The Second World War was fought on many far-flung fronts, but one is much closer than you’d think.

Just down the 401 lie the ruins of PoW Camp 30.

It held some of Germany’s top soldiers and was the scene of a three-day rebellion, the Battle of Bowmanville, the only bloody outbreak of the war on Canadian soil, a wild and wacky piece of our history.

Now, it is a site fit for zombies. Rarely has our history been so insulted by arsonists, vandals, graffiti scribblers and official inaction.

I was last there a decade ago, when ex-PoW Volkmar “King” Koenig, rest his soul, showed me where he’d been shot at the height of the Battle of Bowmanville, which raged Oct. 10-12, 1942.

We found the bullet holes in the brick base of the U-boat officers’ barracks. One slug from a guard’s .303 richocheted into King’s leg, another got him in the hip.

The camp then was immaculate, after a stint as a school, just waiting, surely, for a plaque and a museum orsomethingto honour a fascinating facet of Canada’s war effort.

On Sunday, as Remembrance Day draws nigh, I went back.

What a shock. What a disgrace. The ghosts of Canadian soldiers and even PoWs who once lived, worked and fought here, must rest uneasy.

Camp 30, on the eastern edge off Bowmanville, is an official National Historic Site.

Ha! What a joke. No wonder there’s no plaque. They’re too embarrassed.

“When you stand here and look around,” says historian Lynn Philip Hodgson, “it sure doesn’t look or feel like a National Historic Site, does it?”

No. More like the set of The Walking Dead.

Floors are deep in debris, walls draped in peeled paint and graffiti.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Hodgson murmurs. “Devastating.”

Only a miracle can save this place now. And bureaucrats generally ban miracles.

Hodgson envisions the battered — but solid brick — mess hall revived as a community centre for suburbs rising all around, with a Camp 30 museum included.

Surely some combo of corporate and government can save this piece of our past.

“The role played here was just as important in many ways as what was going on overseas,” says Hodgson. “They were keeping 880 senior Germans, including three generals and a few admirals, out of the war.”

But Camp 30 is losing this modern-day Battle of Bowmanville.

In 2009, arsonists torched the PoWs’ admin building, with its solid oak staircases.

There, the likes of Hans von Ravenstein, second to Erwin Rommel in the Afrika Korps, once smoked cigars, sipped camp-brewed beer and plotted escapes.

If you know where to look, in King Koenig’s old barracks, Haus 4, there’s a closet from which PoWs dug a 100-metre tunnel under Lambs Rd. to a cornfield. They were caught when hidden dirt collapsed the barracks ceiling.

Our guys, aging Veterans Guard, basically let the Germans run the joint, which included dinner menus, a swimming pool, tennis court, hockey games against the guards, their own farm...

The Russian Front, this was not.

The Battle of Bowmanville was no Stalingrad, either. But it surely was the kookiest combat of the Second World War.

It began when Ottawa ordered some PoWs shackled, in retaliation for Nazis doing the same to our lads overseas.

“Sich verpissen!” the Camp 30 Germans replied, or words to that effect. Then they belted out Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles and barricaded their doors.

You’d think these sour Krauts would be easy to overpower, but they were led by Germany’s top U-boat ace, Otto Kretschmer, who set up rebel HQ in the mess hall.

The guards, plus 50 reinforcements from an ordnance corps, were driven back again and again by hockey sticks, table legs, and a hail of bricks, rocks and canned goods.

One Canadian skull was fractured by a jar of jam. There were broken bones, bloody noses, and some reports say a Luftwaffe officer lost an eye.

Had this been a German stalag, a bloodbath might have ensued. But camp commander Lt.-Col. James Mason Taylor sent in his troops with baseball bats, not guns.

“How very Canadian,” says Hodgson.

Three shots were fired during the entire battle, two of which wounded King Koenig, by a tower guard after PoWs grabbed a Canadian officer who wandered too close.

Firehoses finally did the trick. The Germans surrendered. Peace again reigned at Camp 30.

The PoWs fixed the damaged buildings. Our side supplied the material.

Too bad those guys aren’t around now. If they — on both sides — were alive to see the shabby treatment given their corner of history lately ...

... there’d be hell to pay.

Strobel’s column usually runs Monday to Thursday. Hear him on 94.9 The Rock FM Tuesday and Thursday mornings. mike.strobel@sunmedia.ca