Moody Field

This started as a research paper by Renate Kraus Milner for a local history class for Dr. Tomberlin at 
Valdosta State University in 1998

In November 1943, Moody Field, an Air Force pilot training base, located nine miles north of Valdosta, Georgia, became the temporary home to 490 German prisoners of war. At the time Georgia housed 11,800 prisoners of war. Lt. Edward T. Lillis was transferred from Camp Blanding, Florida, as the commander over the 315^th Military Police Escort to guard the POWs at Moody. The prisoners were housed at Moody in buildings near the parade ground and the motor pool. The Police quarters were next to the POW barracks, separated by a fence. It is not clear when the change occurred, but by October 1945 the prisoners were guarded by the 1447^th SCU under the command of Captain Fred Beeman.

The POW barracks at Moody Field were constructed the same manner as they were in most of the South. They were one-story buildings holding eighty prisoners and two guards. On each end of the barracks was a room for a guard; in between were the POW quarters. In the winter the middle room was heated with a potbelly stove that was located in the center. However, the summers brought problems most of the prisoners had a hard time coping with; Germans were used to moderate summers, and the heat and the humidity of the south was almost unbearable for the men. In addition mosquitoes and red bugs, leaving them itching and uncomfortable, often plagued them.

At Moody Field the fire chief inspected the POW barracks at regular intervals. On one occasion he discovered that the prisoners dug tunnels between the barracks. Lenny O’Neal, the former fire chief at Moody Field who inspected the buildings on the base was not sure why they did that but assumed they wanted to visit each other after hours. 

Local farmers in Lowndes and surrounding counties were beginning to feel the impact of the war by March 1943. Many vegetable farmers in this area complained about a shortage of labor. War industries and the armed forces had claimed many of the skilled workers; those who did not join the military or worked in factories did not want to work as field hands either. One plant shipper complained that often the workers worked only "…a few days out of the week, it was not uncommon for some of the workers to leave in the middle of the afternoon and go to a picture show or some other point of recreation."

In April 1943 the War Department announced it would make POW labor available to civilians under certain regulations. The prisoners were put to work for private and government agencies. Many worked in the surrounding area for vegetable farmers and tobacco planters; others labored on the Air Base. One of the stipulations for an employer to be eligible to use POW labor was the requirement to supply the War Manpower Commission, who handled all aspect of POW employment, with proof that all regular sources of labor had been exhausted. It was a long and difficult process to be able to use Prisoners of war. The employment office of the local War Manpower Commission had to be contacted and employers had to make sure the rights if the POWs would not be violated. A county agent then established how many prisoners would be needed. The Farmer had little say in the number of prisoners he received. Still many of them used POW labor which gives one a hint on how starved Southerners were for unskilled labor.

POW labor was classified into three categories. Class one POWs maintained the internment camps, which often meant maintaining the entire base, because camps were established inside existing military installations. Class two POWs were used to work anywhere else, including being hired out to private employers. Class three work was considered unessential work. It is not clear what type of work fell under this classification.

Most of the POWs were friendly and willing to work. But not all prisoners were eager: in those cases the Army had means to coerce their willingness. Officers and noncommissioned officers could not be required to work, but enlisted prisoners had to work if ordered to do so. Refusing to follow an order was punished by being put on a bread and water diet until the prisoner was willing to follow the order. Not meeting work quotas was punished the same way. As it turned out the majority of the prisoners were skilled, well trained and behaved, knowledgeable, and took pride in their to work.

Even though Article 27 of the Geneva Convention clearly stated that officers and noncommissioned officers were not required to work, most of them were glad for the distraction work provided. A welcomed side effect was getting to see the area and the people on the way to and from the work locations. By the accords of the Geneva Convention prisoners from a belligerent country could be employed in jobs not directly related to the war industry, if the work was not dangerous and did not exceed a person's physical capabilities. This left the prisoner's work conditions open for individual interpretation, especially since the War Manpower Commission left it up to the individual camp commanders to decide where and what type of work the prisoners should be used for. This created problems in that it opened the way to some abuse.

