Unexpected History

It was a pleasantly warm day which found my mother, Lena, her father, George, and me, a 14-year-old girl, walking on the outskirts of the little town of Malta, Mont. I was completely unconscious of the bit of history which I would observe this day while World War II was being waged in Europe.

Mama’s long-time friends, Alma and Hazel Coe, had invited us to their little home two and a half blocks west of our home. The Coe sisters were retired country school teachers who planned on building two rental houses.

The work was in progress, the excavating of a basement. Men were using picks and shovels. No machines available as we know it now, and the men were not Montanans but German-speaking prisoners of war! Encampment was what was what is commonly known as Trafton Park with living quarters, the CCC Camp buildings used prior to WWII.

My grandfather was hunkered down on the edge of the newly-dug basement, speaking fluent German to the men as they labored. Their lone guard, with rifle along his side, was conversing with a pretty young girl, daughter of a dairyman who lived a short distance away.

The group’s conveyance was parked in the shade of an outbuilding. Delightful aromas made me curious what the three ladies were concocting as they were soon to be inviting the group into the Coe home. Setting the large table was complete. The menu was sumptuous indeed; a generous platter of fried chicken, a huge bowl of fluffy mashed potatoes, which would be topped off by chicken gravy. Of course, there was a vegetable salad and also steaming home-grown corn on the cob. The ladies had freshly-made buns; then apple pie for dessert.

A feast fit for a king. The seating arrangement as I recall was the uniformed young guard was alone at one end of the table while three young unsmiling German soldiers were at the opposite end. What a contrast to the happy, laughing older Germans – I mean grey-haired ones visiting with “Grandpa George Schwertman across the table. Sometime later I learned about Hitler youth so very tern.

Later, much later, I also learned that Germany was running out of young men for Nazi military; consequently, the grey-haired men were inducted!

As we were clearing the table, we were puzzled that the corn remained on its platter. Mama, who understood the German language, remarked that corn was for the swine in ‘Germany. Perhaps the leftover corn was shared with the chickens in the Coe’s backyard. But on the other hand not so, as this was the era of Never, and I mean never wasting! Waste not, want not.