August 15th, 1944.
Camp Shelby, Mississippi.
The transport truck rolled through the gates of the prisoner of war facility under a sky so bright it hurt to look at.
Inside, 53 German women sat in rigid silence, their gray auxiliary uniforms stained with weeks of travel across the Atlantic.
They had been captured in France during the Allied advance, pulled from communications posts and field hospitals as the Vermach crumbled under the weight of invasion.
Now they found themselves in the heart of America, a place they had been taught to fear and hate in equal measure.
25-year-old Lisa Lata Hartwig pressed her palm against the hot metal side of the truck, feeling the vibration of the engine through her bones.
She had been a radio operator in Air For the war pulled her into service, translating her skills with Morse code into military communications.
Her fingers, once used to tapping out messages across German limeines, now trembled with exhaustion and uncertainty.
Beside her sat Brun Hilda Engel, a 23-year-old nurse’s aid from Castle, whose gentle hands had dressed wounds in field hospitals across occupied France.
Her blue eyes, once filled with the conviction that she was serving a just cause, now reflected only confusion and fear.
The truck came to a stop in front of a long wooden barracks.
American soldiers, both men and women, stood waiting in formations that seemed almost casual compared to the rigid military bearing the German women had been trained to maintain.
Sergeant Francis Chen, a woman of Chinese descent, whose very presence contradicted everything the prisoners had been told about American racial hierarchies, stepped forward with a clipboard.
Her expression was neither cruel nor kind, simply professional.
“Dismount,” she commanded in clear, firm English.
The German women filed out slowly, blinking in the harsh southern sunlight.
The air was thick with humidity unlike anything they had experienced in Germany.
It pressed against their skin like a wet blanket, making their already uncomfortable uniforms cling to their bodies.
They formed rough lines without being told, muscle memory from months of military training, overriding their disorientation.
Lisa surveyed her surroundings with the careful attention of someone trained to gather intelligence.
The camp was smaller than she had expected, clearly designed for far fewer prisoners than the massive compounds they had heard rumors about.
Barbed wire fences surrounded the perimeter, but they seemed almost decorative compared to the fortification she had seen in German facilities.
Guard towers stood at each corner, but the soldiers manning them appeared relaxed, almost bored.
Private Mary Costello, a red-haired woman from Boston with freckles across her nose, watched the new arrivals with undisguised curiosity.
She had never seen enemy soldiers up close before, and certainly never female ones.
They looked nothing like the propaganda posters she had seen, the ones depicting German forces as inhuman monsters.
Instead, they looked tired, frightened, and painfully young.
Most appeared to be in their early 20s, though a few showed gray hair and the weathered faces of women who had seen too much too soon.
The first days at Camp Shelby passed in a fog of routine and resistance.
The German women were assigned to barrack sea, a long wooden structure with rows of simple cotss and thin mattresses that felt luxurious compared to the transport ship bunks they had endured.
Sergeant Chen had explained the camp rules through a translator, a older German American civilian named Mr.
Fiser, who spoke with an accent that marked him as someone who had left the fatherland decades earlier.
The women listened in silence, their faces masks of careful neutrality.
Lisa had quickly established herself as the unofficial leader of the group.
Her ability to understand some English, combined with her former rank as a communication specialist, gave her a natural authority that the others deferred to.
She organized sleeping arrangements, mediated disputes over the limited washing facilities, and maintained a strict schedule of morning inspections where the women ensured their uniforms and living quarters met German military standards.
Even in captivity, they ate their meals in complete isolation from the American personnel.
The messaul had been divided with tables clearly designated for prisoners, and the women sat together in tight clusters, speaking only in hushed German.
The food itself was a source of constant confusion.
Portions were larger than anything they had seen in Germany for years, where rationing had reduced meals to sustenance levels.
White bread appeared at every meal, soft and pillowy, in a way that seemed almost wasteful.
meat came in quantities that would have fed entire families back home.
Brunilda found the abundance disturbing rather than comforting.
She had spent the last two years of her life treating soldiers who were starving between their injuries, watching supplies dwindle as the war turned against Germany.
Now she sat in an enemy prison camp, eating better than she had in her own country.
The cognitive dissonance made her stomach turn and she often left half her food untouched, unable to reconcile the reality before her with everything she believed she knew about America.