At Moody Field prisoners who worked in the camp were used according to their skills whenever possible. Medically trained personnel were used in the hospitals, cooks were used in the canteens, and mechanics were put to work in the motor pool. If a prisoner had no special skill, he was assigned to maintenance work on the grounds such as collecting trash, cutting grass, planting, trimming of trees and shrubs, and so forth. Moody Field prisoners were employed in the motor pool repairing cars and trucks, as carpenters, painters, and various other occupations such as the drafting room.

The POWs were paid in script so they could not hoard money for use in an escape. They spent their money on the post's store where they were able to buy not only personal hygiene articles such as soap, razors, combs, toothpaste, but also newspapers, magazines, candy, cigarettes, and various other items such as writing utensils or cotton underwear and socks. Most of them were able to save money from their meager earnings. Through the mail the prisoners received they knew how desperate the situation was in Germany for their friends and families. This prompted the Moody POWs to take up a collection in the winter of 1945. They gave $6,475 to the Red Cross to help other Germans overseas through the winter.

In Lowndes County, Georgia, Herbert Schroer co-owner of a plant farm with his brother, Walter used German POWs to help in the fields. The author interviewed Herbert Schroer in the Spring of 1998. Mr. Schroer still has vivid memories of wartime and the prisoners. He used German prisoners of war regularly; he was impressed with their work. Though things did not always go smoothly. He usually employed about 100-120 POWs to pull plants from the fields and bundle them for shipment. He picked the POWs up in the trucks at the south gate at Moody Field and brought them out to the fields where he needed them. On one occasion Herbert Schroer had to go out of town for several days for his military draft physical. He told the prisoners he would be gone and that his brother was taking over for a few days. On his return he found out that the prisoners had only pulled 52,000 plants. He called them together and demanded to know the reason was for the sorry results. As it turned out, one of the prisoners had been eating blackberries along the fence. Mr. Schroer's brother got upset with the POWs and told them they had to be "made to work like the colored".  This angered the POWs and they responded: "So we show him we can not be made to work." After some mediation by Herbert Schroer, tensions were relieved and the prisoners went back to their work. This time they worked so hard they pulled 1,200,000 plants the rest of the day.

Almost everybody remembers the Germans for some peculiarity. Mr. Friis, a native of Denmark, who served on an American ship during the war, recalled being home on leave, working alongside the prisoners for Leonard Craig, his father-in-law, on the farm in Hahira. "There was this one prisoner, funny guy, he always washed his hands and combed his hair and always used a napkin when he sat down to eat." Mrs. Wolinski, who lived in Hahira in the Goldleaf Hotel said: "the trucks would come by loaded with these prisoners. …I remember seeing one look up and he had the most beautiful blue eyes."

At first there was one guard per ten prisoners. Americans feared the Nazis would try to break out, sabotage industries and mass murder Americans. They soon found out that these young Germans had no such intentions and the regulation relaxed. Sometimes when no guards were available, Mr. Schroer was asked by the Army to watch over the prisoners. One rainy day the guard and the prisoners stood under a shed when a prisoner asked the guard if he could demonstrate to him how he could disassemble the guard's gun and put it back together blindfolded in less then two minutes. The guard had no objections, he blindfolded the prisoner, and the POW put  the gun back together in less than two minutes; everybody had fun watching. Often the guards would sit and nap under a tree in the shade while the prisoners worked. When they heard the Army jeep come up, one of them would run or throw something at the guard to wake him up.

Mr. Schroer never had a problem with one of them trying to get away.  "As a matter of fact", he said, "one night I went out there [Moody] and they had two boys in the ditch outside the gate; they had made a fire. I stopped and asked them: "what are you doing out here?" They said, "we missed the truck, so we can't get in. The guards won't let us go in. We have to wait out here, we will catch the truck in the morning when it goes back out to work." 

According to Mr. Schroer, Moody was the temporary home of 32 German officers. They requested to be allowed to work, but could not work close to the other prisoners. Mr. Schroer had to work them in different areas and send a different truck just for the officers. Camp Clinton in Mississippi was constructed as special quarters for officers. Their imprisonment was entirely different from that of regular soldiers. They lived in a house by themselves and had some luxuries like private bathrooms, fully equipped kitchens including refrigerators and were allowed to have an orderly to cater to their needs. The Army supplied them with books, music, and American whiskey. They were allowed to go to officers' parties, to the downtown theaters and could raise pets if the chose to do so.

