T-R PHOTO BY SUSANNA MEYER —  Cedar Rapids Storyteller Darrin Crow visited the Marshalltown Public Library on Sunday afternoon and regaled a large audience with true tales about the prisoners of war in Algona POW camps.

The Marshalltown Public Library hosted storyteller Darrin Crow on Sunday afternoon, and a large audience was regaled with true tales of Iowa history.

Crow, who hails from Cedar Rapids, presented his program “They Came as Enemies and Left as Friends: Stories of Prisoners of War in Iowa,” which detailed stories of the citizens of Algona during World War II and the prisoners of war (POWs) who became their neighbors.

“When it comes to history, I am particularly passionate about Iowa history and Iowa stories, because, well, we’re Iowans. We’re a modest people. We tend to play down our importance, or our abilities or our goodness and sometimes we forget how important our stories are,” Crow said. “Throughout Iowa’s history as a state, well, Iowans have pretty much always played an important role in the running of their country, and important things happened across Iowa.”

While some programs are accompanied by a slideshow presentation, Crow was armed only with a stack of notes and his own voice, and as he read from his notes, he adjusted his voice to what he was reading. His emotive gestures captivated the audience as he spoke.

Crow began the presentation by talking briefly about how he researched the stories he was about to recount, and he said one of his favorite resources was local newspapers because of the interesting perspectives they provided, and Crow shared those perspectives with the audience.

“When copies of the Algona Advance landed on breakfast tables on the morning of July 20, 1943, the shopkeepers and farmers and housewives looked up from their eggs and bacon in wonder at the headline that read ‘Group visits city to look for location: Possibility that a war prisoner camp will be located near Algona was revealed by the visit last weekend of several representatives of war agencies,'” Crow read.

Crow continued to read the article, which detailed the plan to bring 3,000 POWs to Algona, possibly to serve as farm hands due to a labor shortage at the time. The article painted a picture where Iowans were not thrilled about having a POW camp “right in their backyard.” In general, articles in most publications reported a very unfavorable view of the idea.

“Well, like it or not, what the newspapers may or may not say, a prison camp was coming to Algona. And the activity of the next several months increased into a flurry. Algona took on all the aspects of a boom town,” Crow said.

Houses and apartments were rented out as the camp was constructed and all the work put into the project eventually culminated in several hundred Italian soldiers arriving in Algona in January 1944. Crow said this first group of Italians would only be there for a little while to get the camp set up before moving on.

“No one was quite, entirely sure who or what would make up the next group of prisoners who were going to be brought in. But it wasn’t long before we found out. It was going to be Germans. Soldiers from Rommel’s Afrika Korps,” Crow said. “When the first train arrived, the citizens of Algona packed into the station and lined the tracks, ready to see what these abominable Nazis looked like. Strangely enough, as the men began to get off the train, they did not see a single fiend in human form. All they saw was a lot of young men.”

Crow said for the next several months after the Germans arrived, both the prisoners and American guards alike were trying to figure out how to run the camp. The Americans had little experience with running prison camps, and as it was, there weren’t enough American soldiers to spare many of them for the job.

Essentially, the Americans kept the Germans from escaping but otherwise left them mostly to their own devices and allowed them to fend for themselves for the first few months, according to Crow. It didn’t take long, however, for the local farmers to realize why the POWs were brought to Iowa.

Because the able-bodied young men of the time were off at war, Iowa farmers were left with no one to do the farm work, but with the Algona POWs at their disposal, that was about to change.

“The reaction was pretty mixed. You got groups of people that said ‘Yes! We can actually get our crops in, we can take care of things, we can harvest!’ and there were other groups of people that said, ‘There is not a German soldier about to step foot on my land, I’ve got a son fighting over in Germany right now,'” Crow said.

But some farmers did eventually utilize the POWs on their farms, and Crow discussed two farmers from Moorhead, Minn. — Henry Peterson and Paul Horn — who contracted 150 soldiers to work on their vegetable farms.

A branch camp was set up near the Red River, and a barracks was constructed in an abandoned onion warehouse. The prisoners and the two farmers formed good relationships, and Crow described one of the hot July days where the soldiers had the day off and Peterson and Horn decided to treat them.

The two farmers took the prisoners to a local gravel pit for a swim, and all went well until one of the POWs, 25-year-old Franz Hummer, drowned.

There was a funeral the following week with full military honors, and Hummer was the first person to be buried in the camp cemetery. This event was important because it was the first time bonds seemed to be forming between the citizens of Algona and the POWs.

“This is one of the first moments where the local people of Algona really begin to connect,” Crow said. “The garden club of Algona went around, and they picked flowers from all of their gardens, and they brought flowers for the funeral. Which I think is pretty tremendous, because that’s the moment where the people connect with these prisoners and say, ‘You are human beings.'”

Crow described several other instances of conflict between the POWs and citizens, including two escape attempts, but he also described other instances of POWs and citizens building up their relationships. For example, one POW made a wood carving for the Algona garden club to thank them for the flowers they sent after Hummer’s death.

As WWII ended and the POWs were released, Crow said the friendships that were formed during those years were not forgotten. The soldiers took the addresses and names of the American guards and farmers who they had become friends with during their time here with them, and those guards and farmers eventually became sponsors to some of those German soldiers who came back to obtain their citizenship.

“What, on that morning in 1943 had terrified the Algonans, the thought that 3,000 POWs would be sent to their community, at the end of a couple of years, turned out to be a whole lot better. Because they came as enemies, and they parted as friends, and that’s my story.” Crow said.