Gertrude the 28-year-old record specialist from Holly, kept a careful mental catalog of everything she observed.
Her training had taught her to notice patterns, to record details that others might miss.
She noted that the American guards changed shifts with casual efficiency, that they spoke to each other with an informality that would have been unthinkable in German military structures, and that several of them were women holding ranks and responsibilities that German women could never achieve.
The separation was not just physical, but linguistic and cultural.
When American personnel passed the German women, neither group made eye contact.
The prisoners maintained their rigid dignity, walking with straight backs and measured steps.
They refused to show weakness or curiosity, determined to prove that capture had not broken their spirit.
At night, lying on their cs in the darkness, some of them wept quietly into their thin pillows, homesick for a Germany that might no longer exist.
Sergeant Francis Chen had overseen prisoner facilities before, but never one quite like this.
Male prisoners of war followed predictable patterns.
Initial hostility giving way to boredom, then to grudging cooperation as they settled into the routine of captivity.
But these German women were different.
They moved through the camp like ghosts, present but untouchable, maintaining an invisible wall between themselves and their capttors that no amount of professional courtesy could penetrate.
She watched them during morning roll call, noting how they stood at attention with a precision that put some of her own soldiers to shame.
Their uniforms, despite weeks of travel and the limitations of prison camp laundry facilities, remained as neat as possible.
They had even found ways to press creases into their trousers using heated stones and careful folding techniques.
It was as if maintaining their military appearance was the only thing preventing them from falling apart completely.
Private Alice Morrison, a farm girl from Iowa with blonde hair and a gentle disposition, had been assigned to guard duty on the women’s barracks.
She found herself fascinated by the prisoners in a way that made her uncomfortable.
They were supposed to be the enemy, the forces that had killed American soldiers and plunged the world into war.
But watching them go about their daily routines, she saw only women, not much different from herself and her sisters back home.
One morning, she observed Brunhilda Angel sitting alone on the barrack steps, staring at nothing in particular.
The young woman’s face held an expression of such profound sadness that Alice felt an unexpected pang of sympathy.
Brun Hilda’s hands rested in her lap, and Alice noticed how thin they were, the bones visible beneath pale skin.
Whatever hardships these women had endured before capture had clearly taken a physical toll.
Corporal Helen Yamamoto understood separation in ways her colleagues could not.
Her own family had been interned during the early years of the war.
Japanese Americans rounded up and held in camps far harsher than this one.
She had been spared only because she had already enlisted, proving her loyalty through service.
Now she found herself guarding enemy prisoners who were being treated with more dignity than her own relatives had received.
The irony was not lost on her, and it complicated her feelings about the German women in ways she struggled to articulate.
Private Mary Castello watched from the kitchen window as the prisoners lined up for their evening meal.
She had been preparing food for them for two weeks now, learning their preferences through observation since none of them spoke to the kitchen staff.
They ate everything, but seemed to take no pleasure in it.
September brought slightly cooler temperatures to Mississippi, though the humidity remained oppressive by German standards.
The women had settled into a grim routine of compliance without cooperation, following rules while maintaining their emotional distance.
They worked in the camp laundry and helped with basic maintenance tasks, their labor silent and efficient.
Sergeant Chen had noted in her reports that they were model prisoners in every technical sense, yet completely unreachable on any human level.
The breakthrough came from an unexpected source.
Private Mary Costello had grown up in a large Irish Catholic family in Boston, where food was love and hospitality was sacred.
Watching the German women eat their meals with mechanical efficiency, she felt an ache that reminded her of how her mother would fuss over anyone who seemed troubled.
These women were far from home, defeated and frightened.
And while they were technically the enemy, Mary could not shake the feeling that they were also just hungry souls in need of comfort.
She began small, an extra roll placed on a tray, a slightly larger portion of vegetables, a piece of fruit that was fresher than the others.
The gestures were so subtle that the prisoners did not initially notice, or if they did, they gave no sign.
But Mary persisted, driven by an instinct that transcended politics and war.
She was not trying to win their trust or extract information.
She simply could not bear to see people eat without any hint of pleasure or comfort.
Mgard Bachmann was the first to notice.
The 24year-old transport coordinator from Lipick had always been observant.
her job requiring her to track supplies and shipments with meticulous attention to detail.