One of the things Moody prisoners are remembered for is the crafty things they made such as wood boxes and other things out of cedar wood. Mrs. Peters, who used to work on the Base with the Prisoners, still owns a jewelry box made by Gerhard Todtke a former POW at Moody. She unsuccessfully tried to locate Mr. Todtke. Mrs. Susie McKey Thomas, who used to work at Moody Field, recalled one of the prisoners had made a wooden rocking horse that the Hale family of Valdosta received.  "Of course it was made of stuff from the base and they shouldn't have, because it belonged to the government. I remember one time a prisoner was working in the yard and he was whistling the song 'Don't Fence Me In'.  It was funny because here he was a prisoner."

Mr. Schroer recalled an incident when one of the officers asked him to give him a quarter and a dime so he could make a present for Mr. Schroer's wife, who's birthday was coming up. "The day before her birthday, he came up to me with a little box. It had a cross and a chain on it. And inside was the dime mounted into the quarter, if you would blow it would say good luck." Another incident of the skills of the POWs was when a young German fixed an American's pocket watch in less than an hour. The Army discouraged contact beyond work orders but this was largely ignored not only by the locals and the prisoners, but also by the guarding soldiers. Herbert Schroer's mother corresponded for many years with some of the prisoners after they returned to Europe. The former Fire Chief of Moody also remembers the prisoners as being nice guys. They built the annex to the fire department on the base. He was impressed with their masonry skills: "they had a way of making cement that would not brake in the winter frost."

Prisoner's uniforms were issued to the POWs after their German uniforms were used up. Recycled American military uniforms were dyed and stenciled with big white letters "PW" on the back of the top, and the bottom of the pant leg.  Mrs. Hazel Lee was employed at Moody Field in Georgia in 1945, after she had finished high school. She worked with Mr. Cook at the Salvage Classification Office where they recycled used uniforms. She made friends with one of the prisoners:  "In the back office worked these two German prisoners. One day Mr. Cook had gone to the PX and brought me back some chocolate. I broke it into pieces and offered some to them. They could not believe I was treating them so nice. They were very young; the one boy was maybe eighteen or nineteen. He was shipped out after the war with the others.  Sometime later, I was working at C&S Bank in Hahira. I got a letter from him. He had sent it to the base, a lieutenant brought it to me. That's when we started writing to each other. After I married in 1950 we stopped writing but in 1954 I got a telegram from him wishing me Merry Christmas, and that he had become a United States citizen."

Although in retrospect Americans tend to remember the prisoners as nice people now, at the time they were not happy to house and feed them. Articles in TIME magazine, telling about the easy life of the prisoners, them being "snug and well fed" or "nothing but the best for POWs" reflected the overall negative attitude of Americans toward the strangers. Prisoners were allowed to buy things in the camp that were not available to civilians, because food was rationed for everybody; American soldiers in Europe were eating C-rations while the German prisoners looked "smug and well fed." What many Americans did not realize at the time was that the camps were basically self-sufficient. The profits from the money the POWs spend in the post stores were used for the prisoner's upkeep. They also were required to grow fruit and vegetables. The prisoners at Moody worked a thirty-acre field on the base with the help of two mules and the use of a tractor. The fresh fruits and vegetables such as cantaloupes, watermelons, beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, corn and sweet potatoes were used to feed American soldiers in the mess halls. POWs had garden plots in almost every camp to supplement their diets, but they did not always harvest the fruits of their hard labor. It was not unusual, while the prisoners were waiting for the fruits and vegetables to ripen, that they were stolen at night. This made them angry not so much over the stolen food, but over being deprived of the satisfaction of harvesting homegrown products which would have been shared by several hundred people including Army personnel.

The Moody prisoners were not only used in Lowndes County, but also in surrounding counties. In Quitman, POWs helped harvest sugar cane; the Brooks County Agent considered the work as "most satisfactory". Adel peanut farmers made use of the prison work force as the peanut crop was ready to be harvested. One of the things locals remember, is the trucks loaded with the prisoners, carrying them to the fields.

