The Lonely Ones

Strong you ng men were scarce anywhere in Owosso, Mich., and painfully so at the W. R. Roach Canning Co. plant. Buxom Kitty Marie Case, 20, and thin, swarthy, 18-year-old Shirley Jean Druce, who worked there, fretted about it almost as much as did the management. Then a labor gang of German prisoners from the nearby Owosso prison camp arrived under MP guard. The manpower shortage was met--but there were ugly complications. Last week, in the Bay City (Mich.) Federal Court, the Misses Case and Druce were convicted of conspiracy to defraud the Government by aiding two German war prisoners, Gottfried Hobel and Erit Classen, to escape (maximum penalty: two years in prison). Points in their testimony:

P: Nazi prisoners and women canners had met in frequent, small-hour drinking parties.

P: Army guards frequently attended the parties, arranged dates, and carried notes from the women to their prisoners.

P: Necking parties in the prisoners' stockade had become standard social performance.

It was not love of the Fatherland that had prompted Nazis Hobel and Classen to vanish into the warm evening last July MPs testified that when they caught them next morning they were bedded down with the two canning-factory girls in a heap of woodland straw. Owosso Sheriff Ray Gallety later reported that there was nothing much unusual about that--about 15 town girls were "always sneaking out to the camp and nearby fields to meet the Germans."

Said District Judge Frank Picard after the trial: "The whole thing is rotten . . . the Army and the State Liquor Control Commission are going to hear more about this."

Sighed Miss Druce: "The Germans are a lot better gentlemen than some of the boys around Owosso."

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