The first troops of the Indian Legion were recruited from Indian POWs captured at El Mekili, Libya during the battles for Tobruk. The German forces in the Western Desert selected a core group of 27 POWs as potential officers and they were flown to Berlin in May 1941, to be followed, after the "Centro I" experiment, by POWs being transferred from the Italian forces to Germany. The number of POWs transferred to Germany grew to about 10,000 who were eventually housed at Annaburg camp, where Bose first met with them. A first group of 300 volunteers from the POWs and Indians expatriates in Germany were sent to Frankenberg camp near Chemnitz, to train and convince arriving POWs to join the legion.