DAD'S WAR STORIES:
It was the summer that Dad decided that working for Idaho Power Company was sufficient.
He had an itchy foot for travel that meant we all went with him. He drove some sort of station wagon, large enough to hold a wife and six kids and could tow a small trailer that was NOT actually large enough to sleep that many.
We spent the summer in Arizona. He drove to a little parking spot east of Pason near the Mugyon hills and if I spelled that correctly it may be minor miracle.
I remember that we parked there and Dad worked as a shade tree mechanic. I was the nominal baby sitter of three younger girls. Richard and Phil were free to get into mischief that didn't kill them.
Occasionally Dad and the rest of us would all jump in the car and he would drive. On one of those drives or perhaps I am mixing two or three of them altogether in my memories, we drove down near Tucson.
Dad drove us by a spot where he spent the last year of the war. He was transferred from Alaska to the German Prisoner of War camp, Camp Florence. Dad was not a guard there he spent his time getting all polished up as a certifed motor mechanic.
I did a little looking around on line. Apparently Camp Florence was the largest POW camp in the USA. By the end of the war there were over seven hundred thousand German POW's in various camps about the country.
There was some attempt to divide the Germans. The most dangerous ones, the SS were kept somewhere in Missouri I think. There was another camp that kept the generals and their staff. The general all got small houses and gardens and the other were in barracks.
Apparently the country did a pretty good job at the Geneva Conventions. All of the soldiers were paid the same amount as our guys which was about 80 cents per day. They were well fed. One fellow wrote that when he first went into a POW camp he weighed 128 lbs and a year later he weighed 155 lbs.
Years later while working at WKMH I became acquainted with our Surgeon Locum Tenen, Dr. Wolfgang Gneuchtel. He was an orthopedist. He told us that he was in the Luftwaffe and was captured and sent to Canada as a POW. He said the diet was pretty steady and he NEVER wanted to eat tuna fish or peanut butter again as long as he lived.
These POW's were paid for local labor and mostly worked in agriculture, harvest etc. Because of the labor shortage, they were seen often in the small towns they naturally enough met local women. There were a fair amount of war brides (I'm a bit surprised Hollywood never made a comedy entitled "I Was a Prisoner of War Bride) who went home as Hausfraus and some of the husband and wives stayed in the US.
At any rate we drove past that site and Dad recited the brief history of the place. I was most interested in the visit to a Mall in Phoenix firstly it was air conditioned and I saw my first ever automatic dispensing machine that put hot water or coffee or chocolate in a cup for 25 cents. It was absolutely fascinating.
We also visited a cactus garden. I was very careful to stay on the path. I saw later that someone's purse had picked up a load of cactus spines from a too close encounter. Saw a road runner there and that was way before Saturday morning cartoons.
If there ever was a movie made about that summer it would have featured Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland and a host of charming children (cough) and while we sang along in the car, we did not pick up any Tony's.
It was the summer that Dad decided that working for Idaho Power Company was sufficient.
He had an itchy foot for travel that meant we all went with him. He drove some sort of station wagon, large enough to hold a wife and six kids and could tow a small trailer that was NOT actually large enough to sleep that many.
We spent the summer in Arizona. He drove to a little parking spot east of Pason near the Mugyon hills and if I spelled that correctly it may be minor miracle.
I remember that we parked there and Dad worked as a shade tree mechanic. I was the nominal baby sitter of three younger girls. Richard and Phil were free to get into mischief that didn't kill them.
Occasionally Dad and the rest of us would all jump in the car and he would drive. On one of those drives or perhaps I am mixing two or three of them altogether in my memories, we drove down near Tucson.
Dad drove us by a spot where he spent the last year of the war. He was transferred from Alaska to the German Prisoner of War camp, Camp Florence. Dad was not a guard there he spent his time getting all polished up as a certifed motor mechanic.
I did a little looking around on line. Apparently Camp Florence was the largest POW camp in the USA. By the end of the war there were over seven hundred thousand German POW's in various camps about the country.
There was some attempt to divide the Germans. The most dangerous ones, the SS were kept somewhere in Missouri I think. There was another camp that kept the generals and their staff. The general all got small houses and gardens and the other were in barracks.
Apparently the country did a pretty good job at the Geneva Conventions. All of the soldiers were paid the same amount as our guys which was about 80 cents per day. They were well fed. One fellow wrote that when he first went into a POW camp he weighed 128 lbs and a year later he weighed 155 lbs.
Years later while working at WKMH I became acquainted with our Surgeon Locum Tenen, Dr. Wolfgang Gneuchtel. He was an orthopedist. He told us that he was in the Luftwaffe and was captured and sent to Canada as a POW. He said the diet was pretty steady and he NEVER wanted to eat tuna fish or peanut butter again as long as he lived.
These POW's were paid for local labor and mostly worked in agriculture, harvest etc. Because of the labor shortage, they were seen often in the small towns they naturally enough met local women. There were a fair amount of war brides (I'm a bit surprised Hollywood never made a comedy entitled "I Was a Prisoner of War Bride) who went home as Hausfraus and some of the husband and wives stayed in the US.
At any rate we drove past that site and Dad recited the brief history of the place. I was most interested in the visit to a Mall in Phoenix firstly it was air conditioned and I saw my first ever automatic dispensing machine that put hot water or coffee or chocolate in a cup for 25 cents. It was absolutely fascinating.
We also visited a cactus garden. I was very careful to stay on the path. I saw later that someone's purse had picked up a load of cactus spines from a too close encounter. Saw a road runner there and that was way before Saturday morning cartoons.
If there ever was a movie made about that summer it would have featured Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland and a host of charming children (cough) and while we sang along in the car, we did not pick up any Tony's.
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