1 Cent Huntsville; PoW Camp

Huntsville, Texas housed a network of German and Italian prisoner of war camps during the Second World War, administered under the Geneva Convention framework that required the U.S. Army to provide canteen facilities for inmates. Camp scrip like this note was a deliberate containment measure — keeping foreign currency out of POW hands reduced escape incentives, since men with no usable money had less reason to attempt a breakout.

Pink paper was a common differentiator for low-denomination camp issues, distinguishing cent-value scrip from higher denominations at a glance. The Campbell reference number places this within a well-documented but thinly collected category; surviving examples are scarce simply because camp canteens had no reason to preserve their own currency after repatriation.