I grew up near Wiggins, Colorado on a farm and my father had German war prisoners working on our farm also. They were housed in barracks right off of then highway 6 in the middle of our small town. A Rocky Mountain News columnist, Mike Rudeen in his column "Ask" today had replies to a reader request asking where these prisoners were kept. Answers popped up all over the State of Colorado. The prisoners were kept all over the state from 1944 to 1946 and worked on farms in the eastern part of the state as well as in the Grand Valley on our western slope where the fruit industry is located. This reader indicated that the troublemakers had been weeded out and that security was light and that many returned to visit Colorado after the war. One reader who responded worked at a POW camp at Camp Hale. Camp Hale was the home of the elite 10th Mountain Division which formed & trained in Colorado mountains. This is not farm or orchard country - so I don't what that particular group was about. One responder spoke of a young POW who sang Silent Night in a stunning tenor "with such passion that it brought tears to people's eyes" in a midnight mass in Fraser, Colorado. Another person spoke of a POW who saved his mother from rattlesnake bite on the eastern plains near Sterling, Colorado. Another spoke of feeding the prisoners. For more memories go to the Ask!blog at blogs.RockyMountainNews.com/denver/ask. There is one prisoner who returned after WWII to marry the farmer's daughter near Windsor, Colorado. Lauren Brantner --------------------------------- Need Mail bonding? Go to the Yahoo! Mail Q&A for great tips from Yahoo! Answers users.
I grew up near Torrington, Wyoming on a sugar beet farm. We got our German POWs from the Camp at Veteran, WY. Dad would drive our truck with a slide-in A-Frame to Veteran to pick them up each morning, the guard would ride up front with Dad. The A-Frame kept them out of the weather. The route to the camp was along a large irrigation canal, one of our neighbors, drove off into the canal and one or two POWs drowned in the strong undertow. They would bring their food in large pots, Mom would heat their food and give them a couple of loafs of home made bread. They would give us candy bars and cigarettes (my uncle smoked). The guard would eat with us. While the POWs were working, the guard would sleep in a haystack. We had a lot of rabbits in our pasture, on one occasion the POWs borrowed the guards M-1 Carbine and shot a couple of rabbits which they took back to the camp and ate. My Dad, Grandpa & Uncle spoke German well. The POWs were amazed that we had such small farm houses and such large fields. In Goshen County, we had camps at Lingle, Torrington, & Veteran. Henry L. Schmick ________________________________________________________________ Keep unwanted email out. Visit www.spamsubtract.com for more information.