As a 12-year-old boy, John Fenzel Jr. was able to meet the “enemy” on friendly terms – from the safety of his hometown.
A newsboy for Hampshire druggist George Wilcox, the young Fenzel was tasked with delivering copies of the Chicago newspapers – the Daily News, Herald-American and Tribune – to the German POW camp in town. Located on the eastern end of Keyes Avenue, Camp Hampshire housed 260 German prisoners, with 50 enlisted men and officers as guards.
The McHenry County Historical Society will host "Memories of Wartime in Hampshire – 1944-45" by Sleepy Hollow resident John Fenzel at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11, at the county history museum, 6422 Main St. in Union. Admission to this hybrid program, live and online, is $5. Those coming in person can pay at the door.
While the German POWs idolized their former commander, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, Fenzel said all but a few were just like their American counterparts: doing their bit and desperate for the war to end.
“They were not Nazis,” he said. “We assimilated with them pretty well. On Sundays when they’d go to church, they’d march down Main Street 12 abreast – all in their summer uniforms with hobnail boots. Half would peel off to the Catholic church and half to the Lutheran church. And when they cam back they’d meet in the town square and sing. They had beautiful voices.”
The prisoners, volunteers with Germany’s elite Afrika Korps, were captured in Libya and transported to the United States to plug holes in the labor force. In the case of Hampshire, they worked alongside locals harvesting peas and corn, and then prepping the produce for canning at the J.B. Inderrieden Co.