A First Sergeant's Memories of Camp Michaux: The Lost Collection of The Pine Grove Furnace Prisoner of War Camp

I have never forgotten my first solitary walk through Camp Michaux. The sun was setting and visitors had gone. I explored in silence, hearing only a gentle breeze create an eerie creaking in the trees that made me strain my ear as if listening for voices of the past. Whether strolling the stone-lined paths of one of Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps camps, perusing the ruins of a long-beloved church retreat, or walking in the footsteps of World War II intelligence officers engaged here with thousands of prisoners of war in a battle for democracy’s future, Camp Michaux instilled in me a child-like sense of wonder and a motivation to discover its secrets.

Recently that motivation lead me to an interview conducted three and one-half decades ago with a former guard who served at the Pine Grove Furnace Prisoner of War Interrogation Camp from December 1944 to November 1945. Diane Reed interviewed 1st Sergeant Robert S. Chastulik in 1983 as part of her Master of Arts studies on German POW’s in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. During the interview, Chastulik flipped through photographs of the camp in a personal album and talked about souvenirs made by POW's at Pine Grove that they traded with him for much-desired cigarettes.¹ Nearly forty years after the war’s end, Robert still felt the need to protect the secrecy of the camp and his collection has remained hidden since that time.² Chastulik died in 1991. Now, nearly three-quarters of a century after the war, I wondered if any part of his collection could still exist? Could it be discovered and what might it reveal about the lives of personnel and prisoners at the secret camp?

In the following weeks I would learn that Robert Chastulik had five children and that two daughters lived in the region along with a long list of Robert’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Upon speaking with Robert’s daughter Judith Shatzer, one may imagine my anticipation when she informed me that much of her father’s collection survives and invited me to view the items for myself. Robert’s family appeared ready to dedicate their father’s collection to history. Along with handmade keepsakes intricately crafted by German and Japanese prisoners are Nazi badges, pins and other militaria traded at Pine Grove. In an album of dozens of photographs taken at the camp, I suspected there would be scenes of army barracks, guards at their duty stations or prisoners on work detail. I never expected to discover a military policeman with a pet raccoon or the face of a Private that may solve a Camp Michaux mystery and would lead to another astounding discovery, or images of women and children in one of the nation’s most clandestine prisoner of war camps.

The last of three top-secret intelligence-gathering centers to be opened in the United States during WWII, Pine Grove Furnace Prisoner of War Interrogation Camp was established as the War Department responded to the Allied victories being won in Europe by late 1942.³ As the Fort Hunt interrogation center in Alexandria, Virginia became inundated with captured German personnel sent there for their strategic military knowledge, the Military Intelligence Service needed a sorting facility to interrogate and separate personnel deemed valuable enough for more detailed interrogation at Fort Hunt.⁴ Those deemed as having no strategic intelligence value at Pine Grove would be sent to regular POW internment centers in various parts of the country.⁵ Aside from having the use of the former Civilian Conservation Corps Camp S-51, replete with sleeping barracks, latrines, bathhouses and kitchen facilities, the Pine Grove Furnace location was an attractive choice for the U.S. Army for its seclusion and proximity to Carlisle Barracks and Washington, D.C.⁶ Over the course of the war at least 7,313 German and 161 Japanese were held at Pine Grove.⁷ The third interrogation center at Byron Hot Springs in Tracy, California interrogated captured Japanese from the Pacific.⁸

