I REMEMBER (continued)
About the years 1943 or 1944, the government would keep Italian prisoners of war in Camp Shanks which was just across the New York border in Orangeburg. Very often, on Sunday afternoons, we would hear loud singing coming down River Vale and coming around Holdrum's Corner. There would be about 20 or 30 POW's, dressed in their Italian uniforms, out for a Sunday afternoon walk with one American soldier. Each POW had with him what was remaining of a long thin bottle of some kind of powerful smelling wine. By the time they reached River Vale they were not walking too good and seemed to think that they could sing pretty well. Usually the American fellow was not feeling much pain either. We would sit by the side of the road across from the firehouse and try to communicate with them. Of course this was a lost cause because they knew no English and we knew no Italian. They were nice fellows and all very friendly and were no threat to anyone. Those poor fellows never wanted to fight anyone anyway.

Sometimes when walking got too difficult for them, an army truck would come down from Shanks and scoop them up and drive them back to camp. About the same time, many American families, mostly from Hudson County, would bring their single daughters up to Shanks on a weekend and match them up with one of these nice Italian boys and every once in awhile they would have "mass marriages" up at the camp where they would marry about 30 or 40 of these couples all at the same time.

I do remember being told that they would not allow the German POW's to leave the camp because they thought that they were still supposed to fight the war, whereas the Italians had long since lost interest in the whole project. There were very few Germans there anyhow because it was not a very secure place.

One time an Italian POW "escaped" and made his way to River Vale and hid out in an unused chicken coop down by Brookside Avenue. The poor guy was really scared, I guess and hung himself in the chicken coop. If he had walked up to any house they would have probably invited him in for dinner. Many townspeople were quite sad about that...