December 17th, 2011
When George W. Barnett attended an auction and entered the winning bid for an old trunk back in 2002, he also acquired a piece of Camp Aliceville history. The trunk is believed to have been given by German POWS as a wedding present to Captain Dodge Old and his wife Margaret while Captain Old was stationed at Camp Aliceville. 
Barnett, who is retired from the US government, grew up in Mississippi and, as a young boy, lived close to Camp McCain during World War II. Camp McCain became the POW camp for German captives who were anti-Nazi, so Barnett already had some knowledge of German POWs in the United States. As an adult, he worked on the Apollo program with NASA and on the Star Wars program with the Army. He and his wife Janet now live just north of Huntsville, Alabama, in a small community called Hazel Green.
The trunk, which is made of walnut and lined with cedar, is entirely handmade. It has a hidden drawer behind the trim at the bottom front that can only be opened when the lid is open. The top of the trunk features a diamond-shaped emblem (seen here in photo), and if this emblem is slid to one side, it raises up to reveal another secret compartment. "A very good craftsman had to have built this trunk," says Barnett. 
The handles at each end of the trunk are heavy brass in the shape of a German eagle. One handle is engraved with the initials DHO (Dodge H. Old) and the other the initials MLO (Margaret L. Old).
After Barnett acquired the trunk, he made minor repairs to the lid, which had been forced open because someone did not realize that there were hidden latches under each front corner. Barnett contacted an Old family member and offered to return the trunk, but they were not interested in it, and he has kept it in his home. He did learn from the family that Captain Old had died in a car accident about a year before the auction.
Barnett visited the Aliceville Museum in 2004 and obtained a copy of special military orders that list Captain Old in three places. Those military orders, dated 18 January 1945, refer to the transfer of German POWs from Camp Aliceville to Camp Forrest in Tennessee and to Camp Sibert (sic), which was also in Alabama. Captain Dodge H. Old was a member of the U. S. Army Infantry and is listed in connection with the Prisoner of War Fund, the Camp Working Committee, and the Camp Safety Council.
If any of my readers have additional knowledge of Captain Old and his experiences at Camp Aliceville or knowledge of the German POW who crafted this fine trunk, please let me know, and I will pass the information along to Mr. Barnett. My sincere thanks to him for sharing this information and these photos.
Posted in Aliceville Museum, German POWs, Uncategorized, World War II | 1 Comment »
December 7th, 2011
More than 19,000 Japanese-Americans served the United States during World War II, mainly in three units–the 100th Infantry Battalion, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and the Military Intelligence Service. In November of this year, those three Army units received a well-deserved thank you for their service when the United States Congress awarded them the Congressional Gold Medal during a ceremony in Washington, D.C. The Gold Medal is the highest civilian honor given by Congress.
GenevaPOW.com has carried several posts about the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. This is because, early in their training and before their participation in some of the fiercest battles of World War II, some members of the 442nd served as guards for German POWs from Camp Aliceville who were sent to Dothan, Alabama, for the peanut harvest in 1943.
If you are new to this blog and would like to read about that early experience connected to the 442nd, please search for the following earlier posts and for the story:
August 30, 2007–"Peanuts, POWs and Japanese Guards"
December 10, 2008–"Alabama Mosaic is a Wonderful Resource"
March 5, 2009–"Former 442nd POW Guard Sends Greetings"
The photo at right, (University of South Alabama Archives collection) shows an American soldier of Japanese descent guarding German POWs as they harvest peanuts in Barbour County, Alabama, in 1943.
We congratulate all of the valiant soldiers from the 442nd who were honored in November.
Posted in 442nd Regimental Combat Team, German POWs, Japanese-American guards, World War II | 3 Comments »
September 14th, 2011
 After Eugen Zimmermann arrived at Camp Aliceville as a German POW, he sent this telegram to his family back in Germany on November 14, 1943. It was customary to allow the POWs to send telegrams like these through the International Red Cross, but this is the first one I have been able to post on the blog, thanks to Eugen's granddaughter who sent a copy, along with information about her grandfather's World War II experiences.