FROM BATTLEFIELD TO PINE GROVE FURNACE

Born March 30, 1918 in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania, Robert Stephen Chastulik was one of nine siblings. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in July 1942 at the age of 24, serving in France with the 791^st Anti-Aircraft Artillery Automatic Weapons Battalion.⁹ While on maneuvers in Normandy with friend and Corporal Korczak Ziolkowski (pronounced CORE-chalk Jewel-KUFF-ski), whom Robert had known since army training at Camp Stewart, Georgia,¹⁰ their transport vehicle struck a land mine. The explosion caused Robert to suffer serious injuries to his leg and arm. He was flown over the English Channel to a U.S. Army hospital in England,¹¹ having no knowledge of the fate or whereabouts of his friend. Ziolkowski, a sculptor, often talked with Robert about a project he would pursue after the war that he believed would gain national prominence and offered Robert a job for the rest of his life. Robert had turned down the offer, but now with himself being nearly killed, he feared the worst for Ziolkowski.¹²

While army surgeons prepared to amputate Robert’s leg, a medic, noticing the amputation on the medical charts, intervened, pleading with surgeons to try to save the leg. Unknown to Robert at the time, the medic was Rudy Chastulik, one of his four brothers who was in the army and who was stationed at the hospital. Rudy joined the operating team, handing out the instruments as medics operated on his brother’s arm and saved his leg.¹³ Robert was awarded the Purple Heart and Good Conduct Medals.

After returning to the United States, Robert waited to be discharged from an army hospital in Rome, Georgia. But the army froze discharges and informed him he’d be going to Carlisle, Pennsylvania to work in a hospital. Robert was not told about the secret camp at Pine Grove until his arrival. “I was surprised and bitter when I went up there,” he told Diane Reed in 1983. “I thought being wounded that I would be in the hospital work until I got discharged.”¹⁴ Robert would now be guarding the German enemy that had nearly taken his life and possibly the life of his friend Ziolkowski. As 1^st Sergeant, Robert was in charge of the soldiers at the camp, organizing guard details, inspections, making sure each person had their assigned duties, and assigning guards to prisoner transport trains. There were drills, afternoon classes and exercise every day, and Robert issued passes for his men to enjoy furloughs.¹⁵ Whenever he accompanied the Germans outside the compound fence during work details, Robert made it clear that those attempting escape would be shot, but he also held his sense of duty and responsibility: “You couldn’t avenge yourself by shooting anybody. What would you gain by it?”¹⁶

Once Robert settled in at Pine Grove, his interview with Reed suggests that he began to warm to his new assignment: “I had it nice there. You had good cooks, you had a nice location, it was a nice location for a camp and fresh air and we had nice buildings… like a camp in the woods and you had a big fireplace. We had it nice.”¹⁷

The camp doctor routinely treated Robert with Novocain to help him endure the physical discomfort of his war injuries.¹⁸ By the summer of 1945 he’d also be guarding Japanese prisoners arriving at the camp.

THE PRISONERS

When asked if he became friendly toward any of the prisoners or got to know some of them, Robert replied, “Yeah, I got to know the ones in the kitchen, and the ones that took care of the horses. They were all friendly. They wanted to be, cause they were lonesome and wanted to talk to somebody.”¹⁹

While the majority of prisoners at Pine Grove passed through quickly within a few weeks, Robert was referring to a handful of Anti-Nazi’s who were given permission to remain longer. These prisoners voluntarily assisted with maintaining the camp as carpenters and metal smiths, taking care of the horses, working KP (Kitchen Patrol) and assisting as tailors, barbers, medical corpsmen and preparing meals for American guards.²⁰ Horses were stabled at Pine Grove to be used in searching for escaped prisoners. They were never used for that purpose but were enjoyed as a recreational outlet by American officers and used by MPs to move about the camp.²¹ German POW’s with equestrian experience, including an SS Colonel, cared for them. ²² “Most were really glad to be here, glad to be out of the war and not living in fear.”²³

