After spending three years at Paget Island as an internee, an Austrian-American man returned to visit Bermuda this week under far more pleasant circumstances. Charles Koeppel, 74, is the only known surviving POW to have been interned in Bermuda at Fort Cunningham in St. George's Harbour during the Second World War.

And at a cocktail reception held at the St. George's Historical Society on Monday night, Mr. Koeppel had the opportunity to meet with his former guards -- three members of the Bermuda Voluntary Rifle Corps (BVRC).

Mr. Koeppel chatted quietly with Youth and Sport Minister Dennis Lister, St.

George's Mayor Lois Perinchief, as well as his former guards Peter Adams, John Mellow and William Soares.

Mr. Koeppel was born in New York, but his parents were both from Austria. In 1941, when he was 15 years old, his family decided to set sail and return to Europe.

Man meets his guards But while en route to Barcelona, Mr. Koeppel and his whole family were taken off the ship and held captive in Bermuda for three years.

"In retrospect, I think we were taken off at the instigation of the American government...we were en route on a neutral liner, only four German men and ten women were taken off,'' he said.

He said he was interned at Paget Island in St. George's Harbour, his father was kept at the mental institution, and his brother and mother were at the old hospital barracks.

"Living at the fort wasn't the greatest thing -- the water would come down the walls when it rained -- but the food was good, we ate the same rations as the BVRC,'' he said.

"The average day was very boring -- we'd get up at about 7 a.m. and eat breakfast. Then we wandered around Paget Island doing nothing. We went swimming in the cove, and sometimes we'd carry the 50-pound sack of supplies up the hill.

"At first they said we were prisoners of war -- which was ridiculous because we were all civilians who weren't involved in the war in any way,'' he said.

"But the only work we really had to do was when they wanted us to break up some coral rock in the cricket field with a pickaxe, which took a few weeks.

After that, we were internees, and we didn't have to do anything anymore,'' he chuckled.

"But we weren't kept locked up or anything -- we walked free all over Paget Island.'' Although Mr. Koeppel said he was treated relatively well as a prisoner, there was one experience that stood out in his mind as particularly brutal.

"One day, the officer on guard wanted us to pack up and prepare to leave...my father was upset because the rest of the family, my mother and brother, were to stay,'' he said.

"He asked `where are you going to send us?', but the officer said it was none of his business, and they got into an altercation.

"The officer knocked down my father with a rifle butt. He bayonetted him in the back -- it went all the way through and stuck out his chest.

"Luckily, it missed all his organs -- that was a miracle -- but when I pushed the guy away and knelt down next to my father, I got bayonetted in the hand and the abdomen.'' But despite the altercation, which occurred during the first few months of his internment, Mr. Koeppel said he was never in fear of his life.

"The people were very nice to us, and the whole thing was instigated by my country anyway... during the war, a lot of things happened and mistakes were made,'' he said.

Mr. Koeppel said he never felt like the three years he spent as a prisoner in Bermuda was time that was robbed from him.

"For me as a young kid, it was an interesting experience, and I look at it like this -- keeping me here in Bermuda kept me from being drafted into the American or German army,'' he said.

Mr. Koeppel and his family were held captive in Bermuda until 1944 -- and he recalled members of his family crying for joy when they were finally allowed to leave.

He said he was put on a Swedish exchange ship with 2,000 German POWs, who were later exchanged for British and American prisoners in Barcelona.

"When the exchange actually took place, the boats were almost right next to each other -- the Germans were singing their war songs and the British were singing their war songs. This went on for about an hour,'' he said.

"It was a really unexpected experience, and I thought to myself, `damn, why can't all of you sing instead of going out there and killing each other?','' he added.

Mr. Koeppel and his family later moved to his mother's birthplace, near what is now the Polish-German border.

And now as an adult, Mr. Koeppel is again living in Long Island -- just a few miles away from his original home.

He initially returned to Bermuda in 1993, almost 50 years after his period of internment.

"My wife wanted to take a cruise, and it is a beautiful place. Other than what happened, I liked it here and I have no bad feelings,'' said Mr. Koeppel.