The workday of the prisoner was not supposed to exceed 10 hours a day, including transportation. That did not keep some lumber mills from keeping the POWs until the quota's were filled, sometimes working 14-hours a day. During harvest or whenever the prison labor was not enough to relieve the heavy demand for field hands, the War Man Power Commission developed an incentive plan: Prisoners who worked especially hard could earn up to $1.50 per day. Herbert Schroer’s impression of the work and the prisoners was very favorable, but not everybody felt the way he did. Mr. Albert Pendleton's interview on April 22, 1998 with Isabel McLeod Allison a lifelong resident of Lowndes County, revealed a point of view held by many Americans during the war especially if they had a family member involved in the war overseas; and many did.

Albert Pendleton: How about your father, did he ever have German prisoners? 
Isabel Allison: Oh yes, he did. Kind of ironic, of course I didn’t know it at the time, but Bill [husband] was a prisoner in Germany and they had some prisoners out at Moody. Daddy used them to stack peanuts. He grew a lot of peanuts at that time. And, of course, it almost makes you mad to think of it. They were so well cared for. Daddy sent a truck for them every morning and took them back in the afternoon. There were maybe 25-30 of them on a truck with one guard. They would stop out there in front of the house under those oak trees and the guard would spend this day in the shade under here and the men would be way back there maybe a quarter of a mile away. The guard never stayed near them or saw them. Daddy had to pay them, of course, guess he paid the government. They saved money while the were here, to spend or take home or buy candy bars. I don’t remember much, I was in high school. I don’t remember how much he paid them, but I do know he paid each one as to how many stacks of peanuts he stacked during the day. Some of  them were sloppily done and we had to go back and straighten up.

Even though the prisoners kept busy working and taking classes, they got bored. The YMCA alleviated some of the boredom by supplying sports equipment and reading material. Favorite pastimes for the prisoners were playing sports, especially soccer, music, tending to small garden plots, landscaping the camp grounds, and watching movies. The camp commander of Aliceville remarked about the newly constructed, deserted-looking camp upon the arrival of the prisoners; give them two weeks and one would not recognize it anymore. He obviously had previous experience; a few weeks later much of the camp was landscaped with bushes and flowers and trees bought with canteen profits or donated by local residents. Moody got a face lift when the prisoners planted Azalea bushes donated by the locals. With the profits from the canteen, paint supplies and other hobby materials were obtained, including musical instruments. The prisoners gave concerts and entertained fellow POWs with elaborate plays. In many camps they built their own soccer fields to play their favorite sport.

The YMCA and the Red Cross sent reading materials and movies from Germany for the prisoners. When the PMGO (Provost Marshal General Office) decided to re-educate the prisoners, they saw an opportunity to indoctrinate the prisoners with democratic values and ideas by making use of their reading habits. The Army started to censor all material brought in from overseas. In December 1944 all camp commanders were instructed to send lists of their library holding to the Special Projects Commission for revision. They then received lists of approved and unapproved books for prisoner use. The unapproved brooks had to be removed and were replaced by other approved books. Books arriving in America from abroad were checked at arrival before they were distributed to the individual camps. This included books such as Achtung Europa by Thomas Mann, Meisterwerke in Vers und Prosa by Heinrich Heine, or the translations of works by Ernest Hemmingway, Joseph Conrad, and others. Books were not the only things censored. Most camps had established their own little newspapers reporting on happenings within the camp and news from abroad. Der Ruf was a paper especially developed for distribution in the POW camps, sponsored by the U.S. Government to promote democracy. The paper was sold at 5 cents per copy to avoid suspicion of indoctrination, that surely would have risen if the paper had been given away as originally planned. After the first issue of "Der Ruf", the Army "monitored outgoing mail" for reactions to the paper. Depending on the reaction of the letter writer, he was then classified into pro or anti democratic. This information then was used to segregate the hard core Nazis from the other prisoners. The details obtained through the "monitoring" of the mail also provided information that was used to identify Nazis in Germany, which then was forwarded to the Allied Military Government in Germany with the names and addresses of the suspects.