She noticed that her apple was less bruised than others, that her bread was from the center of the loaf where it was softest.
At first she assumed it was random chance, but after several days of consistently receiving slightly better portions, she began to watch the kitchen staff more carefully.
She saw Mary pause over her tray, saw the momentary consideration before selecting which pieces to serve.
It was not favoritism in any strategic sense.
The red-haired American woman seemed to be doing the same for several other prisoners, choosing with care rather than simply scooping food at random.
Mr.
felt something crack inside her chest, a fissure in the armor she had built around her emotions.
This small act of consideration, this evidence that someone saw them as individuals worthy of tiny kindnesses, contradicted everything she had been taught about Americans.
They were supposed to be cruel, vindictive, eager to punish their captives.
Yet, here was this young woman offering comfort through the only means available to her.
Late September arrived with the first hints that Summer’s grip might eventually loosen.
The German women had been in captivity for six weeks, and subtle changes had begun to appear in their interactions with the American staff.
Not warmth exactly, but a reduction in active hostility.
Some prisoners nodded acknowledgement when guards opened doors for them.
A few had begun to respond to direct questions with brief answers rather than stony silence.
The ice was not melting, but perhaps it was beginning to thaw.
Sergeant Chen had noticed these small shifts and decided it was time to introduce something that might accelerate the process.
She had been corresponding with commanders at other P facilities, sharing strategies for managing prisoners humanely while maintaining security.
One officer had written about the surprising effectiveness of introducing captured soldiers to American cultural experiences, particularly food items that had no equivalent in European cuisine.
The psychological impact of encountering American abundance and variety, seemed to crack through defensive walls more effectively than any interrogation technique.
She called Private Costello into her office on a Thursday afternoon.
Mary, I want to try something with our prisoners, something that might help them see us differently.
She explained her idea, and Mary’s face lit up with understanding and enthusiasm.
By that evening, arrangements had been made with the camp commissary, and supplies had been requisitioned.
The next day was a Saturday, which meant lighter work duties and more free time for the prisoners.
The women gathered in the mess hall for their evening meal, expecting the usual fair.
But as they sat down, they noticed something unusual.
The American staff was setting up a table near the kitchen door with items the prisoners had never seen before.
Tall glasses, long-handled spoons, and several large containers whose contents remained mysterious.
Lisa watched with suspicious curiosity as Private Castello and Corporal Yamamoto began preparing something at the table.
They worked with casual efficiency, scooping white cream from one container into glasses, then pouring dark brown liquid from bottles over the cream.
The liquid fizzed and foamed dramatically, and the cream began to float on top of the bubbling mixture.
The sight was so strange, so completely foreign to anything the German women had experienced that conversation stopped mid-sentence.
Sergeant Chen stepped forward, addressing the prisoners in her clear, firm voice.
Mr.
Fischer translated her words into German.
We would like to share with you something very American.
This is called a root beer float.
It is ice cream with root beer soda.
We drink it for pleasure, for celebration, for comfort.
We offer it to you tonight as a gesture of hospitality.
The word hospitality landed strangely in the mess hall.
Prisoners did not receive hospitality.
They received rations and basic necessities as required by international law.
The German women stared at the strange concoctions being placed before them with a mixture of confusion and suspicion.
The tall glasses filled with fizzing brown liquid and melting white cream looked more like a laboratory experiment than anything edible.
Some of the prisoners exchanged glances that clearly communicated their shared bewilderment.
Was this some kind of test? A joke at their expense? The Americans stood back, watching with expressions that seemed genuinely hopeful, which only deepened the mystery.
Leiselada reached for her glass first, her role as unofficial leader, requiring her to test anything potentially dangerous before the others.
She lifted it carefully, noting how cold it was against her palms, how the bubbles rose continuously to the surface, creating a soft, hissing sound.
The smell was unlike anything she had encountered, sweet, but with strange herbal notes that she could not identify.
She brought the glass to her lips and took a cautious sip, prepared for anything from poison to some cruel American prank.
The taste exploded across her tongue in ways her German vocabulary could not adequately describe.
Sweetness, yes, but not like sugar or honey.
A complex flavor that was somehow both medicinal and dessert-like, cold and creamy and effervescent all at once.
The ice cream melted into the carbonated liquid, creating swirls of white through the brown.
