Camp Ashby, a World War II prisoner of war camp
for German soldiers, occupied more than 200 acres
just north of here. Its headquarters was the main
building of the former Tidewater Memorial Hospital,
a tuberculosis sanitarium that had opened on this
site in 1937. Among the more than 6,000 men housed
in the camp between Mar. 1944 and Apr. 1946
were troops from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's
Afrikakorps and many soldiers captured on or
shortly after D-Day. Because of acute labor
shortages in the region, prisoners were deployed
as agricultural and industrial workers. They earned
wages and, the camp provided them with food,
medical care, academic classes, church services,
a library, and a theater.
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