Author Archives: designitcorp

The family of Dr./Major Arthur J. Klippen (shown left at Camp Aliceville in 1944) has donated a painting of the Camp Aliceville Station Hospital to the Aliceville Museum in his memory. Earline Lewis Jones, a former civilian employee with the … Continue reading →

I had a telephone call a couple weeks ago from a ninety-eight year old woman who lives not far from me. She had read Guests Behind the Barbed Wire and was inquiring about one of the Aliceville residents mentioned in … Continue reading →

This post doesn’t have much to do with POWs or with my first two books, but I have been working for a year now on a research project that deals with the history of marble quarries in the Sylacauga, Alabama … Continue reading →

Yesterday I made the announcement that Horst Freyhofer, the son of a former Camp Aliceville POW, would visit the Aliceville Museum this Thursday, March 4. That visit has been postponed until Thursday, March 11, at 10 a.m.If you have not … Continue reading →

Bruce Mayhall visited Alabama recently and collected some family pictures from Camp Aliceville days. The photos shown here were processed on May 5, 1944 and show a group of young people–MPEG guards stationed in Aliceville and local residents enjoying a … Continue reading →

I had the pleasure yesterday of giving a talk about Guests Behind the Barbed Wire to a wonderful audience of library supporters in Vestavia Hills, Alabama. Among those who attended were several people who grew up in the Aliceville area … Continue reading →

Although it was one of the largest, Camp Aliceville in Alabama was certainly not the only prisoner of war camp in the United States during WWII. One of my readers sent a link to the Shiawassee District Library website in … Continue reading →

Wendell Parrish was an American armorer and waist gunner shot down over Germany in 1944. He spent time in Stalag Luft IV as a prisoner of war and participated in the long, forced march of American POWs near the end … Continue reading →

When I wrote Guests Behind the Barbed Wire in 2007, I knew that the German POWs in Camp Aliceville had had a puppet theater and wooden marionettes. I knew that they had staged puppet plays, but I had no names … Continue reading →

Wilhelm Schlegel was born in Asslar, Germany in March 1918. He studied in Wetzlar and returned to his hometown to be hired as a bank clerk in 1937. Two years later, as Hitler plunged Germany into war, he was called … Continue reading →