U.S. At War: Legion of Despair

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Congressmen charged that the Army's handling of prisoners of war was a "national scandal"; a Senate committee had started an investigation. Reports from camps around the country had the U.S. people concerned. There were questions they wanted answered: 1) how are prisoners (particularly Nazis) acting; 2) how is the U.S. treating them; 3) what will be the results of U.S. treatment—will they simply be to return a cadre of well-fed Nazis to Germany after the war?

A TIME correspondent returned from a round-the-country tour of German P.W. camps last week with answers to the first two questions. The third question no one could yet answer. This was his report:

The Germans, who comprise 85% of the P.W. population,* think they are guarded excessively, and the more arrogant among them sneer: "That shows how they fear us." Some 1,300 have escaped from camps, but none "permanently" (for more than a year).

Army discipline, though it varies slightly with individual camp commanders (colonels and lieutenant colonels), is generally strict and according to Geneva Convention rules. The Army's chief concern is to give the enemy no excuse for retaliatory mistreatment of Americans in prison camps overseas.

Stories of prisoners enjoying special privileges are mostly baseless. Typical is the widely circulated story that girls from a nearby town went to a dance given by German P.W.s; actually the girls went to a dance held by prison guards. Another story: the Army had let a contract for 200,000 pairs of pajamas for P.W.s; the fact was that the Army ordered the pajamas for its own men in German camps.

P.W. Labor Pool. Basic policy of most camp commanders is to get as much work out of their prisoners as they are allowed under the Geneva Convention. The 350,000 P.W.s in the U.S. are a useful labor pool.

P.W. enlisted men—officers do not have to work, and few of them choose to—repair Army clothes, tools and noncombat Army equipment, build sheds, lay roads. The Army also hires them out as farm laborers, woodcutters, quarry workers. The prisoner-workers are paid 80¢ a day by the Army (in canteen coupons) and wages for their work, paid at prevailing rates, go directly to the U.S. Treasury. P.W.s have saved crops, released service troops for other jobs, and the U.S. Government last year rang up about $10,000,000 on the deal.

Soldiers Must Learn. Base camps, of which there are 135, are dreary barracks behind double fences of barbed wire. Branch camps (308), located near job sites, are winterized tents in which P.W.s keep warm around little pot stoves. Inside these various stockades the prisoners are bitterly waiting out the war.

In their meticulously tidy barracks, they hang up an occasional picture of Hitler. (U.S. prisoners in Germany enjoy the privilege of hanging whatever pictures they please.) More often the Germans have pictures of their families, the Goethe deathmask and Varga girls. They decorate their mess halls with elaborate paintings—the Alps, German heroes, busty girls. Across one day room an artist has painted a group of naked women, on the wall opposite the stern admonition "Ein guter Soldat muss verzichten koennen." (A good soldier must learn to do without.)

They are adequately fed on plain food. They do not care for corn ("Corn is for pigs") and turn up their noses at pumpkin pie.