German POW Cotton Camp Payroll — Coryell County

Among military facilities built in and near Coryell County in the 1940s were Camp Hood, the Bluebonnet Ordnance Plant, and a camp for German prisoners of war. Texas held twice as many POW camps as any other state; branch camps as small as thirty-five prisoners supplied labor to distant farms. German POWs in Texas picked cotton, threshed grain, and baled hay at the prevailing wage of $1.50 per day, with prisoners paid eighty cents in canteen coupons. Coryell County farmers recalled POW laborers with admiration; a few escapees wandered from work parties but were quickly recaptured. Wartime folklore imagines lost paymaster pouches and farmer payroll boxes near temporary CCC fairground and school building camps. Coordinates mark central Coryell cotton country east of Gatesville.