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Anton Buttinger, Former German P.O.W. remembers Camp Gordon Johnston.
In an interview given to CGJA Past President Bill Miller in 1996

Source: The "Amphibian", November, December 2001, January 2002.

On or about October of 1942, the German SS and Gestapo came into our small town in Austria and grabbed me and all other able-bodied men for induction into the German Army. I was 17 years old at the time. We received minimal training for about 30 or 40 days, then shipped out to North Africa to join Rommel’s "Afrika Corp.". Mind you I had never been over 30 miles from my home town. I was shipped to Norfolk Virginia. After processing, we rode trains down to Camp Gordon Johnston, Florida where we were put into a prison compound. I had never seen fl ies, snakes and all the other creatures that ate you because we lived at a very high elevation at home. Camp Gordon Johnston was still better than the Nazi’s, however. We were paid a small wage for working and we were well treated. I was moved to the sawmill at Telogia and found the pay as well as the living conditions better. At the end of the war I wanted to stay in America but, of course, I couldn’t. Back at home my family and my future wife had survived the war. We were married, I applied again, along with my wife this time, for U.S. citizenship but were turned down. We applied, and received, a visa for Canada. After arriving, I went to Electrical Engineering School and am now Director of Power for Quebec. 
This is the first chance I got to bring my wife to show where her I was. We have really enjoyed the hospitality shown us by American Legion 82, and the whole area.

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