Not all of the prisoners were treated well. Some of the conditions for POWs who had to pick cotton were reported as deplorable. Karl-Heinz Hackbarth, who was at a camp in Michigan, remembered seeing a bunch of German POW transfers arrive looking deathly skinny. They had been detained in Texas and Mississippi, where they picked cotton all day in the blazing sun, supposedly without water and never receiving enough food to eat. “They looked like skeletons. We were able to give them some of our food. Of course a lot of American POWs held in Germany also lost fifty or more pounds. So I never saw this mistreatment as something terribly one-sided.”44

With POWs and American civilians living in such close proximity on a regular basis, fraternization was inevitable, even though it was forbidden. Many residents had an uncontrollable desire to observe the POWs and to communicate with them. They were impressed by the prisoners’ youthfulness, physical fitness, and adherence to discipline. In some instances, they responded to them as if they were American farm boys. “Whatever poisonous ideologies may still be boiling underneath their sun-bleached hair to all outward appearances they are like any American kids from Tampa to Tacoma,” said one reporter about POWs in Oklahoma.45

With Frederick’s low rank in the military, he had to take on whatever work the United States Army wanted him to do. With a combination of luck and English fluency, he landed a job mostly working as a cook for the officers’ mess. Most people didn’t want to rise before dawn, but POWs like Frederick worked in the kitchen as much as possible. Being there kept them from hard labor in the fields, and allowed them their sparse wages under the terms of the Geneva Convention.

Just like in any military setting, routines and schedules were strictly set for the POWs, and their days started early. Cooks gathered in the mess hall at 4:00 a.m. to begin assembling the morning meals. Breakfast was served directly after 6:00 a.m. roll call. Everyone was fed well; breakfasts consisted of cereal and fruit followed by pancakes, sausage, and bacon. There was one unpopular meal that caused a stream of complaints: a mixture of dried beef and cream sauce on toast, which was known at the camp as SOS, short for “shit on a shingle.”46