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During his two years as a prisoner of war in WWII, Amon G. Carter Jr. was able to continue something he and his father were both passionate about — stamp collecting.
This real-life happenstance took place in 1943 at a POW camp in Altburgund, Poland, known as Oflag 64. This is where Carter Jr. was taken after his unit, the U.S. First Armored Division, was captured by the German army during a campaign in North Africa. Carter was serving as a forward artillery observer — one of the most dangerous jobs in wartime — alongside the First British Army against Rommel’s Afrika Corps before he was taken as a POW.
Carter wasn’t the only “VIP soldier” to be taken to the Oflag 64 prison camp either, according to an article by The Military Postal History Society Bulletin. His campmates included a nephew of Gen. George Marshall, a cousin of Winston Churchill, and a son-in-law of Gen. George Patton. The authors surmised that German dictator Adolf Hitler placed these well-known names together as possible bargaining chips.
However, that never happened.
To occupy his time while being a POW, Carter began collecting stamps, German propaganda postcards and, covers.
The term “covers” refers to the outside of an envelope or package with an address, typically with postage stamps that have been canceled, which is a term generally used among stamp collectors.
However, POW mail was sent out without having to pay postage unless it was being sent by airmail. Carter had to become inventive to create his collection.
After some time at Oflag 64, Carter befriended a local Polish woman who was working at the camp. The woman, who was conscripted as a laborer assigned to secretarial duties, risked her life to give Carter updates on the progress of the war.
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Through the woman, Carter surreptitiously published a camp newspaper. Each night the woman listened to British broadcasts in the Polish language and then wrote the news in German on scraps of paper. She wadded them up and left them in a wastebasket for Carter, who retrieved them and then snuck them into camp where the messages were translated and printed by hand on toilet paper.
Carter and the Polish woman also struck up an understanding about where she would place stamps to covers and postcards and mail them to him via POW mail or what the Germans called Kriegsgefangenenpost. Try to say that five times fast.
After being a POW for more two years, Carter was informed by the woman that the Russian Army was moving closer to their locale and that victory seemed close. Soon after, Carter and fellow prisoners were told to walk toward Berlin, escorted by SS guards in the dark of winter.
The trek would ultimately cause Carter severe frostbite while walking through the snow and rain. But in his possession along the way were two boxes of stamps and covers, 843 in all.
As the Russian troops began to gain on the convoy, the spooked SS guards suddenly took off.
“The SS guards simply disappeared, and Carter walked into Berlin with thousands of other displaced persons,” The Bulletin wrote. By the time he made it to Berlin, the covers and stamps were still by his side.
During Carter’s confinement, his father Amon G. Carter Sr., the publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, was naturally worried sick about his son. He appealed to his high-level friends, including President Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as the King of Sweden, the International Red Cross, and Pope Pius XII. Another was the head of Borsalino, the Italian hat company that supplied the hat bodies for Amon’s acclaimed Shady Oak hats. Amon, who gave the hats as gifts, bought so many hats that he became the No. 1 consumer of Borsalino hats in the world.
Amon wanted the Borsalino head to reach out to Mussolini, Hitler’s ally, to ask him to intervene on his son’s behalf. The man refused. A volcanic Amon threw his Borsalinos in the closest dumpster and demanded that Peters Bros., who made Amon’s hats, do the same. Amon vowed that he would shut down Borsalino’s operation in Texas, which he did.
Amon switched to Stetson from that point forward.
With the war coming to a close, Amon went to Europe to find his son, flying to Berlin, according to the Bulletin, without the blessing of government officials. In Berlin, at the 83rd Division headquarters, Carter tapped his unknowing father on the shoulder.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Carter reportedly said to his father. It was complete serendipity, the meetup, but at last, the two were reunited.
Carter eventually became an executive of Carter Publications, which owned the Star-Telegram and WBAP radio and television stations. He became publisher when Amon died in 1955.
The covers collected during the war wouldn’t reappear until the 1960s when they were introduced into the collectable postage stamps market. Since then, Carter’s story along with the significance of his more than 800 covers have become a part of stamp collecting lore.
Carter passed away in 1982 of a heart attack while on his way to Dallas Love Field. His confinement likely contributed to his death. Reporting at the time suggested that he had suffered from an enlarged heart, apparently caused by malnutrition and other physical hardships suffered as a POW.
Carter remained close over the years after the war with the friends he met in Poland, including a doctor there. He was also very generous to them.
In the early 1980s, Carter asked a reporter traveling to Poland to take a package to the doctor. When the reporter asked what was in it, Carter replied “money.” It was several thousand dollars. The reporter expressed concern about being thrown in jail for taking that much money into Poland.
“It’s not that bad,” Carter said. “I spent two years there once.”
To the Polish woman, Carter was said to have sent her $100 a month until his death.
