Really great info Larry! 
I had no idea there were that many POWs - especially in North Africa. The photo of the POW enclosure at Mateur is incredible.
No wonder there were so many MPs going back & forth to the states as "escorts".
My Dad mentioned in his letters that some MP buddies saw him when he was in Casablanca & stopped to say hello. You get the impression that he was envious of both the MPs and the POWS who got to go back to the States - even for a short time.
Italy & France were bad, but it was North Africa that my father hated - the heat, the sand,
the people - everything.
With all those unanticipated masses of PWs, there must've been huge potential for disease outbreak. Our guys got a zillion injections for every imaginable disease before they left the US, but what about the POWS? When you think about all the precautions
for disease at Ellis Island and here are all these POWS coming to the US with possibly
infectious & untreated diseases.