Camp Ruston: Rommel's Men in Louisiana

Seven miles west of Ruston, the United States built one of its largest prisoner of war camps in nineteen forty-two. Camp Ruston held more than four thousand prisoners at its peak, the first arrivals being veterans of Field Marshal Rommel's elite Afrika Korps, who reached Louisiana in August of nineteen forty-three. Later, the camp housed men from France, Austria, Italy, Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania, and Russia.

Enlisted prisoners picked cotton, felled timber, and built roads across Lincoln Parish. The camp also held, in strict isolation, the captured officers and crew of a German U-boat, to prevent any word from reaching Germany that Allied codebreakers had cracked their naval codes. The men organized an orchestra, a theater, and a library.

By June of nineteen forty-six, they were gone, and the land returned to north Louisiana pasture.