With most of the shorter term prisoners, Robert points out that the guards didn’t try to fraternize with too many of them, “Cause when you’d bring them in, you didn’t know who they were, and you didn’t want to discuss things with them. So the only ones you would talk to were the ones who were interrogated and were free for us to mingle with.”²⁴ Robert and the other guards at Pine Grove had received training that emphasized that POW’s were prisoners and were to be treated as prisoners, though the prisoners were well behaved and offered no trouble when they arrived.²⁵ Many of them told Robert that they liked the United States and wanted to stay here, that is, once Robert could get them to speak in English: “If you’d get in with a bunch of them, there’d be one or two talk to you in very good English. Most of them could speak English, but they’d play like they didn’t. But they listened to everything (you) said. Sooner or later you’d ask them for something and they’d answer you.”²⁶

As Robert told Reed about Army and other personnel who arrived from Washington, D.C. to conduct interrogations, their conversation revealed how deception would assist intelligence officers in gaining valuable information: “...you would have people that were German and spoke German and wore German uniforms.”²⁷ German-speaking Americans, some of whom were German Jews that escaped Hitler’s Germany and immigrated to the United States, acted the POW role with prisoners and assisted interrogators as translators.²⁸ “After all when you’d (Germans) come in right from the boat and you’d get into the compound and you’d have people there, you would assume they were in the war.”²⁹

Each evening Robert conducted inspections of the prisoners as reveille was held and the American flag was lowered. Robert and a German officer, usually a Major or Colonel, would salute one another. German officers were responsible for their own people and would step forward and provide Robert with the day’s reports. The German officers under Robert’s charge never objected to saluting to an American: “You’d think they would object because they were an officer where I was just a 1st Sergeant, but that was the way the rule was.They saluted to us.”³⁰

Robert told his grandson Jarrod Gipe that German prisoners arrived at Pine Grove still wearing their military uniforms.³¹ Anxious to trade whatever they could for cigarettes, their German and Nazi badges and other articles of clothing like helmets and boots became souvenirs and keepsakes for American guards: “They was always wanting cigarettes, they needed cigarettes, cause they didn’t have no way of getting cigarettes. And they’d make things for the people. Some of them was artists, painted pictures, some of them built boxes,” Robert told Reed in 1983; “They were gifted.”³²

Trench art was a popular pastime for troops who suffered from boredom during slow periods between battles. Soldiers would fashion decorative items from scrap metal, bullet casings and whatever they could find. The German Imperial Crown of the Prussian Empire, which dissolved in 1918, was commonly used on trench art through WWI. A handmade brass letter opener displaying the crown (previous page) and a WWI Bavarian Veterans Badge (right) suggest there may have been German WWI veterans fighting in the Second World War who arrived at Pine Grove; WWI veterans sometimes served as officers in WWII.

Among other pieces in Robert’s collection are military badges awarded by the Luftwaffe (German Air Force), Panzer (Tank) Divisions, the Kriegsmarine (German Navy), and the Waffen-SS. General Rommel’s Africa Corps is represented, as well as policemen and wounded soldiers.

The ideologies, actions and loyalties of German soldiers and officers who passed through Pine Grove varied greatly. Many of the prisoners were listed as Anti-Nazi and as stated earlier, some were trusted with responsibilities that included cooking meals for American guards. Segregating Nazi and Anti-Nazi POW’s was a critical necessity as loyal Nazi’s had often threatened and even murdered fellow prisoners in permanent internment camps who did not support Adolf Hitler.³³ For this reason, prisoners interrogated at Pine Grove and then transferred to POW centers to sit out the remainder of the war were usually divided out by their loyalties and sent to separate camps in the United States.³⁴ No other piece in Robert’s collection illustrates this division of loyalties greater than a cuff title, or armband, bearing the name Das Reich.

This elite division of the Waffen-SS fought throughout Europe including the eastern front against the Soviet Union, the Ardennes in Belgium at the Battle of the Bulge, and in France in an effort to halt the Allies advance after the D-Day landings in Normandy. Throughout its campaign, the 2^nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich earned its reputation for extreme brutality and indiscriminate murder.

