Germans Return To Old POW Camps In Texas ... You usually think of reunions as pretty happy occaisions with picnic lunches, baseball games and perhaps a dip in the nearest lake, attended by folks who are friends, neighbors, maybe co-workers, sometimes.

But there's a twist on some reunions here in Texas -- because periodically, German POW's from WW2 travel across the Atlantic to get together in Mexia, Bryan, and other small Texas towns to have brats, barbecued brisket and beer, and reminisence with their old guards, townspeople and fellow prisoners.

Back in WW2, something like 450,000 German prisoners were shipped from Europe to the States for the duration, and more 100,000 wound up in Texas. Remember, at the time, alot of the people in the Texas Hill Country were second or third generation German immigrants, and many spoke German, though that's since died away.

But memories don't fade so quickly.

Karl-Heinz Blumenthal was captured in Algeria in 1943. He writes:

"After being held for a time in Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, I embarked from the Algerian port city of Oran, with many other prisoners, on a Liberty ship bound for New York. We were 21 days at sea, eating only K-rations and living below deck on the iron planks in the freight compartment

From New York we traveled 6 days by train to Hearne, Texas. It was a very comfortable trip. Whereas in Germany the military forces were mostly transported in crowded, almost unheated boxcars, now in the US we rode on cushioned bench seats, two men facing one other person, so we could all put our feet up. These train cars had lots of windows, although they had been bolted so we could not open them, and two bathrooms, and ice water for drinking. I have since learned from American soldiers that they traveled in the same fashion...

It was late at night when we got to Hearne. They let us off the train outside of town, in a field, and marched us about a mile to the camp. There might have been about 600 POWs, and we marched six abreast, row after row of us, singing. People said we goose-stepped, but that was not true... Guards divided us into groups of 25 or 30 and sent us to barracks, where each POW found a bed with a real mattress and good thick blankets. It was the first time I had had such comfortable sleeping since I finished my boot camp training, after being drafted, in 1942. In Africa we had bedded down on the ground, usually without blankets because we were always on the move.

One of my first surprises was, after the first morning's roll call, the wonderful smell of real coffee from the kitchen. For several years I had not had anything but "Muckefuck Kaffee," also called Ersatzkaffee, a wartime coffee substitute made out of roasted grain. We found the tables all set for us, so that we had only to sit down and eat. I still remember the corn flakes, whole milk, grapefruit, toast, butter, jam, the coffee, and the rest of it. To a young man of 20 years who had been through a lot of recent hardship, it all tasted so good. I was at Hearne only about four weeks. My main activities were making friends, talking about the war and the people back home, relaxing, eating, and sleeping. In addition we spent a lot of our time with sports, mostly soccer, handball, and volleyball. Each of the 12 companies had its own teams, and we played endless tournaments.

Blumenthal was transferred to Huntsville, and then to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, and was relieved at the living conditions in every case. At Fort Sam Houston, he writes:

"...One day one of the POWs was asleep when the rest of the work crew left the golf course to return to the camp. No one missed him, not even the guard. It was late when he woke up to find that nobody else was there. He then walked the mile and a half down the highway to get back to camp. Even though his clothing clearly identified him as a POW, no one along the road seemed to notice. But when he arrived at the camp gate, the guard refused to let him in..."

There are other tales of the camps as well. Some Texas A&M professors researching the camps found that

German prisoners sometimes had wine or beer with their evening meals, could buy flowers and write letters, Krammer said. The women of Bryan, on rare occasions, held dances for the prisoners at Camp Hearne.

Archaeologist Michael Waters said in an interview:

Oh, yeah, as soon as the German prisoners arrived in June of 1943, they -- while they liked the barracks and the surroundings, they started to enhance the area. They planted flowers. They created small miniature castles. They made elaborate fountains..." Which left artifacts for later Texas historians to uncover and re-create.

At first, the residents of the small Texas towns were a little leery of having enemy POW's housed in their towns, but since the men were allowed to help work the fields, and a sort of rapport developed. (I've heard accounts from my own childhood of how POW's stationed near my family's farm near the Hill Country went to movies on Friday nights, and to the Lutheran Church on Sundays with various hosts -- but I can't provide a link to old family stories.)

However, Texans, regardless of European ancestry, never forgot who they were -- there's an account of how three enterprising German POW's managed to escape on a raft, and floated down the Brazos river to New Braunsfels, where they reasoned that because the town had a German name, they'd find German sympathizers there. They were taken back to camp fairly promptly.

Many of the German soldiers were younger than 10 years old when Hitler seized power. In the camps, they learned something about democracy. There were complaints from prisoners that the guards stole valuables, and unfortunately, the Nazi elements in some of the camps, who were probably better organized, came to take control n some places. There's a report of one POW being beaten to death because the Nazi hierarchy within the prison felt that he was seditious to themselves.

However, after the war, those who clung to the Nazi philosophy and those who did not were sent home, where they had to cope with a regieme change, and US (or Russian) occupation.

Bridges were built during the POW years, though, and many of the Texans and the German POW's maintained contact with each other, having re-unions from time to time and hosting each other in their respective towns across the Atlantic.

I don't know if the same nostalgia will develop with Gitmo, after 60 years. Some of the stories out of the camp are pretty unsavory, and some sound downright silly. But, remember, Gitmo is not in small town Texas -- also, remember -- just as the Nazi's took over some of the camps in Texas, it's possible that Al Quada runs the prisoner hierarchy at Gitmo. And according to the Al Quada handbook found in Manchester England, you're supposed to lie about treatment to incense the folks back home.

Here's what I'm hoping though. When you can get past ideology, there are times when even bitter enemies can learn the language of human decency, which transcended German and English sixty years ago. My hope is that today, the decency of everyday people can also transcend dialect in the Middle East, and Western Civilization.

Submitted to the Carnival of German-American Relations. And, many thanks to Jorge Woelf of the Atlantic-Review for asking to see more about German POW's in Texas -- then noodging about it, albiet in a mass mailing!  ¶ 4:00 PM