She swallowed, her eyes widening despite her attempts to maintain composure.
It was not poison.
It was not a joke.
It was extraordinary.
Other women began to taste their own floats with varying degrees of caution.
Gertrude took small measured sips like she was conducting scientific analysis.
Mmgard drank more boldly, her face registering surprise and something that might have been pleasure.
But it was Brunhilda who had the most dramatic reaction, and her response would change everything for the entire group.
The 23-year-old nurse’s aid from Castle had been among the most withdrawn of the prisoners.
She rarely spoke even to her fellow Germans, moving through her days with mechanical efficiency, while her thoughts remained locked away behind carefully constructed walls.
She had seen too much suffering in the field hospitals, had held too many dying soldiers as they called for mothers who would never know what happened to their sons.
She had learned to shut down her emotions completely because feeling anything at all was too dangerous.
But when Bruna tasted the root beer float, something inside her shattered.
The sweetness was so overwhelming, so completely divorced from the reality of war and death and destruction that had defined her last 3 years that she could not maintain her defenses.
Her hands began to shake, making the glass tremble.
Tears spilled down her cheeks before she could stop them.
And then she was sobbing openly in the middle of the messaul, crying so hard that her whole body shook with the force of her grief and relief and confusion all mixed together in one overwhelming wave.
Private Costello moved toward her instinctively, but Sergeant Chen raised a hand to stop her.
This was something that needed to happen without interference.
The other German women sat frozen, watching their comrade fall apart over a simple American dessert drink, and understanding on some deep level that Brun Hilda was crying for all of them.
Brun Hilda’s breakdown lasted nearly 10 minutes, during which time the entire messaul remained in stunned silence.
The young woman’s sobs gradually subsided into quiet weeping, then into shaky breaths as she struggled to regain her composure.
Her face was blotchy and wet with tears.
Her carefully maintained military bearing completely destroyed.
When she finally looked up, expecting ridicule or punishment for her display of weakness, she instead saw Lisa Lada standing beside her with tears streaming down her own face.
Then began to cry.
Then Gertrude, who prided herself on her emotional control, felt her eyes burning with tears she could no longer hold back.
Within minutes, more than half the German women in the mesh hall were crying openly.
Many of them not even sure exactly why.
It was not just the sweetness of the root beer float, though that was the catalyst.
It was the accumulation of everything they had been holding inside since their capture, since the retreat through France, since the moment they realized Germany was losing the war and everything they had believed in was collapsing around them.
The root beer float with its absurd abundance and its casual generosity represented something their minds had been refusing to accept that maybe Americans were not the monsters they had been taught to fear.
Private Morrison watched with her own eyes glistening, moved by the raw emotion pouring out of these women who had seemed so untouchable just moments before.
She had never thought of enemy soldiers as people who could be broken by kindness, who could be undone by something as simple as ice cream and soda.
The propaganda posters back home showed German forces as cruel and inhuman.
But these women crying over root beer floats were as human as anyone she had ever known.
Sergeant Chen felt a tightness in her chest as she observed the scene.
She had hoped the root beer floats might soften the prisoner’s attitudes, might create a small opening for better relations.
She had not anticipated this level of emotional release, this complete dismantling of the walls the women had built around themselves.
Part of her wanted to comfort them, but her training told her to let this moment play out naturally without American interference.
This was something the German women needed to experience together without their capttors inserting themselves into the process.
Corporal Yamamoto stood near the kitchen door, her own complicated feelings about captivity and internment, making her uniquely empathetic to what was happening.
She understood what it meant to have your entire world view challenged to discover that the people you thought were enemies might be the only ones treating you with dignity.
Her Japanese American family had learned that lesson in the harshest way possible.
And now she was watching German prisoners learn a different version of the same truth.
As the crying gradually subsided, the women began to drink their root beer floats in earnest, no longer cautious or suspicious, some laughed through their tears at the absurdity of the situation, at how completely they had fallen apart over a beverage.
Others remained quiet, processing emotions too complex to articulate.
But something fundamental had shifted in that messaul and everyone present knew that the relationship between prisoners and capttors would never be the same again.
The days following the root beer float incident brought profound changes to the atmosphere at Camp Shelby.
The German women no longer maintained their rigid separation from the American personnel.
They still followed camp rules and military protocols, but the invisible wall that had divided the two groups had developed significant cracks.
