Not every World War II veteran in Sterling, Colorado wore an American uniform. Emanuele Campanella, known as “Campy,” was an Italian prisoner of war who became a naturalized U.S. citizen. Campanella’s initial Axis post was in Tripoli, North Africa, and he describes how Americans were coming in from the west, and the British from the east and south, and there was nowhere to go. Campy says:

The Allied forces made a big raid and gathered 200,000 prisoners in one shot. They put us in a great big area, like a big prairie but it was mostly sand, and they put a fence around us—just like a bunch of animals, you know. You had to help yourself. They couldn’t provide right away. Pretty soon somebody came around, a group of Italian friends. They said there was a building somewhere. It was a tent, actually. They had some food. It was all raw stuff, nothing was cooked. It was a little spoon of rice, a little spoon of jelly, a little spoon of something else. We tried to get a little something, but we had canned food of our own, so we didn’t starve. We were there probably a week and half or two. Then they moved us to a different camp, and they had some kind of kitchen. We spent six months in Africa, in different camps—some of them were good, some not so good.

One of our soldiers got killed. There was an American soldier, and through the fence, they were trading. This guy wanted some cigarettes, and this American had them. So he said, “Well, you give me some of your stuff.” So I guess he gave him a watch or some valuable thing; he threw it over the fence. By that time an American officer came by, and they were not supposed to talk to the prisoners because… no trading. He sees this officer, so he pulled out his Tommy gun and told the prisoner to get out. This Italian kid didn’t understand what he was talking about. We said, “Well, he wants his cigarettes. He already threw his watch, and now he wants his cigarettes.” So they were arguing back and forth, and then the American shot a round on his legs and cut his legs and this kid went down. The next shot got him right in the chest. So this was one bad camp. That was the worst thing ever. You know, I’ve been through the war. I had seen bombs and all that kind of stuff. That kind of got me. I never did like what happened. I guess they got that American soldier. He probably was court-martialed. He probably told his story, but there was testimony, witnesses.

When we got to Oran, we waited until we were loaded to come to the United States. It took 30 days to get from Africa to America. We slept on the floor; we had no beds. They kind of zig-zagged—the German submarine was still around in the ocean, you know, so they had to do all that. They had one fleet, all prisoners. We had a mine ship. They put a rake on the front of the ship, and it went ahead of the convoy. They hit a mine, and when it exploded, our ship started shaking. We thought ours had got it. And so a bunch of guys started climbing up the ladder to get out of the hold. They were going to jump overboard, see. They got all excited; thought we had got it.

After that we went along pretty well. We landed in Norfolk, Virginia, and they unloaded the prisoners. They put us in a great big yard and they made us take our clothes off. They opened up a great big room with showers and we got cleaned up. Then they set us on these benches and took spray guns, like you paint a car. They sprayed us with these spray guns, with disinfectant, powder stuff. They sprayed us all good, and then they gave us some jeans and shirts and stuff—and it had a PW on it.

They moved us from Norfolk, Virginia to Scottsbluff, Nebraska; there might have been a couple thousand prisoners on the train. The train stopped not too far from the camp, and we all unloaded there. The prison camp was pretty good, pretty well organized. Had a fence around it. The camp in Scottsbluff was on the prairie, a great big prairie land. I had never been here. I was 22, maybe close to 23. I thought, “This is a heck of a country.” I thought America was beautiful.