Bubba, Fritz and Claus.

"Stop here! I think this is it," I said to Claudette as we were driving along west on Old State Road in Berkeley County, South Carolina. " Over there, on the left," I added.

"What are you talking about?" she said as she braked the Toyota almost to a stop.

"We passed it. Right back there! The POW camp," I exclaimed.

"Oh, you mean where they kept the captured Yankees during the Civil War?" asked she.

"You know to refer to it as the War of Northern Aggression. I think you say "Civil War" just to aggravate me," I responded. A slight smile spread over her lips.  I then added, " It was a prisoner of war camp for Germans in World War Two."

She deftly turned the car around in US Highway  176 and we returned to the sight of the camp.
"The sign says 'Dukes Camp'. I can't believe that was the name of a German P.O.W. camp," she said as we turned into the narrow white sandy road. There were some buildings on the right as we continued our drive.

"That's not the P.O.W. camp, " I said, "There, it's on the left."

We stopped the car and got out. It was a warm day, and the scent of the longleaf pines tickled our noses. Pine straw crunched under our feet as a red-tailed hawk soared overhead. Under the towering pines were three buildings with green roofs and cream colored walls.

"They have sure taken good care of it for the last sixty-eight years," Claudette said.

"MeadWestvaco, the giant packaging company, uses it for some employee training now.  The company has renovated and maintained it, and they changed the name to Dukes Camp," I said. "I liked the name Camp Witherbee better."

"I thought that was the name of a community in the county," said she.

"It is.  There may be a connection to that name for the prison, but I don't know," I added. "There were 240 German prisoners of war housed here between 1941 and 1945."

 "What did they do?" she asked.

"These particular prisoners worked in the forests.  I would think harvesting timber.  Prisoners in different camps did different jobs. Fred, at church, said his daddy used prisoners to pick peaches in Cherokee County, and my brother-in-law's granddaddy used 'em on his farm. You know, almost 400,000 German P.O.W.s were brought to the U.S.A.  Twenty-one camps were right here in South Carolina, and there were 900 nationwide. It seems there was a concentration of camps in the southeast. I think that is probably because skills needed in agriculture are easier taught than industrial skills. The language barrier could be a problem.  Farmers would pay the government $3.50 per day for prisoner labor. The government got the three dollars and the prisoner got the fifty cents. "

"Did any of them ever escape?" She asked.

"Yes, in one instance a POW escaped from a camp in the midwest and blended right into American society.  He didn't reveal himself until sometime in the 1980's," I answered, happy to show off my knowledge.

"I wonder if anyone around here has any German heritage dating from the 1940's?" she mused.

I chose not to comment on her speculation.

"But weren't people afraid with the prisoners so close by?" she asked with a quizzical look on her face.

"Amazingly not.  You have to remember that all able bodied men were off at war. There was a severe labor shortage to cultivate and harvest crops, so the farmers welcomed the German prisoners.  In some cases the farmers' wives would provide lavish dinners for the prisoners on holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas.  German prisoners in this country fared better than anywhere in the world. They had better food and lodgings and, in general,  much better living conditions.  I'm not sure I can understand how they could welcome them with somewhat open arms. These men previously had been killing their husbands, sons, and fathers. When I was researching this bit of history I found out one very disturbing fact of which I am not proud."

"What was that?" she asked then added, "Disturbed you?"

"Yeah, I can be disturbed!"I exclaimed.

"So, what was this disturbing fact?" she wanted to know.

"A few miles from here in Walterboro the Tuskegee airmen were trained. As you know they were  African-American officers in the U.S. Army Air Corps."

"I know. We saw the movie 'Red Tails' with Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr," she added, "We liked it."

"These men and other African-American soldiers were not allowed in white restaurants, but German P.O.W.s were.  That really made no sense to me, and I grew up in the segregated south. You fraternize with the men who are killing your brothers, husbands, or sons, but won't fraternize with the one who is protecting you. Where is the logic in that?"

"Well, as you always say, 'That was just the way it was and the way it had always been.'" she noted.

"But, as Dylan said, 'The Times, They are a Changin'!", I replied.

Later that day we ventured further up the Old State Road into Greenwood County.  While there we had dinner  with my friend Steve. During lunch conversation I mentioned the German P.O.W. camps in South Carolina and the one we had visited.  Steve knew of the one in Greenwood, South Carolina and said that his father had used a prisoner as a laborer for farm work. The German was quite a craftsman and had made small wooden box for his father to give his mother. It exquisitely chip carved and had a clever wooden hinge.

The past is all around us, we have only to look.