On June 9, 1944, three days after D-Day and in retaliation for successful actions by the French Resistance, Das Reich troops entered Tulle, France and arrested every man between the ages of sixteen and sixty. Ninety-nine men were hanged and 149 sent to the Dachau concentration camp.³⁵ The following day the division entered the village of Oradour-sur-Glane where 642 of its citizens, 452 of them women and children, were massacred at the hands of Das Reich and the village burned.³⁶ Today the ruins of Oradour-sur-Glane appear much as they did in 1944. The burned out cars, storefronts, homes and churches are a memorial site and museum.

We cannot know what role the individual wearer of this armband may have played in the actions of Das Reich, but this and the other military insignia of the Second World War that passed through Pine Grove are obvious reminders of the conflict the United States and its allies were fighting to restore the freedom of nations, with intelligence officers and American military staff here at home well engaged in the struggle.

A set of humorous sketches artistically drawn for Robert by a German POW casts a lighter shadow over Robert’s relationship to one of the prisoners under his charge. Horst Kallenberger, listed as Anti-Nazi,³⁷ seems to acknowledge a friendly relationship with Robert when he titles his sketches “Little Bob and the POW’s.” These comedic drawings portray a gnome-like gentleman and his pet bird participating in the goings-on at the Pine Grove POW Camp. One can only imagine whether Kallenberger in one of these sketches may be inferring to the explosion that wounded Robert in France.

The intricate and time-consuming detail given these personalized drawings attest to the artistry and skill of some of Pine Grove’s prisoners. At right, a jewelry box with a card or cutout pasted at top appears to be of a European scene and suggests that prisoners had access to woodworking tools and supplies.

Made by one of Pine Grove’s Japanese prisoners, the box at left displays detailed painted carvings with Japanese words and symbols. While its designer is not known, Miyuki Hegg, the daughter of Japanese prisoner Yoshikuni Masuyama, has translated these symbols into English. Masuyama’s account as a POW at Pine Grove Furnace, entitled “My War”, is published in the 2017 Cumberland County Historical Journal.

GUARDS AT EASE, WOMEN AND CHILDREN

Photographs from Robert’s personal collection of Pine Grove Furnace highlight a restful and recreational side of the guard’s camp life that few have ever seen; there are men at play in the swimming pond, Sergeant Howard Arney bottle-feeding his baby raccoon, and military policemen with their sweethearts and wives. During Robert’s 1983 interview with Diane Reed, he expressed disappointment that after so many decades past the war, he could no longer recall the names of many of his former friends and guards that he lived with at Pine Grove: “You never think that you need the people’s names, you think you remember them forever, but you’d be surprised, you don’t. You don’t remember.” ³⁸

The secrecy of the Pine Grove Furnace Prisoner of War Camp is well documented. In the nation’s official listings of more than 500 prisoner of war camps, Pine Grove Furnace was removed to maintain its classification as a covert interrogation center.³⁹ The camp had no official designation and was referred to in unclassified documents only as the “3300^th Service Unit” with the address “Army Service Forces, Third Service Command, P.O. Box 167, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.”⁴⁰ When communications were sent over a Teletype message system, only the secret code name of “McGoohan” was used to identify the camp and maintain security.⁴¹ No civilians were involved in the camp’s operation. As in Robert’s case, the guards themselves were not told about the camp’s existence until their arrival at Pine Grove, and they could not reveal their assignments to their families. If questioned, staff would tell others they were stationed at Carlisle Barracks,⁴² and personal mail was delivered to a Carlisle post office box.⁴³

And yet with these well-established facts, Robert’s collection reveals photographs of women and children visiting their military husbands and fathers well within the secured boundaries of Pine Grove Furnace. In fact, daughter Judith and her mother Pauline Seylar visited Robert Chastulik at the camp in 1945 when she was 4 or 5 years old. She remembers her father showing them his barracks and bunk bed.⁴⁴ Joan Thomas, daughter of Pine Grove’s commander Captain Laurence Thomas, shared a similar account of visiting the camp as a little girl with her family and sharing a meal with her father in the staff mess hall.⁴⁵ Corporal William J. Myers accompanied prisoners on work detail to a church site at Letterkenny Army Depot, where local girls approached the fence and were permitted to converse with the men.⁴⁶ These photographs and personal accounts seem inconsistent with the established military policy of strict secrecy and security at Pine Grove Furnace, but why the contradiction?