Eugen Zimmermann was a carpenter by trade, and a very good one according to family accounts. His daughter has said that, while a POW, he was allowed to go into the town of Aliceville with work crews because of his skills. 
 Later, when he was released from Camp Aliceville, Eugen was sent to France. (The photo at left shows him during his time as a POW.) Like many Aliceville POWs (including Wilhelm Schlegel, who is also mentioned on this blog site), Eugen was kept in France for another year after the war. During this extra time as a prisoner,he did backbreaking work in a French coal mine. After the war, he told his family that he was treated well while in the U. S. but that his treatment was more difficult in France. "I guess it's understandable," said his granddaughter, "after what the Nazis did." She added that, although her grandfather served in the German army, he was not a Nazi. While he was away fighting, his wife took in war refugees and cared for them in her home, in spite of her meager circumstances. 
Eugen's granddaughter lives in Oklahoma where her father retired from the U.S. Army at Fort Sill. He met his wife, Eugen's daughter, in Ulm, Germany, and they have been married for 50 years. The family has just begun to research the World War II history, which they consider fascinating and important.
PLEASE NOTE: A journalist in South Carolina is seeking information about German POWs who were interned at Camp Aliceville in Alabama and then sent to an air force base camp at Florence, South Carolina. If any of my readers have information about these men, please leave a comment and I will put you in touch with this journalist.
Tags: Camp Aliceville, German POWs, WWII
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May 5th, 2011
May 5, 2011: I had an email yesterday from Mary Lu Turner Keef. This was in response to my inquiry about whether or not she remembered Mr. James Cicero Fancher. (See May 3 post.)
Mary Lu (Photo below when she was an elementary school student in Aliceville) wrote that she did not remember him–only the civilian housing residents who lived near her family and those who were friends of her parents. She did add some additional memories of living near Camp Aliceville as a child:
 Mary Lu commented that the photograph of Camille looked as if it had been taken in front of the grandparents' home. "I don't think we ever used our front door," wrote Mary Lu, "although my mother planted a small bed of cosmos in front of our unit. The back of the unit had a walk (either cement blocks or narrow pavement….) from the back door to a wider walk that ran the length of the building." She wrote that each unit had its own clothesline, which was quite visible. The backs of the units faced each other so residents could share the walkway that led to a parking lot at one end. At the other end, a road led to the community center.
 At some point in the future, Mary Lu plans to donate her Camp Aliceville mementos to the Aliceville Museum. Among those would be the ceramic mug (left) that was created from Alabama clay and fired in the Camp Aliceville kiln. It is painted on three sides. This one shows Tunis, the city in North Africa where the German POW who created it was captured. Another side shows Berlin, the home of that POW. The third side shows New York City where the POW first arrived in the United States.
All of us are grateful to Mary Lu for the many memories of World War II she has shared with the Museum and with the readers of my book.
Posted in Aliceville Museum, Camp Aliceville civilian employees, World War II | No Comments »
May 3rd, 2011
May 3, 2011
When I gave a talk about Guests Behind the Barbed Wire recently at a meeting of Beta Sigma Phi sorority, I was pleased to meet the granddaughter of a man who worked with the German prisoners of war at Camp Aliceville. As a civilian employee, James Cicero Fancher (See photo below.) made repairs around the camp and also taught carpentry skills to the POWs. 
Mr. Fancher's granddaughter was a small child when her grandparents lived in what she remembers as "a row of concrete block houses not far from the camp." This would have been the housing built for civilian employees, and the same area where Mary Lu Turner, who is featured in my book, lived with her parents for three years during the war. (NOTE: See the post for May 5, 2011 for more of Mary Lu's memories in connection with this.)
This photo (at left) shows Mr. Fancher's granddaughter Camille, who was 4 1/2 years old at the time, standing outside her grandparents' Aliceville home in the summer or fall of 1944. Camille is interested in learning more about her grandfather's experiences in Aliceville during WWII.
