Originally posted by WTE_Galway:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Choctaw111:
What a great story.
I have heard firsthand stories from several people that many German POWs felt at home in the POW camps of the allies.
Thousands of German POWs wound up living in the US by choice. They just really liked it here. I have no trouble believing that this was the same in other allied countries.
Of course absolutely anywhere would have been better than post war Germany in 1946 ... but the US would have been a pretty good choice if you where German </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
When I was a kid, I remember my mom reminiscing about how worried all of the people were at first around the local area where there were Italian POW's kept for work in the Beaumont, Texas area. She was telling us how it turned out that one of her friends knew one of the prisoners from the same town she grew up in before she and her family came to the U.S., and that the authorities were using them for road maintenance crews who cleared brush, etc. They all had 'POW' in big letters across the backs of their shirts, but they were more or less trusted to not try to escape. My dad laughed when I asked why they didn't try to run away when they got the chance. He said something like "They probably never ever had it so good like they did here."
My father in law was born in the Pratola area of Abruzzo in Italy in 1942. He was telling me how hard life was for a good number of years after the war, with not much food, and with everything wrecked during the war. He said that he didn't remember this, but apparently he got lost during an attack when he was around two years old. His whole family was running around outside with all hell breaking loose, and finally managed to find him. He ended up emigrating to the U.S. in the early 1960's, joined the U.S. Army during Viet Nam, and met his wife (who was a telephone exchange operator in the army, who was also from Italy) while in the service. They ended up moving back to Italy to take care of some elderly relatives for a few years and then moved back to the U.S. Before my father in law passed away unexpectedly last year, he was seriously thinking about moving back to Italy. He was trying to talk my wife and I to go back with them, but even though that area of Italy is beautiful, I prefer living here in the U.S. http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif