aynsley andras staff writer
Inside the prisoner-of-war camps, a team of guards, workers, and overseers ensured the prisoners were well-supervised and cared for, with many duties extending beyond maintaining order.
Many people worked inside the prisoner-of-war camps, from staff in the kitchen and dining hall to those providing medical services and guarding the prisoners.
Tall wired fences, punctuated by guard towers, surrounded the entire camp, according to Kelly Ouhcley in POW Camps in Louisiana.
Glen Falgoust, a journalist who researched the Donaldsonville POW camp, says, “Each one of these POWS probably had as many as 10 support people wrapped around them to be able to make sure they [prisoners] were properly taken care of.”
“Each one of these POWS probably had as many as 10 support people wrapped around them to be able to make sure they [prisoners] were properly taken care of.”
The guards’ work continued even after the prisoners were sent to work in the fields.
Everet Hallback’s father worked as a mechanic at one of the prisoner of war camps.
“When he didn’t have anything to repair, he would take them and put the POWs in the flatbed truck and then transport them and kind of watch and see to make sure they all wouldn’t run away,” Hallback says.
According to a column in the Houma Today by C.J. Christ, a designated area was made for the guards to sit where they could observe all the prisoners. Some American workers at the POW camps brought water to the prisoners on wagons while the prisoners worked at the sugarcane fields.
The guards and workers still treated the prisoners with respect, says Linda Theriot, secretary at the Houma Military Regional Museum.
“Prisoners here were well taken care of and the guards, not only the guards but the property owners, treated them good,” Theriot says. “Some did not want to go back home.”
