Your column last week on Fort Holabird brought back memories. In the summer of 1945 — I was 15 — I would take the No. 26 streetcar from my mother’s home in Baltimore’s Waverly neighborhood. I always took a seat on the right side. Why? Because as we passed by Camp Holabird, as it was known at the time, we would wave through the open windows at the numerous German prisoners dressed in their dark gray overalls. They would wave back and seemed content knowing that their war was over and that they were being treated humanely. In your research have you found anything about the camp and its prisoners during that era?
Wp Get the full experience.Choose your plan ArrowRight
— Robert Linden, Washington
Of the more than 425,000 Axis prisoners shipped to the United States during World War II — Germans, mostly, but some Italians and Japanese — about 13,000 came to Maryland. They were kept in 19 prisoner of war camps. (There were POW camps in Virginia, too.)
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The prisoners started arriving in large numbers in 1943, after the Allies defeated Hitler’s Afrika Corps. Holding facilities were scant in North Africa. And transferring POWs to Europe ran the risk that they might rejoin their units should they escape.
So to America they came.
Many of Maryland’s prisoners arrived at Fort Meade before being distributed across the state, including to regional work camps in Gaithersburg, Fort Washington, Smith Point, Flintstone, Pikesville, Frederick and Westminster. They lived in barracks or tents and were paid — 80 cents a day in scrip — to work for local farmers. (Enlisted men were required to work; it was optional for officers.)
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Conditions were good. POWs were fed well, not including the extras that farm families often bestowed on them. In the camps, prisoners could indulge their hobbies and take classes. Fort Meade prisoners took extension courses from Johns Hopkins University, those at Holabird from St. John’s College.
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Most camps — Holabird included — had craft rooms where prisoners could create handiworks. Periodic craft fairs were open to civilians, who flocked to purchase interesting souvenir artwork created by the enemy combatants.
In a 1981 article about Maryland’s POW camps, The Post’s Eugene L. Meyer recounted the story of one German prisoner tasked with painting murals of air combat on the walls of a coffee shop at Andrews Air Force Base, then known as Andrews Field. When someone noticed that his design featured a disproportionate number of Allied planes being shot down, he was taken off the job.
Before shipping off to Vietnam in 1967, Bob Hurt passed through Fort Holabird. He took the Army’s Basic Officers Intelligence course there. While a hot war raged in Southeast Asia, the Cold War percolated nearly everywhere else in the world, as the United States and its allies sought to counter the Soviet Union.
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“The Army had a great many civilian ‘spies’ that we had recruited in Europe,” wrote Bob.
At Holabird, second lieutenants such as Bob were given a general orientation on intelligence, including how to detect and counter Soviet agents. They were also taught how to maintain “discreet surveillance” in a European setting. In one exercise, three second lieutenants in civilian clothes were given a photo of a “target” who would pass through a specific intersection in Baltimore within a specified time window.
“Thence our little team was to follow this guy (always a guy) without him spotting us,” Bob wrote. “We would rotate which of the three was closest behind our target so he would not identify us, with the others keeping an eye on our colleague so we would shift. This was always in downtown Baltimore. I can’t imagine we would be hard to spot — three 22-year-olds with short hair and black plain-toed shoes in the hippy era.”
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Things usually started off smoothly enough, Bob said, but then maintaining the tail would become more challenging as the target went into a department store packed with shoppers or got onto a crowded elevator.
“The target would be a specially-trained enlisted guy who was probably torn between boredom or the fun of making three lieutenants look incompetent,” Bob wrote. “Sometimes these expeditions deteriorated into quite a scene. I was told that the Baltimore police had more than a few calls from people who witnessed near wrestling matches by the frustrated lieutenants.”
Covid concert
In a supreme irony, Juan Gallastegui, the director of the Rockville Concert Band — the subject of Thursday’s column — has tested positive for covid. That means the March 13 concert will be conducted by Len Morse and will not include “The Year 2020,” the composition written by Johan de Meij in honor of those lost to covid. That piece of music will be part of the band’s April 10 performance.