Crew members of the German U-352, captured in May 1942 off the North
Carolina coast after the U S. Coast Guard sank their vessel, became pris¬
oners of war held at Fort Bragg. Image courtesy of the State Archives, North
Carolina Office of Archives and History.
Sicily, Italy, in July 1943, and held as a POW at
Camp Butner. Max Reiter, a fellow prisoner at
Camp Butner, had been a member of the
Waffen-SS (the German Nazi Party's own
armed military unit) and was wounded and
captured in Normandy, France, in June 1944.
They all came to North Carolina as enemies
of the United States, but many later left as
long-term friends of Americans and one another.
Because of the relative secrecy of the army's
POW program, few people — other than the
guards who ran the camps and the civilian
employers who "leased" the services of POWs
from the military — even knew about the POWs
in the Tar Heel State. Today many people still
are not aware that there were thousands of war
prisoners held here.
Some of the first prisoners to arrive in the
United States were Italians. By the end of 1943,
nearly 50,000 Italian POWs were held in 27
camps in 23 states, including North Carolina.
Camp Butner was one of the major barbed-
Ш
hey were not from the Tar Heel
^State. They spoke foreign
1'
■ languages and wore different
uniforms from those of the
Ш Ш* Ш
American military. They had
names that sounded strange to Tar Heel ears.
They were among the thousands of prisoners
of war (POWs) who spent time in North
Carolina during World War II.
Farm kids sometimes saw foreign prisoners
helping with their fathers' peanut harvests,
picking cotton on a neighboring farm, or cut¬
ting pulpwood in the woods nearby. Attending
a baseball game in Charlotte or sitting in a
restaurant or movie theater in Monroe, North
Carolinians might encounter Italian-speaking
members of Italian Sendee Units — former
POWs who had taken an oath of alliance to the
new anti-German government in
Italy and gotten American
uniforms and day passes to see
the local sights.
Who were these foreign
strangers? Each had his own
interesting story. For example,
Heinrich Bollmann — a POW at
the camp at Fort Bragg — was res¬
cued from the U-352 sunk by the
U.S. Coast Guard off the North
Carolina coast in May 1942.
Giuseppe Pagliarulo — a soldier of
Benito Mussolini's army cap¬
tured in Tunisia, Africa, in May
1943 — later trained as a member
of an Italian Service Unit at
Camp Sutton in Monroe.
Matthias Buschheuer — a POW
at Camp Sutton — was a veteran
of Erwin Rommel's Afrika
An Italian Service Unit member earn¬
ing to be a lineman at Camp Sutton,
which included a major prisoner of
war camp- Image courtesy of Edith Long,
of Indian 'I rail,
Korps, also captured in Tunisia, Africa, in May
1943. Fritz Teichmann was a member of the
German Luftwaffe (air corps), captured in
Enemies and Friends:
POWS in the Tan Heel State
"Dr Robert D. Hilliuger In is the Ruth Davis Horton Professor of History at Wingate
University. The University Press of Honda has just
/
mblislted his hook Nazi I’OU s in
the Tar I Icol State.
26
//////.
Spring 2008
