Many German POWs spent much of the war in Southern camps

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Posted 7:44PM on Saturday, April 6, 2002

VALDOSTA - Harley Langdale had a hard time finding able-bodied workers during World War II, so he didn't hesitate when offered hundreds of strong former soldiers who would cut timber, plant seedlings and clear land. The soldiers weren't American heroes returning from the front, they were German prisoners of war, some of the hundreds of thousands taken to camps in the United States most of them in the South. ``Some people were afraid of them,'' said the 87-year-old Langdale. ``They thought some would get away. But we never did have any serious incidents.'' The camps are an all-but-forgotten part of history, but the prisoners did leave some remnants behind in south Georgia and throughout the country. Langdale's POWs came from camps at Moody Field near Valdosta and Fargo, an isolated Okefenokee Swamp town. They planted many of the azaleas at what is now Moody Air Force Base, and there still is a ``Prison Camp Road'' north of Fargo. Some 700 internment camps were thrown up in the United States to detain 426,000 enemy soldiers, who arrived sometimes at a rate of 30,000 a month. Some Americans resented the relative comfort and food provided the enemy soldiers. Texans called camps the ``Fritz Ritz.'' But Georgians said the Germans won people over. ``I got the impression they were glad to be over here,'' said Langdale, chairman of the Langdale Co., a major south Georgia timber company. ``I didn't see any animosity toward us at all.'' Although there were a few Japanese and Italian prisoners, most were Germans. ``The young women from the area ... remember they were good looking and didn't spit because they didn't chew tobacco,'' said Renate Milner, a German-born historian in Valdosta who is writing a book about the POWs. The German internees are still remembered for their skills and hard work. With most of America's young men overseas, the POWs helped overcome a labor shortage by harvesting crops and doing other physical labor for 80 cents a day. About 466 of the 700 camps were in the South; Georgia had 40 with 11,800 prisoners, Milner said. ``The government classified them as unskilled laborers, but in reality they were very skilled carpenters, mechanics and goldsmiths,'' Milner said. ``They were pulled into the military at 16 or 17, but by then, they had already been trained'' in technical schools. Milner, director of the Valdosta-Lowndes County Museum, began her POW research for a college thesis, then decided she wanted to tell the story in greater detail. ``Everybody knows about the people who got a Purple Heart, but the POWs are kind of forgotten,'' she said. ``You don't give medals to soldiers who surrendered to the enemy.'' Audrey Peters, 77, worked at Moody Field during the war. The Valdosta woman still has a wooden jewelry box made by one of the prisoners, who carved ``Gerhard Todte, Moody Field 1.9.1945'' on the bottom. ``They were nice people,'' she said. ``Of course we didn't fraternize with them. I tried to locate him, but I couldn't. I wanted to see how he was doing and thank him for the box.'' A museum in Aliceville, Ala., which had a camp with 6,000 prisoners, honors the POWs with exhibits featuring their uniforms, their musical instruments and their paintings and sculptures. The prisoners in Aliceville, located in west-central Alabama, were all corporals or sergeants. Under the Geneva Convention they could not be forced to work, but some volunteered to harvest peanuts and work in sawmills, said Mary Paluzzi, director of the Aliceville Museum and Cultural Arts Center. The town is planning a reunion for former prisoners next March on the camp's 60th anniversary. ``They had orchestras, elaborate theater productions, and choruses,'' Paluzzi said. ``About 3,600 were enrolled in a school taught by other prisoners. They were old enough and wise enough to make use of the time while they were here. When they went home, the German government gave them credit for the college-level courses.'' Milner has corresponded with several of Moody's former POWs and met with some. One of them, Walter Rommeswinkel, who worked as a hospital orderly in Thomasville, gave her three rattlesnake skins he had tanned. Milner said Rommeswinkel had never even talked to his wife about his POW experiences. ``It was very emotional for him,'' she said. ``He said if he could come over here, he would be fulfilling a lifelong dream.'' Rommeswinkel planned to come last May, but died five months earlier. ``Those WWII veterans are dying by the minute,'' Milner said. ``They have a history and it needs to be preserved. As young kids, they went to war. By the time they got home, they had to rebuild Germany.'' Thomas Burch, an Army guard at the Clewiston, Fla., camp, said he initially resented the POWs and once broke a soft-drink bottle over the head of a defiant prisoner. At his south Florida camp, the 300 prisoners lived in regular military barracks, worked in sugar cane fields and spent their earnings on cigarettes and art supplies at the camp canteen, he said. ``At Thanksgiving, they got the same meal as the Americans,'' said Burch, 85, who now lives in the Florida Panhandle town of Wewahitchka. ``Two or three would push their plates back and tear up because they knew their families weren't getting anything to eat.'' Burch remembers their singing and marching. ``When they finished playing soccer, they would march around the soccer field and sing. They sang beautifully,'' he said. ``I also loved to see them march. I think they could out march us.'' He still has a handkerchief embroidered by a prisoner named ``Bruno,'' a diesel mechanic. The letters he stitched, ``BB,'' symbolize the bond between Bruno and Burch. ``They were good men,'' Burch said. ``They were people just like us. They were drafted and made to do probably what they didn't want to do.''