Comments on: Camp Michaux

By: Ralph Brandt

Ralph Brandt — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 05:10:05 +0000

They came in on a train… If they came in on buses it would not have been necessary to march them up the road.

One prisoner escaped and they had a tank across the road from my home, I remember that.

By: Ralph Brandt

Ralph Brandt — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 05:08:23 +0000

Amy. The CVHS will not listen to the people who were there and worked with the prisoners, the ones who transported them (My dad did most of it) or anyone else that falls outside what they think. The secrete camp was kings gap.
There was also a camp at the Gettysburg battlefield that my dad picked up prisoners at and they deny that one existed!
The G-Burg military park doesn't want the German camp recognized because that would create conflicts for them.
Let me give you this. Just this evening my sisters who are 5 and 6 years older than me and were 7-9 during the war remember the prisoners being marched up the road from Hunters Run Railroad Station to the pine grove road and then up to the camp. At times they took them off the train at the pine grove road crossing. They were marched out in the open for 12 miles! Secret camp my foot... And the Beam boys who lived next door to us (Leroy was the one's first name) threw stones at the prisoners till the guards ran them off.
We lived this.

By: Amy Snider

Amy Snider — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 02:57:32 +0000

Prisoners were interrogated at Michaux, so it is possible Ralph Brandt is correct. I just toured the site today. Our guide was from the Cumberland Valley Historical Society. We were told the prisoners were transported there by buses whose windows were blacked out. They only knew they were somewhere on the eastern coast of the U.S.

By: Ralph Brandt

Ralph Brandt — Mon, 28 May 2007 23:01:34 +0000

This site is the only place I have ever seen this statement and it is wrong. The top secret camp in the area was not Michaux but Kings Gap, which is now the Masland Estate. This is about 5 miles from Michaux and is closer to the Army War College at Carlisle PA. If this was a secret camp, why did the Army unload the prisoners in daylight at the railroad crossing and march them to the camp? Local boys that lived next door to me actually threw stones at the prisoners. One of the historians who has studied Michaux interviewed a man who’s last name was Beam and he told the historian that he and his brother did that. The people who lived next door to us in “Myers’ Row” had a surname of Beam and they were among the boys who stoned prisoners. The army ran them off when they did it. I will be posting more on this – including information about the place…

BTW, My dad transported prisoners in a truck that he drove home each night, I remember the truck. He told us he picked up prisoners at Michaux and stories about the trips.