According to an article in the Valdosta Daily Times, Captain Beeman stated that all but two prisoners voluntarily enrolled in courses on American Government and the Democratic Process. The POWs went to classes four evenings during the week. All classes were conducted in English, which makes one wonder how much the students actually understood and learned. The Special Projects division taught courses in democracy to those prisoners whom they had sorted out as the most reliable and the least politically active during and prior to the war. After the war was over, these prisoners were sent directly home, while many others were sent to France, England and the Russian occupation zone.

POWs stationed in South Georgia were sent home by train to Savannah and then boarded to ship to New York. From there they were put on ships on route to Europe to bring Americans home. At the closing of the war, the prisoners for the first time became nervous about what was going to happen to them. As one prisoner stated, "None of us had any idea of what to expect. We had come to experience the first genuine fear since becoming prisoners". Prisoners were repatriated to Europe by the thousands, but many of them did not get to go home; they were handed over to the occupying allied forces. Americans had an agreement to release a certain number of its POWs to the Allied Forces to be used in the rebuilding of the war-torn countries as part of Germany’s war debt. England released the last German POWs in 1948. Russia did not let the POWs go until 1956, and then only after lengthy negotiation with the German Government. Many of the POWs did not return home from Russia at all. Out of 3,060,000 POW in the Soviet Union 1,094,250 were lost. That amounts to almost thirty-six percent; in comparison Andersonville losses amounted to twenty-four percent. Nobody knows what happened to them, but the recent discovery of secret documents gives one a good idea that many of them were physically abused, starved, and froze to death. The Sunday Telegraph reported the discovery of documents that prove Norway and Denmark used German POWs after the war was over to clear minefields. POWs were walked across minefields to make sure all mines were gone or in this case were exploded. Close to 700 Germans were killed this way and 252 wounded.

It is estimated that 5000 former POWs came back to become U.S. citizens. Immigrating to the U.S. was a difficult process. Until 1948, no immigration was allowed unless a person could find a sponsor over in America. Later after Immigration law had been relaxed the number of immigrants was very restricted. There seems to be an overall consent that American treatment of enemy prisoners was directly responsible for former prisoners coming back after the war and becoming American citizens. While this may be true for some, existing research suggests that the former prisoners came back because of what they experienced while in captivity working outside the camps. One American had a good idea why the Germans came back: "the POWs were surprised at the lifestyle in America, they couldn't get over the luxuries available in America". On their way to work they saw cars, trains, well-dressed people and most of all, plenty of food for everybody. The country was not destroyed, unlike their fatherland, and even luxuries like candy, alcohol, and nice clothes were available to everybody. What impressed them most of all was the abundance of food. In addition, the American civilians were friendly toward them and treated them nice. Those people who remember the German Prisoners of war in Lowndes county recall them as being friendly and cooperative. They filled an expanding gap of the labor shortage, caused by different aspects of the war. Overall it can be assumed that having the POWs did not hurt the U.S., it provided the desperately needed workers to keep many industries functioning, they were not a burden to their host country, and the prophecy of sabotage did not materialize. The work program was a success not only because it provided for much-needed workers; most importantly, Americans and Germans learned to see each other as human beings instead of enemies. Germans in general respected Americans, and many returned after the war to become American citizens.

To date, only a few articles and books have been written about German Prisoners of War camps in America, and the only comprehensive study that has been done is Dr. Arnold Krammer's book Nazi Prisoners of War in America. Even though it is an important contribution to this topic much research remains to be done. The Maschke Commission, a group of German scholars, was asked in the early 1950’s, by the German Government to collect and write the history of the German Prisoners of war interned by the Allied Forces. It took more then twenty years to complete this tremendous task. The result was a twenty volume series, each volume dealing with the internment of Germans in a different country. The volumes were only available in Libraries because of the controversial and touchy content. Before the books went to the printing press all countries mentioned in the books were allowed to edit and have facts removed, to not offend these countries. All though these books contain important information one must be critical in the use of them. Willy Brandt, the German chancellor at the time when the books were published was by many Germans regarded as a friend of eastern Europe, who showed good will and German reconciliation efforts especially towards the Eastern Countries.

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