If any of my readers remember Mr. Fancher, who passed away in 1959, and his work with the camp, please let me know, and I will forward your information to Camille.
May 4, 2011 Update: Aliceville Museum Director Mary Bess Paluzzi confirmed today that Mr. James Cicero Fancher is listed as an employee of the Army Corps of Engineers at Camp Aliceville during World War II. She suggested that he probably worked for Mr. Ward Turner during that time. (NOTE: See Mary Lu Turner Keef's response in the post dated May 5, 2011 that follows this one.)
Posted in Aliceville Museum, Camp Aliceville civilian employees, World War II | 4 Comments »
April 25th, 2011
On Monday, April 11, 2011, the City of Aliceville sat in the pathway of a powerful storm. High winds blew down Broad Street, ripping the roofing off of a building across the street, smashing windows and damaging the bright green awning on the front of one of the Aliceville Museum buildings.
 Museum Director Mary Bess Paluzzi reports that "By late Thursday, we were boarded up and covered in plastic in anticipation of the storm predicted for Friday, April 15. One of the two tour groups scheduled for Friday canceled. The other completed their visit just as the rain began. I left shortly after the tour bus pulled away as I was afraid the remainder of the mayor's roof would land on our building."
Fortunately (at least for Aliceville), the second storm hit Geiger, 19 miles south of Aliceville.
 Now comes the waiting to find out how much repair and cleanup will cost. "We are holding our breath until we receive the bids to replace the windows and awning, the bill from Servpro, and the insurance payout."
I'd like to take a moment to salute Mr. Bernard Goldstein, a resident of Galleria Woods in Hoover, Alabama, and a proud veteran of WWII, who stood up at my talk about Guests Behind the Barbed Wire on Monday, April 18, and urged his fellow residents to write checks to help pay for the Aliceville Museum damage. Mr. Goldstein is an enthusiastic supporter of the museum and has donated some of his wartime memorabilia to the displays there.
If any of my readers would like to contribute to the cleanup and repair of the Aliceville Museum, you are welcome to send a check to the Aliceville Museum, 104 Broad Street, Aliceville, AL 35442. You can contact the Museum by email at museum@nctv.com or visit the website at www.cityofAliceville.com/MuseumMain.htm.
Tags: Aliceville
Posted in Aliceville Museum | 2 Comments »
February 11th, 2011
 I first wrote a post about Camp Aliceville puppeteer Walter Buettner (1907 to 1990) on January 22, 2010. You can go to that post and see the basic information about him (seen here in 1945 with one of his puppets). I am adding additional information based on an article in the Museum News for July 2010.
When Buettner arrived at Camp Aliceville, he volunteered as a fireman in his POW compound kitchen. While working in the kitchen, he met Sergeant Ernst Hummel. Hummel was an artist and created the oil portrait of B. J. Johnston and the pencil sketches of Pep and Karen Johnston that hang in the Aliceville Museum.
 Buettner and Hummel, who had once cared for the props and costumes of a marionette theater in Frankfurt, gathered together twelve to fifteen other creative POWs and founded a puppet theater for the camp. Among their group were a wood carver, a tailor, a musician, a teacher, a music professor, and an "all-rounder." (Buettner is third from right, seated, in this photo.)
 The Camp Aliceville Puppeteers stayed in contact and got together for several reunions after their return to Germany. Seen here is the program for the fifth of those reunions, held in Maschen in August 1960.
The Aliceville Museum task of identifying, locating, and telling the stories of former POWs is both fascinating and daunting. The identification of Walter Buettner as the leader of the Camp Aliceville Puppeteers came about in two parts:
1) Holger Viereck, formerly of the German Supplementary School at the University of Alabama, first identified Buettner by name. Viereck is now an instructor at a university in Stuttgart.
