Location: US 74 east of Monroe
County: Union
Original Date Cast: 1965
Soon after the United States entered World War II in December 1941, North Carolina assumed a prominent role in preparing the country’s armed forces for duty overseas. Along with Camp Butner, Camp Davis, and Fort Bragg, Camp Sutton was among the largest military training facilities in North Carolina (and the nation) during the war. Each of the installations was also the site of a prisoner of war camp. At these and eighteen smaller POW camps scattered across the state, more than 10,000 prisoners were housed in North Carolina between 1943 and 1945.
Camp Sutton was organized as a training site for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and opened as a temporary “tent” camp in the spring of 1942. The base covered 2,296 acres about three miles east of Monroe in Union County. Located on U.S. Highway 74, Sutton was naturally divided into two halves by Richardson’s Creek, and a railroad line also ran through the camp. The troop quarters were connected by dirt roads to outlying tactical areas of the base. The white and African American units stationed at Sutton were segregated, and racial tensions often ran high. The installation was named in honor of Frank H. Sutton, a Monroe native who was killed over Libya in 1941 while serving as a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Engineering units received training in both fixed bridge and pontoon bridge construction. Richardson’s Creek was used for the fixed bridge training, while areas along the Catawba River in South Carolina were used for pontoon bridge and river-crossing instruction. Base depot companies, base equipment companies, dump truck companies, utilities detachments, general service regiments, graves registration companies, and construction battalions also underwent training at Sutton. A total of 16,000 men in 49 units trained at the base during the course of the war.
The foreign prisoners of war, however, made the biggest impression on the local citizens. Hundreds of German POWs from the Africa Corps, and later Normandy, were interned at Camp Sutton. The inmates worked hard and maintained discipline within their ranks in keeping with their former military hierarchy. Thanks to the Geneva Convention, the inmates were afforded a relative life of comfort while in captivity. Remembering their meager rations while on the front lines, many of the captives marveled at the generous portions of food they received.
The foreigners worked as laborers (sometimes through contract work) and held other jobs from cooks to sheet metal workers. They were paid in coupons that could be redeemed at their own canteen at Sutton. The captives forged relationships not only with their guards, but often with nearby families. Many worked on the base itself, but were also employed in cutting trees for pulpwood, or by local farmers in picking cotton and corn, or other farm chores.
The prisoners attended religious services and had their own library (thanks to the German Red Cross). For recreational activity, they enjoyed games and sports such as ping-pong, volleyball, and soccer. Tensions did exist, but most of the inmates viewed their overall experience as positive, given the circumstance of captivity. There was often an undercurrent of tension among the inmate population at facilities like Sutton—because not all German prisoners were supporters of the Nazi regime.
Camp Sutton was deactivated in January 1945, but the last of the German POWs were not shipped out until the spring of 1946 (nearly a year after the war ended). After the war, buildings on the property housed facilities used to treat polio patients.
References:
Robert D. Billinger, “Behind the Wire: German Prisoners of War at Camp Sutton, 1944-1946,” North Carolina Historical Review (October 1984): 481-509
Blanche D. Coll, et al., “The Corps of Engineers: Troops and Equipment,” U.S. Army in World War II: The Technical Services (1958)