Camp Ashby research started as a 2017 grant from the City of Virginia Beach to have a historical marker placed at the site.  The marker was placed on October 11, 2018 at 11 am and is located on Virginia Beach Boulevard in front of Willis Wayside.    

Camp Ashby in Virginia Beach housed approximately 6,000 POWs mainly from Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps Panzer division and German soldiers captured shortly after D-Day.  Rommel was born November 15, 1891, and served in both World War I and World War II.

Camp Ashby headquarters were located in Tidewater Victory Memorial Hospital, built in 1937 and known for its treatment of tuberculosis patients.  The Camp was built on 21.49 acres behind what is now known as Willis Wayside Furniture.

The POWs were used in an effort to assist in the labor shortage caused by the war.  Prisoners were paid $0.80 per day and often worked 6 days a week with Sunday off.  They used the money earned to purchase items from the canteen such as sodas that cost $0.05, beer for $0.15, and cigarettes for $0.18 per pack.  

The prisoners were privy to an Education program provided by William and Mary which consisted of 4 Classrooms used for teaching.  Along with traditional education the Prisoners learned music history, music appreciation, drama, painting, pottery, sculpture, and orchestra practice with the availability of 12 instruments.

By March of 1946 the Army Service at Camp Ashby was closed.  The prisoners of Camp Ashby were once again transferred, this time to Fort Eustis.  While interned at Fort Eustis they were enrolled into a re-education program where they were prepared to return to their homeland postwar.  There is not much information about the return of German Prisoners to their homeland however, we do know POWs were held in the British and Soviet Sectors served as forced labor after the war.  Approximately 2.8 million German POWs had been released by 1946; but 85 thousand remained imprisoned in Russian camps in the mid 1950’s and were forced into hard labor.  Higher Wermacht personnel were held for longer periods for interrogation purposes.  A majority of the German POWs were forced into labor to assist in the clean-up effort after the war as a form of reparations. 

While the world was in the midst of a war, terror reigned through war-torn Europe, and the horrors of the concentration camps were being revealed.  Here in Virginia Beach a majority of German Prisoners found as stated by Pusch, a former POW at Camp Ashby “…solace in a time when both his Native Germany and his family were torn by war.”