THE WAR AT HOME. World War II, that is, when Sycamore was a work site for German war prisoners.

Sycamore Historical Society photo republished in the DeKalb Chronicle

The Historical Society recently hosted a presentation on the prisoners' work in the area.

About 300 German prisoners spent summers during World War II at a POW camp in Sycamore, at a South Avenue branch of the larger Rockford-based Camp Grant. The Rockford facility, which opened in the late 1910s, served as both a training center and a detention camp during the second world war.

Nearly 75 area natives gathered at the Sycamore Center on Thursday to share their memories at a brown bag lunch led by [90-year old Martha] Wetzel and 73-year-old Connie Wallin. The event was coordinated by the Sycamore Historical Society and Museum in hopes of gaining information for archives and to get community members talking.

“We only have one picture of the site,” said Michelle Donahoe, executive director of the Sycamore Historical Society and Museum. “You would think people would have taken more photos, so we thought this might encourage them to bring some in.”

They spoke of seeing prisoners dressed in green uniforms that had “POW” branded on the back. Many remembered them working in the fields and harvesting and canning vegetables, they said. Wallin's earliest memories of the camp were from horseback riding when she was 11.

German war prisoners well inland were not great security risks, although there were escapes from camps in Texas and Arizona. One person at the meeting spoke of his time, in the early 1950s with the occupying U.S. Army in Germany, of having a driver assigned who was a German in the U.S. Army. The driver was offered a sort of amnesty: when the war ends, enlist in the U.S. Army and become a citizen, which he did. I believe it's contrary to the Geneva Convention to make free agency offers to war prisoners.

Recollections of World War II railroaders include tales of working the prisoner trains taking Germans and Italians to Rockford and beyond. An article in Trains noted that the prisoners' experience of an undamaged United States, as seen from the Pennsylvania Railroad, caused some cognitive dissonance with the propaganda Germans were given at home. An article in Railfan and Railroad mentioned the effect the sight of a Union Pacific Big Boy on 100 cars of war materiel had on the morale of Germans bound for points further west.