2) Later, a Museum visitor from Bad Wimpfen named Dennis Bernhard, returned to Germany and was able to identify and then communicate with Walter Buettner's daughter Meike. After their visit, Bernhard forwarded several items of interest to the Museum as a presentation from the Buettner family. One of the most significant of these was a copy of the script for the puppet production Indienfahrt (Indian Journey), which was performed at Christmas in 1944 at Camp Aliceville. The family also sent a sketch of Buettner done at the camp by his friend Ernst Hummer, photographs of puppets created at Camp Aliceville, and illustrations from each of three reunions held by the Camp Aliceville Puppeteers.
Also of interest is the fact that, after Dennis Bernhard saw the painting of Bad Wimpfen that hangs in the Aliceville Museum, he returned home to Offenau and sent a comtemporary photograph that shows Bad Wimpfen from almost the exact same perspective as POW Emil Osterbrug's painting. Osterbrug presented the painting to Harvey Spiller on April 1, 1944, and it is now on loan to the Museum from Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Spiller. Bad Wimpfen is situated on the Neckar River about 40 miles southeast of Heidelberg and approximately one mile from Dennis Bernhard's hometown of Offenau.
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January 10th, 2011
Thanks to an invitation from my good friend Ruth Breipohl, who used to be associated with the library in Selma, I visited with Alabama's #1 Storyteller at her home in Selma on New Year's Day. When I reminded Kathryn, who is now in her early 90s, that our paths had crossed a number of times at writers' conferences–most recently at the Alabama Book Festival when both of us spoke there–she shared a story I had not heard before:
 "I know all about Aliceville," she said. "But in a roundabout way." Kathryn was born in Selma. After graduating from Huntingdon College in Montgomery in 1939, she worked first as a free-lance journalist in Thomasville and then as a feature writer and police reporter for The Alabama Journal in Montgomery. In 1942, she moved to Birmingham. She began working for The Birmingham News in 1943, editing state news and aviation articles and serving as a courthouse reporter. She also used the newspaper's Graflex camera (like the one at left) to take photos.
 While sitting in her dining room, next to a table laden with freshly cooked black-eyed peas and cornbread, Kathryn told me The Birmingham News sent her to Dothan in August 1943 to cover the peanut harvest because the German POWs were down there helping with it. "I had that big camera around my neck, and I went inside the fence to take some photographs," she said. "One of the POWs didn't want his picture taken, so he kind of came at me. He had a pitchfork in his hand." According to Kathryn, she ran as fast as she could with her camera bobbing and actually managed to get over the barbed wire fence without being harmed.
I have not yet located a newspaper article about this incident, but I do know Kathryn was working for the Birmingham newspaper in 1943 (the year before I was born). For now, you will have to judge for yourself how true-to-life her story is. Keep in mind two things: 1) Kathryn is a great storyteller. 2.) Kathryn and her family have lived for years with a ghost named Jeffrey.
For more information on Kathryn Tucker Windham, see the online Encyclopedia of Alabama at www.encyclopediaofalabama.org. For information about the 2011 Alabama Book Festival (April 16),visit www.writersforum.org. or www.alabamabookfestival.org.
To read more about the German POW participation in the peanut harvest of 1943, please see my previous blog entries for August 30 and 31, 2007 and March 5, 2009.
Tags: Aliceville, German POWs, Kathryn Tucker Windham, The Birmingham News, WWII
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December 25th, 2010
People who know me well have probably heard me say that I think war is a stupid way to solve international disagreements. Of course, that's an oversimplified attitude, but really, after all these centuries, why haven't we worked out a better way?
The more history I read, the more conscious I am of the fact that individual soldiers often hold no grudge against individual soldiers on the other side. If it weren't for duty to country and to others in their unit, many battles might not occur, and individuals might work things out. I know, it's a simplistic attitude, but the more complicated ones don't seem to be working.