There may be motive for speculation. In the case of Joan Thomas visiting her father, Captain Thomas was transferred from his prior command at the Gettysburg POW Camp to Pine Grove Furnace in late 1944 and remained there until the end of the war.⁴⁷ With Germany’s surrender in May 1945 it is possible, perhaps even probable, that family visits to Pine Grove Furnace took place after the war with Germany had ended. With the European war over and the Pacific war ending in August, intelligence operations would have been winding down. In an example of lessened security at the Fort Hunt, Virginia interrogation center, intelligence officer William Hess invited a trusted and cooperative German prisoner to his home after the war with Germany had ended. The officer traveled unescorted outside Fort Hunt to enjoy dinner with Mr. Hess and his wife.⁴⁸ It may be reasonable to assume that heightened security and secrecy at Pine Grove Furnace were also alleviated. In fact Robert suggested during his 1983 interview with Reed that taking personal photographs in the camp was not a violation of protocol,⁴⁹ and all of Robert’s photos are dated 1945 on their reverse sides. At present, there are no known photographs or accounts that specifically place family members or civilian visitors at the camp prior to the end of the war. This is of course circumstantial theory on my part and readers may draw their own conclusions. Perhaps one day, out of the thousands of declassified documents on Pine Grove Furnace stored in the National Archives, a definitive explanation may be found.

YOUTZ BRIDGE

In the spring of 2013 as I explored an overlooked and overgrown pocket of forest in Camp Michaux’s south side, a small concrete structure appeared to be hiding under years of leaf cover and debris. Clearing off the abandoned and forgotten relic revealed a footbridge that was once likely used to cross a small stream. Delicately cemented along the side were small stones that spelled out the name Youtz-Bridge. A new Camp Michaux mystery had been found. Who was Youtz?

Answering this question could be challenging considering Camp Michaux’s three eras of residents. Was he a Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) boy from Camp S-51, which operated here from 1933 through 1941? Could the stonework have been completed during the Prisoner of War period from 1943 to 1945, or could the artist have been a visitor or staff member of Camp Michaux, the church camp open here from 1947 to 1972, from which the camp today derives its name? Access to surnames in CCC records of the National Archives was limited to individuals who may prove a family connection. An attempt at locating the name in church camp records was also unsuccessful. Youtz did not appear on the POW prisoner list, which was not surprising; Youtz Bridge is well outside the prisoner compound and POW’s on work detail would likely not have had the time for such artistry. But while reviewing a list of military staff names from the POW camp, a similar but different name appeared. Checking that man’s service number revealed a misspelling: the military policeman’s name was Private First Class (PFC) Lewis Paul Youtz. It appeared the artist of Youtz Bridge may have been found, yet what I would learn about my own connection to PFC Lewis Youtz in the coming days would be extraordinary. In following Lewis’s path before and after the war, I learned that Lewis Youtz was born and raised in Lebanon, Pennsylvania and lived there until his death in 2003, only two miles from my current home.

Robert Chastulik was meticulous with identifying many of the names of his guards and comrades in his photograph album. As I flipped through its pages, one photograph stood out as I read the names of two guards pictured at Pine Grove with their visiting friends: one of them was Lewis P. Youtz. To confirm which of the two men was Youtz, I hoped that a visit to the Lebanon County Historical Society to view high school yearbook pictures would suffice. But as is the case with many men and women in the 1930’s, Youtz did not attend high school. Staff at the historical society offered to check the Lebanon archives for family connections, and what they uncovered astounded me. A daughter of Lewis Youtz, Mrs. Helen Garman, is my neighbor and lives around the corner from me. Robert’s photo of Lewis Youtz would lead to an enchanting discovery.

