In a small cemetery at Fort Meade, the base's installation commander and others will gather tomorrow in a section of 33 graves for a tradition of commemoration that dates back at least three decades.
But the fallen soldiers they will honor fought not for America, but against it. They were Germans fighting for the Nazis - and they were among thousands of Axis prisoners of war held in Maryland during World War II.
The annual ceremony - planned in conjunction with Germany's Day of Mourning, akin to Memorial Day - is organized by Fort Meade authorities at the request of the German Embassy. Col. Kenneth O. McCreedy, Fort Meade's installation commander, and a naval attache from the German Embassy will preside this year.
On Tuesday, the post will hold a similar, smaller ceremony for two Italian prisoners of war buried there.
Travis Edwards, an Army reservist who helped organize tomorrow's ceremony, sees no irony in honoring men who once fought for the enemy.
"At the end, it's a soldier that died fighting for their country," said Edwards, a community relations director at Fort Meade. "We remember that, not which country they were fighting for. They gave it all for their families ... just like we do."
Only one of the Germans buried at Fort Meade was an officer, and the post's historian points out that the prisoners were generally rank-and-file soldiers, not Nazi ideologues.
The soldiers are part of a little-discussed facet of the Second World War that brought at least 378,000 POWs to the United States. As many as 10,000 of them were scattered across 18 camp sites in Maryland, according to news accounts from the time.
From North Africa
The majority of prisoners were captured in North Africa in April 1943 when German forces there - about 330,000 - surrendered en masse, said Arnold Krammer, a history professor at Texas A&M University who wrote Nazi Prisoners of War in America.
With vast regions of Europe occupied by the Nazis, space for Allied prisoner camps was limited. So the POWs were shipped to America, many destined for camps in the Southwest, Krammer said.
At Fort Meade, an estimated 3,500 prisoners arrived between 1943 and 1946, said Robert Johnson, the post's historian.
The prisoners lived six to eight to a hut at Fort Meade. With a shortage of workers in the United States, many found work on farms throughout the region. In spare time they grew vegetables, and even took college courses. They prepared their own meals.
