David Fiedler

Book Award

During WWII, 15,000 Italian and German soldiers were sent to 30 POW camps in Missouri. David Fiedler's book, The Enemy Among Us, preserves the story of these POWs before it vanishes forever.

His book not only lays out the facts of the camps, their dates, numbers of prisoners and what the men did but also, more tellingly, recounts the stories from the human angle. These prisoners of war worked in the corn and cotton fields, swam in local pools and impacted the lives of the people in the towns where they were held.

The book is described as well-researched and well-written with many first-person interviews. It have given Missourians an opportunity to remember the men held in their small towns, while documenting an important part of Missouri history.