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Did you ever know that there was a German POW camp in Windsor during World War Two? No nose? No. Never heard about it. No, no, I do not know anything about No, no, no, no. I have heard about it. Way got a winner. Oh, yeah, Right

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up above us. Quite a place. They had quite a few barracks up there. They used to march him down the road down Teoh Holy Market E. I did. What an amazing part of American history. This little town that is now town green and awesome and part

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of the wine country was a very quiet area where we kept the German prisoners. Yes. Oh, yeah, the use of Miss workers. Um, And they were kept safe and protected, and they just made the work. It was a safe area for them to be. Yeah, the

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camp was right. Right up above us out there side of the hill up there. You should see the left side of the road. Figured if they were going to keep them here. They Mansell put them toe work serves a purpose. They had to have a place

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to stay. So that was it. They were friendly. They were away from home. The environment was much safer and less hostile. And as she comptel the weather here in Sonoma County's Beautiful. So who wouldn't want to be here? Yes, Sonoma County did house German prisoners of

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war in the town of Windsor, California, mainly in agricultural rural community, with farmers, ranchers and winemakers not too different from today. All of the young, healthy, able bodied man had gone off to fight in World War Two. So ironically, German POWs were housed in Camp Windsor

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and commissioned out to help farmers, ranchers and winemakers whose own young sons have gone to fight in the war. The American severe labour shortage was alleviated by prisoner labour in 1944 can't feel housed and can't be on. Marysville housed the ah lot of German prisoners of

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war, and winter was picked as a satellite camp, so camp actually opened to German prisoners. In August of 1944 German soldiers were surrendering to the Allies in the hundreds of thousands, Hitler was losing the war, and with massive American reinforcements of men and supplies, it was

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more honorable to surrender than to retreat. Soldiers of all ages and nationalities had started to surrender to the Allies. It was a migrant labor camp first opened in 1939 and that was not without quite a lot of controversy. Nobody wanted the camp or very few people

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wanted to camp locally. It was only open for about 18 months before it closed, and the government never relinquished ownership of it. So there are a Siri's. After it closed in 1940 there was a series of requests to open it for different purposes. They wanted to

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reopen it as a migrant labor camp, and that was not that was not recommended. They then suggested that it be open for the temporary relocation of enemy are not enemy aliens but Japanese citizens that were being relocated. And the government said that camp was too close

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to sensitive areas, so it was not appropriate. They came from virtually all of the countries. But I think when when, when Corporal Sullivan, corporal, when he was in the service, talked about the sub Mariners, that and the African car they were that they were generally German,

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that's that's where they came from. On it was It was later that the soldiers came from the from these other countries, and I was the only time. I think he talked about kind of the horror of World War Two, where Germans occupied a town, called everybody

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of a certain age together and told them that they were going to enlist. And if somebody said no, that they were shot. And that instance created a lot of volunteers. Nobody wanted to cross the that, and the and his friend told him that is when he

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was brought into the German military system and finally sent out into combat that his goal was simply to keep walking. And he was just gonna walk until he was captured and hope that he wasn't shot and coming to America was I mean, they viewed the Statue

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of Liberty just like immigrants. It was. This is a great place to bay. It's amazing that so few American soldiers were supervising so many Germans, America could afford to house the Germans. Germans have been brainwashed with propaganda into believing that America was in ruins when in

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fact it was in full swing in war mode and the country was fueling the war. They expected to see the major cities of the us in ruins bond and devastated whether they all came in by train or if some came in by truck. I'm not certain

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Alma crack and owned a store in town, and he remembered them coming into town on a train. What they did dio. They did a lot of barging. They worked at the winery and winter downtown winter, and so they would march from the camp to the winery,

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and so to and from its about just a little over a mile, they would very often sing. So they became, very, uh, obvious marching down the street. They would be singing and sometimes 23 o'clock in the morning on their way home or on their way down

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to the winery, singing at the top of their lungs. They also got quite a lot of attention that way. One of the guards told us how they marching home. They would. They would be singing particularly loud after their shift because they were given a certain ration

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of wine have with their meal, which put them in great spirits, which made them saying even louder. And so there were complaints by the people that lived along the road to try to keep it down on the way back to the camp. The other good stories

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was Horse was not quite in that category. Horsley wall that we met because he had been a a good women to the service right out of high school. His father was already in the war in the Russian front, and so he knew that this is where

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he was going to go. And he had been indoctrinated almost entirely with the war rhetoric at the time, and the United States was kind of at the end of its rope. Our capacity for production of the materials needed to wage the war was running out. And

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when he came and got on the train in New York and started across the Midwest, it he said that you could just feel the that the energy drain from the soldiers. They had absolutely no idea. And when they came to Chicago to see the size of

