It’s a confusing world we live in. Trips to outer space have become so common they don’t make the headlines. According to the media we are supposed to ask the doctor if it would be all right if we take more expensive colorful pills. Drug companies need our help to get rich. Big Humpty Dumpty companies topple. Presidents issue assassination orders. American dignitaries are met in foreign countries with signs reading “The Greatest Terrorists!”---and the point of view makes it so. United States wins over Mexico in the World Matches. But the Rangers are lost in the cellar.

No wonder we get a little dispirited sometimes. For a lift, the July, 2002, Reader’s Digest has a group of articles about patriotism under the title of Our America. It kind of let in a ray of sunshine for me. One of the selections was about a young man, prisoner of the Vietnamese, who fashioned a small American flag from scraps and a needle made of bamboo. He was severely beaten for it, almost to the point of death When thrown back into the cell with several others, he began sewing another flag.

THE PASSING OF THE NIGHT, by Colonel Robinson Risner who was held prisoner for seven years by the North Vietnamese, tells of pain, deprivation and demoralizing treatment by his captives.

Not all POWs have been so cruelly treated. Many prisoners of war were sent to the United States during World War II. A little research shows that 375,000 German prisoners of war were kept so well in U.S. POW camps that many of them migrated back to become citizens.

The U. S. was determined to adhere to the rules of the Geneva Convention because they believed that would insure better treatment of U. S. prisoners in Germany. At first the people objected to housing the enemy in the homeland. With 551 branch camps across the country, Texas had several. Some areas welcomed the boon to the economy, but others could just imagine organized breakouts by hundreds or thousands who would commit violence or sabotage throughout the country. (In truth, only a few dozen, less than 1%, even attempted to escape.)

A Smithsonian article tells about one attitude, “In Stephenville, Texas, an officer who bought Cokes for POWs he was escorting from one site to another was roundly cursed by a counter woman.”

The Geneva rules allowed prisoners of war to be used in the work force under guidelines. In Northern California many worked on farms, and some even in factories. Agriculture workers were few during those years, so many were put to work on farms.

POW cooks were allowed to cook their native foods. At Camp Swift, Texas, favorites were pig’s knuckles and wurst. Many dollars were saved by letting them plan and prepare their own food, because less was wasted. They also created their own entertainment and pastime from art to music, to plays they wrote and preformed, to helping build local churches and other civic buildings.

The only escapee who was not recaptured was made by Georg Gaerter who faced return to Russian occupied Germany. He escaped from Camp Deming, New Mexico, in 1945, by slipping under a fence when the prisoners were watching a movie and hopped a freight train to California. He kept moving across the country working a many odd jobs including teaching skiing and tennis in Colorado.

Once, he led a patrol of cross-country skiers 17 miles through a snowstorm to rescue 226 people trapped beneath 20-foot drifts without food or heat in a freezing train. He had to flee from there before media people took pictures that might lead the FBI to him. After 40 years of running he called Texas A&M professor Arnold Krammer who had written a book about prisoners of war in America and gave himself up.

Most all problems with the prisoners were caused by fanatic Nazis, who tried to create Hitler camps within the camps. Toward the end of the war, trying to put erase the Nazi influence, the government began to use teaching and propaganda about democracy. Evidently, judging from the lives after prison, the efforts were successful..

So, in this crazy world it seems that only the U. S. treats prisoners as human beings. Even those kept in Guantanamo, Cuba, are lucky. In a crazy world like this they probably eat better than most of the Cubans and many that live here in the U. S.

The article in Reader’s Digest will awaken your sense of pride in our country. Contributing authors were National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice; Olympic Champion Sarah Hughes; Senator Arlen Specter; Restaurateur George Lang; Senator John McCain; Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor; and others have to say. You might ought to have a tissue for the tears as you read. I needed one. Maybe it’s me instead of the rest of the world that is confused. I cry about strange things.