By David Vitrano

L’Observateur

RESERVE – Dr. Gerald Keller presented the fifth lecture in the series celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of Reserve on a little known period in the community’s history — the few years in the mid-1940s during which Reserve was home to a German POW camp.

Locals packed the LaCour Center to hear the lecture called “German Prisoners of War in Reserve during World War II.”

“I want to keep a part of history we had here in St. John Parish,” said Keller.

While POWs started arriving in the United States as early as 1943 and were spread out in camps throughout the South and Southwest, in the sugar and rice belt of southern Louisiana they served a specific purpose. Faced with a labor shortage, local plantation operators used the POWs to work in the fields. The Reserve camp opened on Oct. 25, 1944. It was located just off West 10th Street in the general area that Natco now occupies.

“It really was a blessing to us,” said Keller.

Godchaux Sugars employed the most POW laborers with a count of 125 at one time.

The camps hardly resembled what have come to be familiar images when one thinks of labor camps today, however. POWs were paid wages equal to that of a private in the military — 80 cents per day — and were well-fed, with camp operators even adjusting meals to suit German tastes. They also enjoyed relative freedom compared to their American counterparts. Many even enjoyed visits from relatives on weekends.

The POWs were treated so well, in fact, that escape attempts were few and far between, and when a guard fell asleep on the train tracks and was killed, the POWs marched back to camp with their hands in the air, according to Keller.

“They were happy to be out of the war,” said Keller.

The camp only housed lower-level German soldiers with the more “hardcore Nazis” being sent to camps in Oklahoma.

The farmers who employed POWs had to follow a set of regulations that included not taking photographs or feeding the prisoners, but Keller said enforcement of the rules was rather lax.

Although none of the POWs were able to return to the area after the war, many of the guards influenced life in Reserve. For example, Sgt. Gordon Grady of Dayton, Ohio, married Bessie Acosta of Reserve, and the couple eventually settled in her hometown.

Keller said toward the end of the war, attitudes toward the German POWs changed as news of the treatment of American POWs made its way stateside. At this time, too, the nature of the POWs themselves changed as the average age and rank of captured German soldiers increased.

Camp Reserve was closed in January 1946, and all POWs had left the U.S. by June of that year.

Keller said part of the reason he chose the topic for this lecture was so a commemorative marker could be placed at the site.

The final lecture in the series, which will explore the history of St. Peter Church, will take place on Thursday, Dec. 2, at the Reserve public library.