German PWs Escape! The Paris News, March 8, 1944

Later new reports said these prisoners turned themselves in shortly after their escape.  After this report, Ernest Koslowski, 22, escaped from Camp Maxey, Texas, May 19.  According to a report in the Paris News, he was recaptured by Texas highway patrolmen a few days later on the edge of some woods between Greggton and Gladewaler. Texas.

The Camp Maxey Prisoner of War Camp was designed to hold up to 10,000 German prisoners.  Records indicate that there were just over 7,000 held their at its peak.  Most of the early prisoners were sent over from North Africa after the combined British and American forces defeated the German Afrika Korps.  These were joined by prisoners captured in Italy and later from France.

1942 May 8, Article from The Paris News regarding cemeteries with Camp Maxey boundary.

Camp Maxey was big by any standards and the process moved quickly to acquire the land.  Besides families being displaced there came additional hurdles.  The land had belonged to family groups and small communities for more than a century.  One of these hurdles was what to do with the graves in within the camp.  Even today there exist old family graves within the boundary of the existing National Guard training camp.