Princeton: Event marks where enemy was held in WWII
By LAUREN D'AVOLIO / The Dallas Morning News
Sixty years after liberation rang out in Nazi-ravaged Europe, L.W. Godwin, a stoic and unassuming World War II veteran, tells tales of brutality and of inspiration.
On Saturday, the 84-year-old Princeton resident and seven other veterans lent their presence to acommemoration of the anniversary of the war's end and the dedication of the Collin County Historical Marker at the prisoner of war camp in Princeton. The concrete slab of the pavilion and a corroded water tower are the only original structures of the camp left standing.
Erma Beeson, a member of the Collin County Historical Commission, said the marker dedicated Saturday includes a pictorial of how the camp was assembled.
"We feel that we needed to know what it looked like when those monuments were here," Ms. Beeson said.
POWs, primarily Germans but also some Japanese and Italians, were detained at the Princeton camp and toiled at farm work for about $1.50 per day, Ms. Beeson said. Part of that money was used by the government to help fund the camps.
The Princeton camp had about 30 buildings - 20 to 25 barracks in addition to laundry, community and shower structures, she said. Only about 150 people were there at any given time, she said, noting that it was opened rather late in the war.
Ms. Beeson said she's heard stories about how some POWs weren't especially eager to return to their homelands.
"I've read that the time the prisoners spent here they considered some of the best times of their life. Much as we would probably not like to think about it, their life here was really not all that bad," Ms. Beeson said. "There were Americans that thought that we were treating them too well. Sometimes, POW camps were considered too good for the captive Germans. Some Texas communities called the camp the Fritz Ritz."
U.S. Rep. Ralph Hall, a World War II Navy veteran, spoke at the ceremony. "It's just a good day in Princeton because this is what this country's all about. ... That's freedom," Mr. Hall said. "That's what everybody fought for Ð and that's what everybody died for. ... Folks don't die if you never forget them."
Mr. Godwin, who served in the Army in World War II, had his own POW experience.
He was shipped to France in 1944, where he "tried to keep from getting hit."
In Belgium, he was captured by Germans as he and about 140 comrades were holed up in a basement.
Herded onto a claustrophobic train, they spent a week without food or water. Mr. Godwin, to this day, doesn't know the exact location of 13C Prison Camp.
From that hellacious first camp came a somewhat more humane sawmill camp in Germany, where Mr. Godwin was fed boiled potatoes and an occasional slice of bread. This was presumably to keep his strength up for the taxing job of wood-chopping. It was at the sawmill that he heard a heavenly sound: American tanks and jeeps on a nearby highway. After being held captive for nearly five months, Mr. Godwin was free.
"Me and another boy, we took off across a field. ... The Germans didn't have any business trying to stop us. They wasn't going to do nothing else."
E-mail ldavolio@dallasnews.com
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