POWs Save A Bridge
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During a 1945 spring flood, a small South Dakota town faced a sobering prospect--losing an important bridge vital to commerce and the war effort . Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow and this is the Weather Notebook. As Curt Nickish reports, the bridge and townspeople got help from unexpected quarters.

In 1945, a large snowpack and wet spring swelled the Missouri River to where it was eating away at the foundation of a bridge that connects Yankton, South Dakota with Nebraska. The bridge abutments had to protected to keep the bridge from collapsing and blocking barges carrying grain out of the heartland for the war effort. With millions of GI's overseas, workers were few and far between. But the Meridian Bridge, an unusual over-and-under construction that puts one lane of traffic right over the other, got help from fifty-seven German prisoners of war.

KABAISEMAN: They used to march from the airport down Douglas Street here in Yankton, then across the Meridian Bridge to the work site.

John Kabaiseman was eleven then and remembers at first the town was nervous about hosting the enemy, but then warmed up to it.

KABEISEMAN: There was one or two ladies used to meet those prisoners coming to work into town and they'd have pies - freshly baked pies - and I don't remember how many - they would give to these prisoners as they walked by. Nobody stopped it or anything.

At the work site, the POW's built rip-rapping - that meant weaving wooden slats into giant mats and weighing them down with stones on the river bed to stop shore erosion. They also lined the river with thousands of pylons to divert the channel from the bridge abutments. Kabeiseman says the experience with the prisoners was good for the bridge - and for the town.

KABAISEMAN: It left a good taste in the people's mouth for the reason that they found out the enemy, basically, were human beings like themselves. And they were asked as prisoners of war to do a job, and I guess they did it fairly effectively.

The Meridian Bridge still stands today - forty-six years after the German POW's went home.The Meridian Bridge still stands today - forty-six years after the German POW's went home.

Thanks today to Curt Nickish of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The Weather Notebook is supported by Subaru and the National Science Foundation.