In 1945 Lewis presented a wallet-sized photograph of his wife and three-year-old daughter Helen to a German POW at Pine Grove. In exchange for chocolate bars and cigarettes, the prisoner agreed to paint their likeness and constructed a frame for their portrait, signing it only with the initials G.W. For many years after the war this portrait hung on the living room wall of the Youtz home.⁵⁰

Lewis was friendly with the long-term prisoners; even sitting on the back steps of the staff mess hall with one of them and assisting him in peeling potatoes. But the painting wasn’t the only family piece that Lewis requested be made in exchange for chocolate and cigarettes. Another German prisoner named Alois Hanus, a carpenter and Anti-Nazi,⁵¹ was asked by Lewis to construct a special gift for three-year-old Helen. Details on the friendly agreement are not entirely clear but suggest that Lewis may have provided some of the materials for his requested projects in addition to the agreed sum of 2 chocolate bars and 2 packs of cigarettes.⁵² The charming piece survives and presents a wonderful illustration of the creativity of some of Pine Grove’s prisoners. It also reveals the first known example of a child’s toy being made at the Pine Grove Furnace POW Camp.

Alois Hanus was one of Pine Grove’s long-term prisoners like those discussed earlier who were Anti-Nazi and remained voluntarily, employing their specific skills throughout the camp. In a letter to Lt. Colonel Edward Davison at the Provost Marshall General’s Office dated November 27, 1945, one day before Pine Grove POW Camp’s official closing, the repatriation of thirteen of these men, including Alois Hanus, was considered with commendation by Colonel Russell H. Sweet, Chief of the Captured Personnel and Materials Branch of the Military Intelligence Service:

They have been extremely cooperative and are deemed worthy of some consideration. It is hoped that their return to the American Zone in Germany may be arranged.⁵³

Shortly after viewing Helen’s items I was contacted by Lewis Youtz’s two remaining daughters, Marie Parker and Patricia Waybright, and another piece made for Lewis by an unknown German POW at Pine Grove was shared with me. This piece, once again made in exchange for cigarettes, was a gift for Lewis’s wife Pauline, nicknamed Polly. This jewelry box was designed with hinges, a locking mechanism and blue velvet lining.

Lewis Youtz served the nation domestically during the war and after leaving Pine Grove Furnace in December 1945, reenlisted in the Army’s Corps of Military Police, serving at Camp Pickett, Virginia and in the Enlisted Reserve Corps. After four additional years of service, Lewis received his honorable discharge on December 30, 1949.⁵⁴ In civilian life he retired from truck driving after decades of service with Keystone Express and Mushroom Transportation Corporation. Lewis loved woodworking and carpentry, watching his daughter Marie perform in horsemanship competitions, and often retreated to his beloved fishing spots on Swatara Creek or Stavers and Stracks dams in Lebanon County. His daughters are planning to visit Camp Michaux and Youtz Bridge.

BEYOND THE WAR

The Pine Grove Furnace Prisoner of War Camp was Robert Chastulik’s final duty of World War II. He had his civilian dress suit brought from home and planned to wear it as he left Pine Grove, only to learn that he had one more stop at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania where he would be processed and honorably discharged on November 8, 1945.⁵⁵ Robert married Pauline Seylar and together they raised their five children in the Chambersburg area. Growing up with Robert as her father, Dana Swandol remembers that the army never left her dad: “Dad would line us up, give us our chores and we better do them and do them right, or you’ll do them again until they were done right the way he wanted them done!” Dana told me laughing.⁵⁶

Years after the war a special and personal reunion would take place between Robert and an old comrade and friend. Robert discovered that his wartime companion Korczak Ziolkowski was alive and well in the Black Hills of South Dakota when he learned of the national recognition Korczak was receiving for his visionary project. In 1977 the two shared a joyful reunion at Korczak’s home long after each of the men thought the other had been killed in France.⁵⁷ Before the war Korczak had assisted with sculpting the Mount Rushmore National Memorial and had been chosen by Chief Henry Standing Bear of the Lakota Sioux to carve a monument to his cousin, the Native American

war leader Chief Crazy Horse. This was the lifelong job that Korczak had offered Robert during the war that Robert had turned down: the chance to help blast and etch the largest sculpture in the world ever to be carved out of a mountain.