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the manufacturing capabilities and the size of the city of Chicago, and the fact that there was no no damage from the war, that this is a bustling city, they knew the world was over, and in fact, the war by the time he got here, the world

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was only going to last another month or two before it was over. So that's, you know, that was an interesting take on it. You're told one thing and then you discover another Before the Windsor Historical Society. My wife and I were very involved in winter baseball

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and we, in fact, were the founding members of Winter Little League. And at that time we were looking around for people toe Teoh be sponsors. And we went to a friend who was a realtor. And we always hate begging for things. And so we tried to

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make it like a conversation and the conversation Waas looking for property. And he ended up showing us this property, that we had absolutely no intention of buying or moving. And he explained that it was land that recently come on the market and had been part of

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an old Camp Windsor. He described it as the prisoner of war camp. There were still some foundations around. We were uninterested, but we did take the drive with them and then that kind of cooked us. And then we started finding out more about it, and when

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we actually thought, uh, that we could move. Uh, we knew we couldn't afford to build a house, So we moved our house from where we lived out to the property. So now we have kind of period correct house sitting on an old piece of property. We

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have, Ah, 1910 home, very modest. Sitting on a beautiful piece of property that used to house migrant labourers in the thirties and prisoners of war German POWs in the forties. I would love to be able to just walk out and find artifacts that had something to

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do with the camp on and those don't exist. We've never found dog tags or, you know, something that would associate it with the POW camp. We rebuilt our barn on the foundation of the community center. That was part of the, uh camp. And there were two

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buildings were actually three buildings that still exist today that are virtually unchanged. At least parts of them are virtually unchanged from when they were part of the camp. Because the camp was originally set up as the migrant labor camp. There were these. There was the base

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commander or the camp manager's house and Then there was a guardhouse where the P X was established. One of the guards that came to visit us, uh, during the service in 1945 when he was 17 years old and he looked and by his own admission, he

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looked like he was 14 or 15 and and he took pictures of the camp that, uh that you are not supposed to take pictures up. It was against the regulations to take pictures of a camp. Uh, so you shared those with possibly think they were probably

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the first pictures that we had ever seen or anybody had ever seen of Camp win for. So we would take those pictures and try the lineup current scenes and so we can see where they stood in front of the signed Camp Windsor or in front of

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the flagpole in front of the the laundry room where the big singalong occurred. And for us it is, it's it's ah, it is a very moving experience living on it. I don't ever want to change anything way. We're hoping we would find photographs of the building

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where our foundation waas, and it's by pure luck. We ended up building a barn that was not that different from the original building, But But we have a neighbor whose addition to his house was built by the POWs. And we have a photograph of the carpenters

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with PW on each leg and PW on each arm, and they're looking at their their handicraft, putting a putting condition on the building. And I'm guessing he's probably the only one in snow, my county that has German POW uh, inspired addition from

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you. The labor force was involved in fighting the war, and so the POWs. The idea was that they would be able to augment the lack of, uh, or a substitute for the lack of young men. And

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if you came to the camp with a need, they would authorize X number of POWs to go out to your farm to do a variety of things. They picked hops. They prove the grapes they wound. Bruins picked prunes. Uh, I think they did virtually everything that

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that any farmer, any rancher would do. We've heard from very many people. When the Germans came out of the camp and again, almost to a person, they all described these as the happiest smiling ist nicest people that they have wanted to have work on their farm.

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So it's a very unusual. I'm hoping unique situation for the folks that lived in the area. The person we got to talk to the most was Don Sullivan and I was at work and my wife called and said that there was a gentleman at our house

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that said he had mended our camp at a camp in the war on Could I come home? And I said as he talked to the neighbors today, I couldn't get home right away and she said, He says he was a guard here during the war and

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I said, I'll be home in 10 minutes. Uh, Don was just 17 years old when he joined the service. So he's and he looks like such a kid. He looked he could have been my older brother to talk to him. He was out here with his

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son and he had just a great time visiting. He had a little bit of a hard time getting himself oriented to the camp. Uh, told us some just fabulous stories. Uh, he left his gun on his cot one day while he was out on the POWs

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were would go in and clean up the tent, and he came back and his gun was cleaned and there was a note along with it that suggested that perhaps he shouldn't leave that out, that he might get in trouble. And one of the POWs had given

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him that note. He told the stories about taking the his friend Tommy Coletta down to the movies in Santa Rosa. He'd put a coat on him, and they drive now toe to see the movies. He told a great story of the guards all being particularly happy

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because the prisoners had done a good job and we're being recognized for a good harvest, a good day of pruning, something that they had done. The guards bought them a bunch of beer, and they had put it in buckets and laid it out on the cement

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pad in ice. And then they stood back as the Germans filed into the camp and were astonished toe watch the POWs walk up to the beer, tip it over, let all the ice and water out, and then lay all the beer flat on the cement toe.