 At this Christmas season, I'd like to remind my readers of two instances that illustrate what I mean:
The first is the Christmas Truce of World War I, which occurred when British and German soldiers faced each other across a no man's land on Christmas Eve in 1914. In some places, the front-line troops of the two sides were dug in only 60 yards from each other. A Christmas cease-fire had been proposed by Pope Benedict XV but rejected by the LEADERS of both sides as absolutely impossible.
That evening, the German soldiers set small trees on the parapets of their trenches and lit candles on them. They began singing carols. The British shot at a few of the trees, crawled forward in curiosity, then suddenly joined in the singing–in their own language.
Over the next few days, the soldiers shared rations and gifts, sang together and buried their dead between the lines. They even played soccer with improvised balls.
By New Year's Day, however, the LEADERS on both sides ordered their troops to go back to hostilities or be court martialed. The soldiers parted reluctantly after handshakes and good will wishes. Sadly, this "war to end all wars" dragged on through three more Christmas seasons, and all later attempts at Christmas truces failed. In addition, it did not "end all wars." (NOTE: This description is based on Stanley Weintraub's book, Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce as reported on www.snopes.com under "Christmas Truce."
The second instance comes from Wendell Parrish's story in my book, Guests Behind the Barbed Wire. On page 439, I described Wendell's Christmas Day 1944 experience while he was an American prisoner of war in Stalag Luft IV. The German commander decided to let the American prisoners approach the barbed wire inner fences of their compounds that day so they could share Christmas wishes with POWs held in the other compounds:
"This as no small thing to the prisoners of Stalag Luft IV. The men greeted each other eagerly, each group having known about the others but having had no contact. From time to time, "Ohio" would ring out across the wire or "Kansas" as each POW searched for some small touch from home.
When Wendell stepped up and hollered out "Alabama," he heard a voice in another compound shout back, "What city?" When he hollered back "Selma," he was dumbfounded to see Charlie Cosby, a boy he'd grown up with, emerge from the ragtag crowd pressing near the other side of the barbed wire. Charlie had been shot down in October.
The coincidence was almost too much, but there was more. "Wendell, you have a son!" his classmate shouted back. "I saw your wife and the boy just before I came over here, and they're doing fine." That news was the finest Christmas present Wendell ever received. Relief and hope filled his heart. Later in the day came another present–the first set of Red Cross packages he and the others in his compound had received since October.
I wish to all my friends and readers, wherever they are, the joy of Christmas peace and good will. Please, this year, let's pay it forward all the way to next December!
Tags: Aliceville, Christmas, Stalag Luft
Posted in Aliceville Museum, World War II | No Comments »
December 2nd, 2010
The current issue of Museum News (October 2010) (www.cityofaliceville.com) includes a quote from Stephen Ambrose in his book Citizen Soldiers. This quote, in my opinion, puts into perspective important stipulations of the Geneva Convention as they were applied during World War II. American prisoner of war camps like Camp Aliceville adhered to the directive that they provide the same quality of housing, nutrition, recreation, and religious opportunities that they provided for their own soldiers.
Ambrose stated the following on page 361 of Citizen Soldiers, which is available at www.amazon.com:
 In most cases, being a POW in World War II was about as bad a human experience as one could have. For certain, there was nothing good to be said about being a POW. Which was worse, being a German in Russian hands or a Russian in German hands? No one can say, but on a scale of horror they also rank ahead of being an American in German hands.
For comparison sake, between 34 and 38 percent of Americans held by Japanese as prisoners died; about two-third of Russian prisoners held in Germany appear to have died; and the proportion of Germans captured on the Eastern Front who died has been estimated as high as 80 percent. In the West, .7 percent of Americans held as POWs by the Germans died; 1 percent of the Germans held by the Americans died.
Stephen E. Ambrose was a leading World War II historian who wrote many books about World War II, including Band of Brothers, which was the basis for the movie, Saving Private Ryan. He died in 2002.
My thanks to Mary Bess Paluzzi at the Aliceville Museum for including this quote in the recent newsletter.MyMy
Tags: Camp Aliceville, German POWs, POW, WWII
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