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Escape to Bull Hill

Civilian Conservation Corps – or CCC – camps have become an element of the regional landscape, slowly fading into the surrounding forest as the abandoned structures and roads are slowly reclaimed by the steady advance of nature.

Constructed in 1935, when the CCC program began as one element of many in Roosevelt’s New Deal social regimen that sought to repair the damage done by the Great Depression, the CCC camp on Bull Hill had an official “opening” date of June 6.

Unemployed, unmarried young men could enroll in the quasi-military organization and move into the forests, receive pay for work and allotments for dependents, food, medical care, and lodging in exchange for work in the national forests and state lands that had been devastated, in our area, by the logging industry of the previous era. But by 1942, with World War II ramping up, the same young men who’d flocked to the CCC in search of work after the depression were overwhelmingly flocking overseas to fight and the CCC program went defunct.

The camps, however, remained.

And, according to a publication entitled “CCC Camp #13 As a German Prisoner of War Camp,” available at the Warren County Historical Society, “as the war progressed, the 1945 Normandy invasion was made and one soldier was quoted as saying, ‘…We captured German prisoners faster than we could ship them out.’ It was then that the military decided to keep prisoners of war in the vacated CCC camps.”

The document states that around 200 prisoners would have been housed at the Bull Hill camp in Warren County at any given time, guarded by 14 military policemen.

Dave Leidig, a member of the Warren High School class of 1946, got to know one prisoner from a similar camp – Camp ANF #3 at Red Bridge – well enough, he recalls, to have had the prisoner to his home one evening for dinner and a visit. Many of the boys in his high school class, thinking ahead to whether their service would be needed after their graduations, began preparing for just such occasion by taking German to fulfill the foreign language requirement of their coursework. When they then learned that the POW camp had been established near their homes and that friends and neighbors were “making contact” with both the guards and the prisoners there, the boys “became intrigued by a prospect of trying out what we had learned in our study of the German language at school.

On weekends,” Leidig said, “we ventured into the woods and approached the men who were working there.”

The prisoners, upon arriving at the Bull Hill and Red Bridge camps, were put to work in the forest cutting wood for the Johnsonburg chemical plant. Why ship German POW’s all the way to the ANF? As the Historical Society document explains, “guarding them was easy? Where could they go? There was no danger that a counter-attack by the German might free them,” adding later, “attempted escapes were virtually nonexistent in the records. It is recorded that … ‘a few going for a walk in the woods got lost by (sic) they always came back home.’ The wayward POWs,” it says, “had no idea where they were, probably not even knowing where Pennsylvania was.” But it did happen.

One particular such instance, outlined in a Wednesday, August 8, 1945, edition of the Warren Times Mirror: “Alfred Maehrig, 25,” the article states, “was reported to have escaped while at work in the woods yesterday. State police and other agencies went to work in a search for the fellow and the FBI was notified. Later it was discovered that the fellow had become confused while in the woods and did not get to the point where the truck picked up the men. He walked into camp late at night having finally found his way through the woods. He was tired and hungry and evidently had no desire to run away.”

According to the document from the Warren County Historical Society, soldiers at the Bull Hill and Red Bridge Camps were “well treated and their food was equal to that of our soldiers.

“In compliance with the Geneva Regulations the prisoners ran their own camp. They were permitted privacy in their barracks. It is said that each had a swastika flag on his table beside his cot where he also kept pictures from home. They were permitted three packs of cigarettes and three bottles of beer a week if available. The prisoners had spokesmen, and English speaking non com to whom they referred their complaints and grievances. General orders for the prisoners were issued to this spokesman. It was noted that their spirits would rise or fall over the news they received about the ongoing war. When the news showed that the war was going badly for the Germans, there was a noticeable increase in tension and letter writing increased. Visiting chaplains conducted religious services and regular Sunday services were held when the weather conditions permitted.”

Leidig confirms much of what the article states.

“Distance from the battlefields allowed for relaxed security among the prisoners,” he writes. “We were able to develop friendships among certain of the men.”

Leidig recalls going with a German-speaking minister from Warren to the Red Bridge camp visits when he presented films there for the prisoners’ recreation.

“Together,” Leidig writes, “we ate in the mess hall with the prisoners and the staff.”

Leidig developed a personal friendship with a young German soldier named Hans-Dieter Sangmeister, with whom, Leidig writes, “I had some common interests.”

Sangmeister, from Dortmund, Westphalia, was even able to make a single personal visit to Leidig’s family home after a guard from Red Bridge came to inquire with Leidig’s parents whether such a visit would be alright with them.

“My parents agreed,” writes Leidig. “I drove the family car through the town of Kinzua… to the camp and there picked up my friend. We drove to my home to spend an evening with my parents.”

Leidig recalls that his mother had a meal prepared for Sangmeister, and the family gathered around the piano after dinner, singing together as if they were old friends.

“He spoke of his family in Dortmund,” Leidig writes, “his conscription into the Wehrmacht (unified armed forces of Nazi Germany), his capture from a bunker in Normandy, his current status (of) Kriegsgefangener (prisoner-of-war), his uncertain future, and not knowing the fate of his family.”

Sangmeister was protestant Lutheran, “the same as we,” said Leidig.

Sangmeister, Leidig said, had a mother, father, and sister in Dortmund who suffered as a result of the occupation of Germany, and he wrote them often. So, said Leidig, did his family, as well as sending care packages to the Sangmeisters. “Other people in Warren became interested,” Leidig said,” and then connected with people in Dortmund,” as well. “Exchanges developed.”

Sangmeister returned to that family in Dortmund, eventually. The war, Leidig said, had come to an end, but the friendship, he recalls, never did.

Leidig and his friend from Red Bridge remained in contact as Sangmeister had with his family throughout his time as a Kriegsgefangener.

Leidig spent his junior year at the University of Rochester, from 1948 to 1949, in Zurich, Switzerland. “Before returning to the United States,” he writes, “I traveled by train to Dortmund to spend a few days with my friend and his family.”

Again, 25 years later, Leidig recalls, “I was privileged to return to Europe with my wife and two sons. We toured through several countries on our own. As you may guess, we visited Dortmund and met again the family that had meant so much to me many years before.”

It’s not often we think of German soldiers and high school kids making lasting connections that span continents and decades. And yet here Leidig and Sangmeister are, like many unrealized groups of German-American friends made over the tragedy of World War II.

As Leidig writes, “life does often include surprises and unforeseen consequences.”

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