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Warm it up because they had never would never drink cold beer. They thought that was unbelievable when the Americans were surprised toe watch them drink warm beer. But that's how it waas. So he had all these great little snippets of, uh, of his memories. They drive

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the large trucks down to the Presidio to pick up coal to bring it back, gave his photograph of the guards staring at the Golden Gate Bridge from Sausalito while is, they were picking it up. So it was a great visit. We've corresponded with him for almost

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10 years, Lost touch with him about five years ago. Not exactly sure what what happened, but, well, we know he moved. And but he provided us a lot of fun. Photographs and stories. No, Mina, this club maneuver. I guess they were sailors, and they they escaped.

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And by the time they were caught in, uh, Point Reyes, I think that's a Sfar as they got that. That's what they wanted to see The Pacific. They had spent their military career on the Atlantic, and as sailors, they he knew the Pacific was was right.

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There was right out their back door, and they just wanted to see him created a little hysteria assed people were looking for them and what? But they just want to get back there like it reminds me of like kids that run away from home. And then

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all they want to do is figure out how to get back home, about getting into trouble. And then you got was the case. The Don Solomon talked about POWs that had been out, some doing something, you know, just taking a walk. And then, oops, they came

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back in the the place was locked down and they had to figure out how to get it without getting into trouble, because it was dangerous. If you're caught outside, that might create a problem. Press Democrat Wednesday, September 20th 1944 Escaped. Nazis recaptured, two fleeing prisoners of

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war. Nabbed Coast Guard patrol ceases fugitives at Dylan's Forced out of hiding along the Marine coast by hunger. Two escaped German prisoners of war who fled from Camp Windsor during the early morning hours last Friday, were captured by a Coast Guard patrol yesterday morning. The pair,

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identified as Frederick Sternberg, 21 an auto stern 21 were picked up by Coast guardsmen from the Bodega Bay Station. Shortly after, Sternberg had appeared at Tom Larsen home at Dillon Speech and in Broken English had asked for food or something to do. Stern remained in the

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background while Larson was approached by his companion. Larson, former member of a submarine crew and World War One, became suspicious of the pair and, after turning down their request, notified the Coast Guard Patrol Lieutenant. Guy King, commander at Bodega Bay, was notified, and he dispatched patrol

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to the Dylan speech area. Boatswain's Mate, one C. Thomas Campion, former Santa Rosa police officer, and carpenters made Kenneth Jensen, also of Santa Rosa, were in the patrol that apprehended the two German fugitives. An FBI special agent and chief criminal deputy, William E. Cook Jr of

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the sheriff's office, also sped to the beach, arriving just after the prisoners had been loaded into a Coast Guard truck cooked Campion and Jensen and the FBI agent brought the prisoners to the county jail, where they were given their first meal in several days. Both men

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said they had only a loaf of bread between them for rations since their flight Friday morning. After questioning by the officers, both were booked and locked up pending arrival of army authorities who were returned them to can't deal at Mary still for detention. Both prisoners told

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officers that curiosity and not a desire to escape has caused them to flee from the Windsors camp, but they said were former German Navy men and had seen service on Lee on the Atlantic. We wanted to also see the Pacific Ocean. We knew it was close

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by and we could make this trip in two days. We took a loaf of bread and started out, but it got into the hills and it was floated on me. Sunday morning. We saw the ocean and went down to the beach and swim. We traveled only

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at night and hit most of the time in the daytime. Finally, we figured we couldn't get back to camp, so he went to the wrench and ask for something to eat or a job. We figured the man who would tell on us so he kept close

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to the road so they could see US. Army officers from can't Feel arrived here last night. But the men were not released pending further questioning and investigation of their escape and actions since they left the camp at Windsor. When the war was over, the P O

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W's went back home to Europe. They didn't know what they would find. They had left in the Delic place, a place where they had food, shelter, onda, purpose to their lives, to a Europe with food shortages and an uncertain future. Immigration to the Windsor we had

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one were destitute families coming as the migrant labor camp. And then we have people coming essentially under guard, uh, to the camp that were combatants and in some stories, the people that were here in the destitute. We're not welcomed while the people were actually fighting were

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welcomed. So there's some. There's just too interesting lessons in life to be learned. I think just constantly every story that we hear makes you kind of pause and ponder what the the psychology of the whole event, the whole but way haven't experienced the whole nation that

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wore the or the whole nation in that kind of depression. So there's just there's things that were that we learn all the time, and it's so it's never ending the stories, never ending. That's the most interesting part of it. First