Revisiting Daniel Mayer

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About a month ago I went to Camp Breckenridge in western Kentucky and raved about the great museum they have there, devoted to the prisoner of war camp that was established there in the 1940s for German (and later, Italian) prisoners of war. I highlighted a German POW by the name of Daniel Mayer, who was very artistic and painted a number of scenes on the walls of the building that remains as a museum and testimony to part of World War II history that you probably never hear about. While I was in Radcliff yesterday I stopped at Fort Knox (veterans are allowed access to most military posts). On the base they have a number of cemeteries, dating back to when it was private property, the Civil War, and when it was “Camp Knox.” The so-called “main cemetery” is rather small, compared to many national cemeteries that you may have seen (especially the most famous one, Arlington). One thing that is present in the cemetery is an area devoted to prisoners of war who were kept in Kentucky during WWII and who died while in captivity. One of those was our artist POW, Daniel Mayer. As you can see by his grave marker, it is quite similar to an American military grave. His rank of obergefreiter (equivalent to a lance corporal in the Army or Marines, an E-3 paygrade equivalent) is on the marker, along with his death date. Apparently they didn’t have his birth date on file (he was born in 1909…they didn’t have the internet back then and couldn’t look that up ), so only his death date is listed. A number of the POWs, especially the Italian prisoners, have their graves marked with a religious symbol (a cross [and, for complete boring trivia, the US government has strict regulations on what is approved for a religious symbol on a national cemetery marker]). Their markers are not even identifiable by “POW” or “prisoner of war,” just “Italian Army” or “German Army.” Even in death, these men were given respect due their military service. On the right you see another one of the paintings that Mayer did while at Camp Breckenridge, using the walls of the mess hall as his canvas. PHOTOS: (Left) Mayer’s grave in the cemetery at Fort Knox (Right) Wooded scenery he painted while a POW in Kentucky