Conversations began to occur, tentative at first, hampered by language barriers, but driven by a new curiosity on both sides.
The Americans wanted to understand these women who had cried over ice cream, and the Germans wanted to reconcile their experiences with everything they had been taught about their enemies.
Leiselada found herself in conversation with Sergeant Chen one morning while working in the administrative office.
Her English was improving rapidly through daily exposure, and she had been assigned to help with translation work for camp records.
As they sorted through paperwork, Chen asked her a question that cut straight to the heart of everything Liselotta had been struggling with.
What did you think Americans would be like before you came here? The question hung in the air between them, loaded with implications.
Liselada sat down the papers she had been holding and chose her words carefully.
We were told you were cruel, that you would torture prisoners and starve us, that Americans especially hated Germans and would take revenge for the war.
She paused, looking directly at Chen.
We were told that people like you, people who were not white, were treated worse than animals in America.
that your country was barbaric in how it treated anyone who was different.” Chen nodded slowly, acknowledging the propaganda without flinching from it.
“And now? What do you think now?” Liselotta gestured around the camp at the comfortable barracks, the abundant food, the guards who treated them with professional respect.
I think we were lied to about many things.
But I also think America is more complicated than either the lies we were told or the truth we are seeing here.
You are Chinese.
Yes.
And you serve as a sergeant.
In Germany, this would be impossible.
But I also know that your country has its own prejudices, its own failures.
she was trying to be honest without being insulting to acknowledge the complexity without retreating into propaganda from either side.
The conversation reflected a larger awakening happening among all the German prisoners.
They had been fed a steady diet of propaganda about American weakness, American degeneracy, American cruelty.
Every aspect of their training had reinforced the message that Germany’s enemies were inferior in every way that mattered.
Yet their daily experiences contradicted these teachings so completely that they could no longer maintain their previous beliefs.
The Americans were not weak.
They had won the war.
They were not cruel.
They had offered kindness when harshness would have been justified.
They were not degenerate.
Their society functioned with an efficiency and abundance that put wartime Germany to shame.
Brun Hilda spoke about this during an evening gathering of the German women in their barracks.
I keep thinking about the root beer float, she said quietly.
Not just the taste, but what it means.
They gave us something special, something made just for pleasure, not for survival.
In Germany, we had forgotten that food could be anything except fuel for the war effort.
We were so focused on sacrifice and duty that we forgot about joy entirely.
October brought cooler weather and a new rhythm to life at Camp Shelby.
The German women had begun participating in camp activities beyond their required work duties.
Some joined informal English lessons organized by Private Morrison, who discovered she had a talent for teaching.
Others helped in the expanded kitchen operations, working alongside American staff to prepare meals.
The root beer floats had become a weekly tradition served every Saturday evening, and the women now looked forward to them with unguarded enthusiasm.
It was during these Saturday gatherings that the real stories began to emerge.
With root beer floats in hand and defenses lowered by sugar and acceptance, the women started sharing pieces of their lives that they had kept hidden since their capture.
The conversations happened in a mixture of German and English with those who had better language skills translating for others, creating a communal storytelling experience that bridged the divide between former enemies.
Lisa was the first to share her background in detail.
She spoke about growing up in Airfort, about her father who taught mathematics at the university and her mother who played piano in the city orchestra.
She described a childhood filled with music and learning with Sunday walks along the river and summer vacations in the Theringian forest.
When the war came, she had been recruited for her skills with radio communications, believing she was serving to defend this beautiful life she had known.
I thought I was protecting my home, she said softly.
I did not understand I was helping to destroy other people’s homes.
Mr.
Guard shared memories of Leipick, of working in her family’s small town shipping company before the war consumed everything.
She had three brothers who all joined the military.
Two were dead now, killed on the Eastern Front.
The third was missing, and she had no way of knowing if he had survived.
My mother wrote to me once after I was captured, she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
She said she was glad I was in America because at least she knew I was alive.
She said that was more than she could say about my brothers.
The American personnel listened to these stories with growing understanding.
Private Costello spoke about her own family, about brothers serving in the Pacific theater, and the constant fear that accompanied every telegram delivery.
Corporal Yamamoto shared carefully chosen details about her family’s internment, about the painful irony of being imprisoned by her own country while serving in its military.
