Posted on 10/30/2021 11:28:57 PM PDT by citizen
There were about half a dozen prisoner of war camps in Tennessee during World War II — the best known of which was Camp Crossville, in Cumberland County. We know a lot more about Camp Crossville than the others because of Gerhard Hennes.
Hennes was a German officer captured in North Africa in May 1943. Five months later, he entered the gates of Camp Crossville, where he was interred for two years.
After World War II, Hennes would become an American citizen, and in 2004 he published The Barbed Wire: POW in the USA. In it he gives a detailed description of life at Camp Crossville — a piece of real estate now occupied by the Clyde York 4-H Training Center.
Hennes and his fellow prisoners were treated better than any prisoners of war I’ve ever heard of. They were given new uniforms, they were not interrogated and they were mostly left to the authority of their own German officers.
The best part of Camp Crossville, Hennes claims, was the food. “There were three square meals a day,” he wrote.
(Excerpt) Read more at elizabethton.com ...
The worst was in AZ. Look it up.
Crossville would have been a hometown blessing.
Seems they were treated very well at the Crossville camp.
Well, as long as they behaved it would be Aunt Bee and her fried chicken.
Those bastards in AZ, not so much.
That would be the gist of it.
There were many camps in the US. The POW’s were treated much better than Allied prisoners in Germany. There was a manpower shortage and most were allowed to leave the camps during the day to work on farms or factories. I mean, where could they escape to? Quite a few emigrated to the US after the War to become US citizens.
Danny, you know that is possum right?
And that most stayed in the US rather than go back to the destruction in Germany.
Yeah but the Germans don’t know that.
There were some good cooks, I imagine. He said the chow was good.
Yeah, the former POW author was send back to Germany to a camp there and the conditions were crowded, not good. He eventually emigrated to the US and became a citizen 5 years later.
I’d have to guess Granny’s possum would be tasty indeed.
... and treated MUCH better than the demonic Japanese treated POWs.
Miss Granny was a looker in her day.
That show saved TN and AR for years from the stereotype they presented.
All gone now. Dammit.
The japs were terrible.
I really did not want to go there.
They earned Fat Man and Little Boy all their own.
There is only one way to deal with evil.
Kill it.
Hart, Michigan, north of Muskegon, had a German POW camp.
A neighbor of mine was a Nuc Engineer in Oak Ridge that had a lot of keys.
He took me, my brother and his 2 kids into the original reactor plant. It was spooky.
Nobody was there. We walked around the cooling pool.
All lights were on and the control room was lit up. We were not taken in there.
Don’t fall in the pool.
ca; 1975
Now we know how “The Cracker Barrel” got started.
There were six POW camps in TN and one was at Camp Forrest at Tullahoma, TN. There, also, the POWs were treated well and many stayed after they were released after the war. I went to school with some of their children.
Some were sent out to do construction work and some to area farms to help with planting and harvesting. Many worked on the farm I live on now, which is my husband’s family’s farm. They enjoyed it because Hubby’s grandparents - Germans themselves - were alive and Grandma cooked German food.
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