Postcard from the past: World War II POWs Grave Horse Meat

by; Dick Perue

Past Postcards concerning a World War II prisoner of war (POW) camp at Ryan Park in the Snowy Range of south-central Carbon County has prompted several personaål accounts, as well as other stories written over the years.

During this time, there was a great shortage of young men to perform the work in sawmills and the woods, as most of them had been drafted or enlisted in the armed forces.

R.R. Crow, the owner of the sawmill and logging operations in Saratoga, requested POWs to perform these duties. His request was granted, and Italian and German prisoners were stationed here from 1943-46.

In previous Postcards, we have reported several stories concerning the World War II POW camp near Ryan Park, with the following by Neal Ward being one of our favorites.

In the early 1940s, my dad went to work in one of the horse barns on Brush Creek where the POWs would cut and skid logs to the road for transport to the mills to be cut into lumber. He had two POWs to assist him with horseshoeing, harness repair, feeding and care of the horses.

He said these men were outstanding horseshoers. They would fit the shoe to the hoof and then heat it and burn it into the hoof to seat it before nailing it in place.

I remember one of the men’s names was Wilhelm Vogt. My dad called him Bill. He spoke English fairly well, and a friendship developed I couldn’t begin to understand.

My older brother was in Europe fighting Germans, and my father was treating one of them as if he was our neighbor. 

Wilhelm told my dad he was from a fairly well-off family, and his parents had sent him to Switzerland to avoid the war. He said one day he received a letter telling him to return to Germany and the Army or his parents would be executed.

Eating horse meat had long been a common practice in Europe, but looked upon as the ultimate, despicable sin in the U.S., especially in the western U.S. 

A tree fell on a skid horse, breaking its back, and it had to be shot. Some of the prisoners immediately started to butcher it, but were sent back to work by the guards. 

At every opportunity, the POWs cut meat from the dead horse. It became such a problem, the commanding officer finally posted a guard near the horse to keep prisoners from eating it.

The two men working for my dad obtained some of the meat some way or another and asked if they could use his skillet to cook the horse flesh. He was horrified anyone would even eat horse meat, but to call it flesh made it sound even worse to him. I don’t recall, but I don’t think he let them use his skillet.

When the POWs first started skidding logs with horses, they unbuckled every strap on every harness at the end of the day when they took the harnesses off. The following morning, every harness had to be put back together before they could go to work. 

This went on for several days. Some people thought the prisoners didn̕t know much about working horses, but one must wonder if this wasn’t a planned work slowdown, as work horses were in common everyday use in Italy and Germany.

This is just a short part of the story concerning POWs who worked in Wyoming during the World War II. Additional information can now be found in a couple of new books and on the internet.