Stories about the POW’s abound in East Texas.

When a little girl wandered away from her home in Chireno, townspeople searching for her found her in the arms of a German. They were petting a cow.

It turned out that the prisoner, Hans Klepper, saw the little girl standing too close to a railroad track as a train rumbled by. He gently picked her up and, as they walked toward Chireno, they stopped to pet a cow. That’s where the searchers found them.

Using only shovels, German prisoners built at Center an Olympic-size swimming pool that was used for years by the town. Center Mayor John Windham, who helped dedicate Center’s historical marker in January, recalled that County Agent John Mooseburg was instrumental in bringing the POW’s to the town as labor for agricultural work.

With a peak capacity of 700 prisoners, Camp Center was the largest POW camp in the U.S.

The rest of this story is at http://www.texasescapes.com/AllThingsHistorical/POWs-in-East-Texas-BB908.htm