10 Cents Camp Atterbury PoW Canteen

Camp Atterbury, located near Edinburgh, Indiana, held thousands of German and Italian prisoners during the war years. Like most large PoW installations, it operated an internal scrip system to allow canteen purchases without giving prisoners access to U.S. currency — a requirement under Geneva Convention guidelines governing prisoner commerce, but also a practical measure against escape-funded spending in surrounding communities.

The purple color coding distinguished the 10-cent denomination within the Atterbury series. Camp-issued scrip of this type was produced in small quantities, used hard, and rarely preserved — guards had little reason to keep it, and prisoners who saved it often lost it during repatriation processing.