The U.S. military is sending 3,500 American troops to Zagan, Poland, from Fort Carson to meet NATO commitments. The Polish defense minister called the American mission a “fulfillment of a dream Poles have had for decades,” according to the Chicago Tribune.

The last time American military were in Zagan was from 1943-1945. Many U.S. airmen shot down while flying over Axis nations ended up as prisoners of war in Zagan’s Stalag Luft III, the site of the Great Escape in March, 1944. The escape was a British exploit, with the Steve McQueen character in the movie a bit of fiction.

The Brits dug three tunnels named Tom, Dick and Harry in the Stalag’s North Compound. The Brits managed to get 76 men through Harry before the 77th was spotted by a guard. The area is heavily forested and escapees couldn’t find the train station in the night. It was a record-cold March with 5 feet of snow covering the ground. The Germans captured 73 of the escapees.

Meanwhile, Americans were filling up the Center Compound and the newly constructed West Compound. Paul Noonan, a 2nd Lt. navigator in the 460th Bomb Group, ended up in Stalag Luft III’s West Compound after he was shot down on May 10, 1944, during a very large bomb attack over the Wiener Neustädter Flugzeugwerke in Wiener Neustadt near Vienna in Austria. The plant made and repaired Messerschmitts.

Out of ten men in the B-24 called “L for Love,” five survived the shoot-down that happened in the midst of the raid. Three of the killed soldiers are buried in Europe and two were never found. Noonan and his four flight mates ended up in the Wiener Neustadt jail where they were interrogated by Gestapo, then put on a train to Vienna, then another train to Berlin, then another train to Zagan’s Stalag Luft III.

As Soviet troops pushed west toward Berlin, Zagan was right in their path at about 90 miles south and east of Berlin. On January 27, 1945, 11,000 prisoners were marched out of Stalag Luft III for 34 miles to Bad Muskau. They rested and then marched another 16 miles to Spremberg.

On January 31, 200 men from the West Compound, including Noonan, were sent by train to Stalag VII-A in Moosburg just outside Munich. This stalag’s population ballooned from 14,000 POWs to 130,000 by April 20 when the camp was liberated. Many of the original 14,000 were French, Russian, and Polish POWs, used illegally as labor for the German war machine.

In addition to a Luftwaffe POW site in Zagan, the German Wehrmacht stationed its Panzer and grenadier divisions for training at Zagan’s military camp. Millions of German soldiers launched across Poland into the Ukraine from Zagan and environs in 1941 only to retreat across the same path to defend Berlin in 1945.

Fort Carson troops will stand guard against Russian aggression in Ukraine, and potential incursions into Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. The Poles haven’t forgotten the history from 1939 to 1945 under the Germans and then from 1945 into the late 1980s, when the Soviets finally departed. That’s why NATO is so important to them. It’s essential that the United States remembers that history also.