Dear Group, Back in June I posted a message to the list about my memories of the German Prisoners of War at Fort Niagara during WWII. In July the gist of it appeared in our Niagara Gazette. A friend of mine sent an email to me at the time; however, by then I had changed my email address and it bounced. Well, this afternoon she sent it to me again and I feel certain that you will enjoy reading some more about the POWs from the vantage point this time of a little farm girl who lived (and still lives) on East Avenue in Town of Porter. BTW, East Avenue used to be called Poverty Ridge. vee Hi, Vee Saw Don Glynn's article in the July 16 Gazette, quoting you on prisoners and thought I'd add my ten cents. In those days a lot more farming was being done than there is now. Just about all of East Avenue was being farmed - the place south of us that is now Acome, our place, Coolaw (now Hiddie), Gushee, Phillips (now the folks across the road from Dorothy [Samples]), Jows (Dorothy's dad), Schumacher, Walt Myers, and Hosmer. South of where Acome is now was Lige Pearson and he farmed where Ruth Myers lives now. The whole road was being farmed and lots of places elsewhere in the Town of Porter that is now residential. Up and down River Road, Route 93, Calkins Road, Cain Road, Porter Center, etc., etc. All the able bodied American men were off fighting the war and all these farms had crops that had to be harvested and there was the prisoner-of-war camp full of able bodied men [at Fort Niagara]. So they were farmed out. They were parceled out in units of 15 prisoners with an armed military guard. For our farm, we got two units totaling 30 prisoners and two guards. We started them picking peaches. By the second day, the guards hung their rifles in a tree and picked right alongside the prisoners. The prisoners never even looked at the rifles. They knew when they had a good thing going and were not about to rock the boat. We paid them piecework, the same as we would have paid the local help if it were available. The prisoners, who were mostly family men, were allowed to send the money home to their families. Where else but in the good ole USA did that ever happen? The prisoners were tickled pink to be able to get out of the camp and actually EARN MONEY that they could send home to their desperately needy families. The weather got very hot and the prisoners would come into the back yard and eat their lunch under the shade of the sugar maple on our back lawn. My brother and I were just little kids at the time (I was only 9 when the war ended) and we used to circulate among the prisoners. This made my mother nervous, as she worried that one of them might try to take us hostage or something. She used to stand on the porch and watch over us. Her fears were allayed one day when one of the prisoners beckoned us over and pulled a tattered old wallet out of his pocket, opened it up and showed us a picture of his family, himself, his wife and two children that were about the same age as my brother and I and who were towheads. He offered to share his lunch with us but we declined. This was all done by hand signals as he spoke no English and we spoke no German. My Dad could speak German and was able to communicate to a certain extent - they had no trouble understanding his college-learned Baerlliner Deutch but he was having trouble understanding their various low-German dialects. Anyhow, my mother went to the head of the stairs on the porch and asked, "Does any one speak English?" A man got up, came to the foot of the steps, removed his hat, and stood with hat in hand. Mom said, "Would you please tell the men that we have fresh, cold milk for any that would like it." He turned around and said something in German, and you should have seen the flurry of movement as the men rushed to dump the tepid coffee from the quart canning jars that they had brought from camp. Mom had, the night before, taken the bottom shelf out of the refrigerator and placed four gallon jars of milk (we had three cows) in the bottom. She brought the jars out and filled the canning jars as the men lined up (very orderly). And so it went thru peach harvest and apple harvest. One of the prisoners that was assigned to our farm was only 14 years old. Several of them were middle-aged. They were all of them very polite and respectful and I guess it won't surprise you to learn that, when the war was over and they were all shipped back to Germany - they gathered up their families and caught the next boat back to the USA or Canada. I'm outa time and gotta go. Hope this helps your cause. Ask Dorothy - I don't think her Dad had any prisoners at his place, but her uncle Howard Myers, the biggest beekeeper in NY State had many of them and some of them kept in contact with him after the war was over. Ask Tom Tower's Dad. There's gotta be several people still around who will remember the prisoners. Ask Rennie Holloday. That's her maiden name. She and her sister and hoards of other young girls from the village used to go down and flirt with the prisoners thru the barbed wire. Gotta go, Jane [Richardson]