5 Cents Fort Benning PoW Camp

Fort Benning held Axis prisoners — primarily German and Italian — under the Geneva Convention's requirement that captives be compensated for labor. These scrip notes were the mechanism: PoWs received them as wages, then spent them within the camp canteen system. The currency was deliberately non-negotiable outside the wire, preventing it from functioning as escape currency or entering local civilian commerce.

Pink paper was not cosmetic — color-coding denominations reduced counterfeiting and simplified canteen accounting. Similar color-differentiated scrip appeared at dozens of American PoW installations, though individual camp printings varied considerably in quality and design execution.