These exchanges created bonds of shared experience that transcended national boundaries.
Brun Hilda’s story came out in fragments over several weeks.
She spoke about training as a nurse’s aid, about her idealistic belief that she was helping to save lives.
She described the field hospitals where she worked, the endless stream of wounded soldiers, the gradual realization that Germany was losing despite all the official pronouncements of victory.
The worst part, she said during one Saturday evening, was knowing that the soldiers we saved would just be sent back to die.
We were not healing them.
We were just prolonging their suffering.
Her voice broke, but she continued, “And we were told this was noble.
This was duty.
This was what good German women did for the fatherland.
The stories painted a picture far more complex than simple narratives of good versus evil.
These were women who had been caught up in forces beyond their control, who had made choices based on limited information and relentless propaganda.
Among the German prisoners, one woman had remained conspicuously resistant to the changes sweeping through the group.
Gertrude at 28, the oldest among them, had maintained her ideological convictions, even as others began to question everything they had believed.
She was not a fanatic, but she was stubborn, and her training as a record specialist had taught her to trust documented facts over emotional responses.
The kindness shown by Americans, the abundance of food, even the root beer floats.
She attributed all of it to strategic manipulation rather than genuine compassion.
She refused to participate in the Saturday evening gatherings, choosing instead to remain in the barracks, reading old German newspapers that had been provided by the Red Cross.
She maintained strict military discipline in her personal appearance and behavior, never relaxing into the more casual atmosphere that had developed among the other prisoners.
When Lisa Lada or others tried to engage her in conversation about their changing perspectives, Gertrude would respond with cutting remarks about naivity and the dangers of being seduced by enemy propaganda.
“You have all forgotten who you are,” she said one evening as the others prepared to go to the messaul for root beer floats.
“You have let them make you soft, make you forget your duty to Germany.
This kindness you think you are receiving is just another weapon and you are surrendering without even realizing it.
Her words carried the weight of genuine belief and they made some of the other women uncomfortable because they touched on fears they had not fully resolved.
Sergeant Chen had been aware of Gertrude’s resistance and had deliberately chosen not to force the issue.
Some prisoners needed more time, needed to come to realizations on their own terms rather than having change imposed on them.
But she also knew that Gertrude’s isolation was becoming a problem, both for the woman herself and for group cohesion.
She asked Private Costello to make a special effort to reach out, to find some way to connect with the resistant prisoner.
Mary Castello began leaving small notes with Gertrude’s meals written in simple English that the woman could understand with her basic language skills.
The notes were not about the war or politics, but about ordinary things, a recipe for her grandmother’s bread, a description of autumn in Boston, a funny story about her younger sister’s mishaps learning to drive.
Gertrude read these notes with apparent indifference, but she kept them, tucking them between the pages of her newspaper.
The breakthrough came unexpectedly on a cold November evening.
Gertrude had developed a severe cough that grew progressively worse over several days.
She refused to report to the medical officer, insisting she was fine, and that German soldiers did not complain about minor ailments.
But one night, the coughing became so violent that it woke the entire barracks.
Brun Hilda, drawing on her medical training, recognized the sound of pneumonia developing and immediately alerted the guards.
Dr.
Hayes, the camp medical officer, examined Gertrude and confirmed Brun Hilda’s diagnosis.
The infection was serious enough to require hospitalization and intensive treatment.
Gertrude was moved to the camp infirmary where she spent the next week receiving roundthe-clock care.
Private Castello visited daily, bringing her meals and sitting with her during the long feverish nights when the medication made her confused and frightened.
She held Gertrude’s hand when the German woman cried out in her delirium, speaking soothing words that transcended language barriers.
Gertrude’s recovery took three weeks, during which time her resistance crumbled under the weight of sustained kindness that asked nothing in return.
When she finally returned to the barracks, she was a changed woman, quieter but more open, willing to listen rather than judge.
The first Saturday after her recovery, she joined the other prisoners in the messaul for root beer floats.
And when Private Costello handed her the tall glass, Gertrude spoke in halting English, her first real attempt to communicate directly with her capttors.
Thank you for everything.
I was wrong about many things.
The gesture marked a turning point that Sergeant Chen decided to build upon.
She proposed something unprecedented, allowing the German women to learn how to make root beer floats themselves to participate in the creation rather than simply receiving.
