Free Republic

Ukraine's military said on Tuesday it was working to evacuate all remaining troops from their last stronghold in the besieged port of Mariupol, ceding control of the city to Russia after months of bombardment. The evacuation of hundreds of fighters, many wounded, to Russian-held towns, likely marked the end of the longest and bloodiest battle of the Ukraine war and a significant defeat for Ukraine.

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...

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — When word reached Camp Lawton that the enemy army of Gen. William T. Sherman was approaching, the prison camp's Confederate officers rounded up their thousands of Union army POWs for a swift evacuation — leaving behind rings, buckles, coins and other keepsakes that would remain undisturbed for nearly 150 years. Archaeologists are still discovering unusual, and sometimes stunningly personal, artifacts a year after state officials revealed that a graduate student had pinpointed the location of the massive but short-lived Civil War camp in southeast Georgia. Discoveries made as recently as a few weeks ago were being...

SAVANNAH, Ga. – Preserved for nearly 150 years, perhaps by its own obscurity, a short-lived Confederate prison camp began yielding treasures from the Civil War almost as soon as archeologists began searching for it in southeastern Georgia. They found a corroded bronze buckle used to fasten tourniquets during amputations, a makeshift tobacco pipe with teeth marks in the stem, and a picture frame folded and kept after the daguerreotype it held was lost. Georgia officials say the discoveries, announced Wednesday, were made by a 36-year-old graduate student at Georgia Southern University who set out to find Camp Lawton for his...

Kuwait City British and American soldiers are building an internment camp at a secret location inside Iraq to hold thousands of prisoners of war from Saddam Hussein's forces. They have not disclosed the location even to the Red Cross, which has a right under international law to visit the prisoners. About 500 soldiers from Britain's Queens Dragoon Guards are among the troops involved in building the camp in southern Iraq, close to the Kuwaiti border. It will include feeding stations, washing facilities and areas for providing medical care. American General Tommy Franks, the officer overseeing the US-led war, said this...