Spring Rally 2012--Day 13

A visit with the Army and a POW camp.

Today was a visit to the local Army base, Camp Atterbury.  This is a training and staging base for troops heading off to Afghanistan.  The first part of the tour was was to an area of a World War II prisoner of war camp.  Many Italian and German prisoners were held here during and immediately after the war.  (Many people do not know there were many of these camps scattered all over the country during the war.  The purpose of to remove the prisoners from the European Theater of War so they could not escape and rejoin the fighting.)  About all that is left of this POW camp is a rock inscribed with the camp unit number and a small chapel that was built by the Italian prisoners.

The base tour was done using two school type buses.  We had a young Army Captain conducting our tour and she was very knowledgeable about the base and it's mission.  After the tour was complete our last stop was at the base Dining Facility, what in times past would have been called the Mess Hall.  We had a good lunch there and an opportunity to visit with the soldiers who would be deploying soon.  This was a pretty good tour and a chance to say thank you to our nations defenders.