some reason," Patton said, "Charlie took a trip back to Germany and while there he, being German, was drafted into the German army. He was captured by the allies and sent to the Bastrop POW camp."

The guard told Patton he got to know Charlie who told him about his wife and family down in south Louisiana.

"Charlie wanted very much to go join his family and one day Charlie told the guard something to the effect that the first stormy night, he was going to leave and go back to his family," Patton related. He said the guard told Charlie, "Don't let me see you go, because if I do, I will have to shoot you."

Patton said, "Sure enough, the morning after a stormy night, Charlie did not show up for roll call at the POW camp. Charlie had escaped and was never caught."

Patton said he understands there was an article in the Saturday Evening Post about six Axis POWs who escaped in the U.S. and were never caught, and that Charlie was one of them. Actually, the report of Charlie King's escape was reported in the Aug. 23, 1945 Bastrop newspaper. Several other escapes were also reported. On June 7, 1945, two men escaped, ages 19 and 20, and were apprehended two days later. On Oct. 25, 1945, three different escapes were reported - all three apprehended, but there was no mention of the capture of Charlie King. King was 23.

Then came the end of the war and at a rate of 50,000 a month, the German POWs were returned to their homeland. On July 22, 1946, the last 1,500 German prisoners - the final boatload - sailed from Camp Shanks, NJ.

The POW camps were considered by the Army to be temporary facilities. Their objective was limited, therefore, little, if anything is left of them anywhere, so that gradually, they disappeared, one by one. In many cases the facilities - the buildings and equipment - were sold at public auction. If the land was not government property, it was either auctioned off or sold back to the original owners.

The closing of the POW camp in Bastrop was reported in the Dec. 6, 1945 edition of the Bastrop newspaper, advising that all Army equipment would be removed and most German POWs shipped home, with the exception of 15 POWs who were left in Bastrop as a demolition detail to be shipped at a later date. A total of 210 POWs had been incarcerated in Bastrop from its opening on Oct. 2, 1944, until its closing Dec. 8, 1945.

Speedy Goodnight said, "I remember the camp, but it's been so long ago, there's not much I can say about it now."

Jane Shear McKoin, Lytle's aunt, said, "I recall my father, C.V. Shear, saying the camp in Bastrop was a tent city with wooden floored tents," adding that Shear bought one of the floors after the camp was disbanded and used it to build a tenant house on Jones Cut Off Rd.

"The tenant house burned a couple years ago," Lytle said.

"Right after I got back from the war, in 1946, I got a job with the State Highway Department and also worked for the parish. Later I worked for Eugene Ware and we bulldozed the POW camp grounds," said George King. "It was around 1950."

He said, "Dell Cockrell bought one of the old barracks from the camp for Buddy Korjan to live in. They moved it to Mer Rouge. I tried to buy one but I didn't have any land to put it on at the time. The one Buddy had was a box house, set up on blocks. Right across the street was a Sears and Roebuck house. As far as I know, Buddy's house is still in Mer Rouge."

Raised in the neighborhood where the camp had been, Elva Greer said he and his friends used to play baseball in the former camp yard but he was too young to recall much more than the fact that it had been there.

And so it is, when the barbed wire was removed and the buildings torn down, new construction replaced the old and soon even the memories begin to fade away - blurring into a kaleidoscope of ordinary life once again.

A bit of American history in danger of being lost except for the memories of a few old-timers, with Bastrop just one piece of the grand puzzle by virtue of having one of the POW camps located within its midst, but most assuredly, the prisoners of war never forgot the time they spent in the United States.

©Copyright December 2, 2004 by Barbara Sharik