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| Issuer | United States Army - Camp Grant Prisoner of War Camp |
|---|---|
| Year | 1943-1946 |
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| Reference(s) | Camb#7697, S&B#1051 |
| Obverse description | Yellow-buff stock with dark blue letterpress printing throughout. The left portion carries two bordered text panels: the upper panel bears the camp designation inscriptions, while the lower panel contains the warning legend alongside a red typeset serial number prefixed by 'No'. A bold bordered cartouche at right displays the denomination numeral '1' above the unit 'CENT' in large type. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse description | Reverse is entirely plain, printed on the same yellow-buff stock with no text, vignette, or other markings. |
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| Comments |
Camp Grant, near Rockford, Illinois, operated as one of the larger Prisoner of War processing and holding installations in the continental United States during World War II. Like many such camps, it issued its own scrip to allow German POWs to make canteen purchases without handling official U.S. currency — a requirement under the Geneva Convention, which obligated the detaining power to compensate working prisoners and provide a means of spending that compensation.
The scrip was deliberately inconvertible and valueless outside the wire. Most was destroyed at war's end during camp decommissioning, which is why individual denominations from Grant's series surface infrequently today.