From 1948, sculpting the Crazy Horse Memorial would be Korczak’s passion and commitment to the Native American people of North America until his death in 1982. His children and grandchildren continue his work on the monument, which will take several generations to finish. When completed, Crazy Horse’s head will be large enough to envelope all four heads of the Presidents at Mount Rushmore.⁵⁸ During Robert and Pauline’s second visit to the Black Hills in 1981, an old army picture of Robert and Korczak still hung in the museum at the Crazy Horse Memorial site as a testament to their friendship.⁵⁹

Robert retired from civilian life in 1974 with 27 years of service as a production controller with the

Letterkenny Army Depot. He continued his many years of dedication to a long list of veteran organizations that included the American Legion, AMVETS, and served as commander and on the

Honor Guard of Veterans of Foreign Wars posts, Disabled American Veterans, and the Joint Veterans Council.⁶⁰

In addition to coin collecting, studying archeology and expanding his collection of Native American artifacts, Robert always kept an eye out for stories about Camp Michaux and amassed a collection of news articles and even photos from its CCC period. He told a reporter in 1986 that he was disappointed the buildings were torn down and with the camp overgrown by nature, little was left to identify what the camp had once been: “It may not have been a big deal, but it meant something to some of us.”⁶¹ Today, Robert would be pleased to see trails cleared and visitors exploring Camp Michaux who enjoy its newfound status as a state historical landmark.

Robert Chastulik’s experience represents one of many in which wounded servicemen returned from the battlefield to find themselves assigned to Pine Grove Furnace or other POW camps across the nation, where a shortage of manpower made them indispensable. These invaluable collections reward us with a new and intimate glimpse into the lives of both American staff and prisoners of war at the secret World War II intelligence gathering facility at Pine Grove Furnace. From the personal military insignia and artisan skills of its prisoners to the lighthearted moments of its American soldiers, the collections of Robert Chastulik and Lewis Youtz will remain a significant contribution.

Will there be new and revealing Camp Michaux discoveries in the coming years ahead? Certainly, there will be. Young students of local colleges and universities are now taking an interest in the historic site. Those who explore after us, both in and outside the camp, will require a thorough knowledge of the camp’s rich and layered history, its geographic layout, its storied legends. Perhaps most of all, they will need to have a child-like sense of wonder, the kind so easily instilled when one takes their first solitary walk through Camp Michaux.

The writer wishes to express his sincere gratitude and appreciation to the families of First Sergeant Robert S. Chastulik and Private First Class Lewis P. Youtz for their generosity in sharing these historic collections of the Pine Grove Furnace Prisoner of War Camp, so that others may enjoy and learn from them in the present and the future to come.

Vincent J. Montano is a native of New Jersey. He completed a degree in computer science in 1986 and worked in that field for a number of years. He moved to Pennsylvania in 1988 and loves to call Pennsylvania his home. Since 2010, he has been an Individual Assistance Specialist with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), assisting individuals and their families following natural disasters. His avid interest in outdoor activities led to the discovery of Camp Michaux in 2009 and he has been exploring the camp and its history ever since. He has made a number of discoveries at the site, the most recent being German prisoners’ inscriptions in concrete. This is his first contribution to the Journal. Cumberland County History, 2015, Volume Thirty-two by Cumberland County Historical Society, 21 North Pitt Street, Carlisle, PA 17013