Close your eyes on this Veterans Day, and you can almost picture World War II fighter planes soaring across the sky, headed for the landing strip that is now Leesburg International Airport.

Not only was the airfield home to the 313 Tactical Fighter Squadron, but after the pilots left for France, it became home to German prisoners of war.

In 1941, with growing signs of U.S. involvement in the war, Leesburg attorney Henry Pringle donated 410 acres of the Silver Lake Estates development to the government for construction of a base. Others chipped in land for the landing zone and the base on what is now Lake-Sumter State College. Work began on the site as a President FDR Works Progress Administration project.

It was not a cushy assignment, according to Lee King and Ken Huff in their book,

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