National POW/MIA Recognition Day

National POW/MIA Recognition Day is the third Friday in September
To commemorate and honor those men and women who were prisoners or are still missing, the Bong Veterans Center will set up the Missing Man table September 19-21st, 2025. The table is a ceremonial memorial that honors and remembers prisoners of war, missing in action, and fallen service members. Every element on the table holds symbolic meaning. On Saturday, September 20th, 2025, members of American Legion Post 435 will share those symbolic meanings in a special ceremony at 12:45pm.

Following the POW/MIA ceremony, we will be hosting Abby Allcox to speak from 1:00-2:00 pm. She will present a program on the WWII POW camps in Wisconsin.

Program Highlights: During World War II, 39 prisoner-of-war camps housed captured German soldiers in Wisconsin. After the war, the prisoners were sent home, and the camps were mostly forgotten. However, in 2023, the logbook of Fort McCoy’s POW Camp Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Horace I. Rogers, was recovered. Its daily entries provide glimpses into the everyday events of the camp, ranging from the mundane to the news-worthy. This presentation will highlight key discoveries from the logbook and provide new insights into the inner workings of an oft-forgotten aspect of Homefront history.