JACKMAN (AP) – It took some searching, but 11 eighth-graders from Forest Hills Middle School pinpointed a long-forgotten landmark: a World War II prisoner of war camp 15 miles south of town at Spencer Lake.

“It was a big secret that there was a camp out there,” said teacher Deborah Achey, whose students did research on camps built in Maine to house German captives.

The former Spencer Lake camp had 22 buildings, including large, dormitory-style structures to house the prisoners, a mess hall and a nurses station.

But when the students arrived by bus, there was no marker or other evidence of its role in history.

The group found the camp’s stone Dutch ovens, fencing with trees growing up through it, an old saw blade and a can of packaged meat that may have been used to feed the prisoners.

During their research, students learned that there were four main POW camps in the state, at Houlton, Princeton, Seboomook and Spencer Lake, as well as smaller camps in Bangor, Augusta and Presque Isle, Achey said.

Other sources indicate there were branch camps in Caribou, Princeton, Baileyville, Crawford, Dyer Township and Talmadge.

After their visit to Spencer Lake, the students traveled to the larger Camp Houlton, which is marked with a granite stone. Deciding that the Spencer Lake camp should have a marker, they are working on a grant proposal to obtain one for the site.

“There is a danger of history being lost,” Achey said. “If we dont do something, it will disappear.”

There were about 425,000 POWs in the United States at the end of World War II, housed in every state except Nevada, North Dakota and Vermont. Houlton was the base camp for POWs in Maine, and that camp housed approximately 3,000 prisoners while operating between July 1944 and May 1946.

Many POWs labored as replacements for local men who fought in the war. They picked potatoes in Aroostook County and learned how to harvest lumber at other locations, including the Spencer Lake encampment.

Jackman native Jeanette Holden, 87, a founding member of the Jackman Moose River Historical Society, said there is very little left from that POW camp by the lake.

“We have a nice album with pictures of the camp and an ashtray made by one of the prisoners,” she said Friday.

Although she never visited the camp, Holden said area residents knew of its presence – especially when three Germans in their early 20s tried to escape.

“They got as far as The Forks,” she said. “They had homemade snowshoes that I believe are in storage at the Maine State Museum in Augusta. When captured, they had 11 cents.

“Those poor kids thought they were going to get to the ocean where a submarine would pick them up,” Holden said.

With 61 years have passed, the pupils realize that now is the time to preserve what little is left of the POW camp.

“The eighth-graders want to see the Spencer POW camp marked so that a piece of Jackmans history is not lost,” Achey said.

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