By Liz McMahan
“Tell a lie loud enough and long enough and the people will believe it." — Adolf Hitler
The question lingers, even though the family says the story is not true: Was former Braggs resident Homer Bell ever a German prisoner of war at Camp Gruber?
And, if he wasn’t, how did that story ever get started?
Local historian Wally Waits, who reported the Homer Bell legend in a history blog, said he now believes the story to be untrue and wishes he could ask more questions — questions of the people who thought they saw the young man from Braggs, questions of Homer Bell.
However, there is no one left alive from that era, only those who said they knew someone who said they saw Bell.
Bell’s family members say Bell served in the U.S. armed forces, not the German Army.
Historian Mike Bradley of Fort Gibson said the Bell story wouldn’t be the first time history has been incorrectly passed down.
Bradley and his wife Bette operate Uniforms of Antiquity, which specializes in re-creating military uniforms of the past. He studies every little detail of each piece of the a uniform and said he often finds mistakes in the drawings of the colorful pages of the books on his reference shelf.
If one author publishes something wrong, it might be picked up by another and another, he said.
“Four books later, it’s gospel,” he said.
The same thing happens in history, he said. As examples, he points out the stories told students about Paul Revere and Betsy Ross involve a lot of folklore.
“We tell the myth so often, suddenly the myth becomes fact,” he said.
“There are three kinds of history,” he said, listing them as:
• The history that we believe we know.
• What really happened.
• The history authorities don’t really want you to know.
What happens, Bradley said, is “We tell the myth so often, suddenly the myth becomes fact.”
Reach Liz McMahan at 684-2926 or lmcmahan@muskogeephoenix.com