The idea met with enthusiasm from both prisoners and staff.
Though some administrative officials questioned the wisdom of giving enemy prisoners access to kitchen facilities, Chen argued successfully that the women had already proven themselves trustworthy through months of good behavior and that this gesture could further cement the progress they had made.
The first cooking lesson was scheduled for a Tuesday afternoon.
Private Costello and Corporal Yamamoto stood at the front of the kitchen with ingredients laid out on a large preparation table, bottles of root beer, containers of vanilla ice cream, tall glasses, and long-handled spoons.
15 German women gathered around, their faces bright with an excitement that would have been unthinkable months earlier.
Even Gertrude was there standing near the back but clearly engaged.
Mary demonstrated the process with exaggerated slowness, narrating each step in simple English while Liselada translated into German.
First, you take the glass.
Cold glass is better because it keeps the ice cream from melting too fast.
Then, you scoop the ice cream about this much.
She held up the scoop to show the proper amount.
Not too much or the root beer will overflow.
Not too little or you will not get enough creaminess.
The women nodded seriously as if learning a military procedure rather than making a dessert.
Now the important part, Mary continued, “Pour the root beer slowly down the side of the glass.
If you pour too fast, it foams too much and spills everywhere.
Slow and steady.” She demonstrated the dark liquid cascading over the white ice cream, creating that characteristic fizzing reaction that had so amazed the women during their first encounter.
See how it bubbles? That is the carbonation meeting the cream.
It makes everything light and delicious.
The women began making their own floats under supervision, working in pairs to help each other.
The kitchen filled with the sounds of bubbling soda, quiet German conversations, and occasional laughter when someone poured too quickly and created an overflowing foam volcano.
Bernhilda worked alongside Private Morrison, the two women communicating through gestures and broken phrases in each other’s languages.
Mr.
paired with Corporal Yamamoto, discovering they shared similar precision and attention to detail in their approaches to the task.
What made the afternoon remarkable was not the technical skill involved in making root beer floats, which was minimal, but the atmosphere of genuine collaboration and joy that filled the kitchen.
For a few hours, national identities fell away.
December brought news that would shake the foundation of everything the German women had begun to rebuild in their new understanding of the world.
Reports were filtering back from Europe about discoveries made by advancing Allied forces.
The rumors had been circulating for weeks whispered stories too horrible to fully believe.
But now official documentation was beginning to arrive.
photographs and witness testimonies that could not be dismissed as propaganda or exaggeration.
The systematic murder of millions.
Concentration camps designed for industrialcale killing, a machinery of death that had operated throughout the war.
While ordinary Germans claimed ignorance, Sergeant Chen faced a difficult decision about how much information to share with her prisoners.
The women had made remarkable progress in their transformation, had opened themselves to new perspectives and genuine connections with their former enemies, but they also had a right to know what their country had done, what cause they had unknowingly served.
After consulting with camp leadership and a military psychologist, she decided that the truth, however devastating, was necessary for any genuine reconciliation to occur.
She called a meeting in the mess hall on a gray afternoon when sleep fell against the windows.
The German women gathered with growing apprehension, sensing from the somber faces of the American staff that something significant was about to happen.
Chen stood before them with a folder containing photographs and documents, her expression grave but compassionate.
Mr.
Fischer stood beside her to translate, though his face was pale and his hands trembled slightly as he held his notes.
“What I am about to share with you is difficult,” Chen began, her voice steady but gentle.
“But you deserve to know the truth about what was done in your country’s name.” She opened the folder and began to describe what Allied forces had found.
Bergen, Bellson, Dau, Awitz.
She did not show the most graphic photographs, but the ones she did share were devastating enough.
Emaciated bodies stacked like cordwood, gas chambers disguised as showers, documentation of mass murder carried out with bureaucratic efficiency.
The messaul fell into stunned silence.
Several women began crying immediately.
Others sat frozen, their faces reflecting disbelief and horror in equal measure.
Lisa felt her stomach turn.
nausea rising as she tried to process information that seemed impossible to reconcile with any understanding of human behavior.
These camps had existed in Germany.
She had lived in Germany her entire life.
How had she not known? How had no one known? Gertrude stood abruptly and walked out of the messaul, her face white as paper.
Brun Hilda followed her, concerned for her friend’s state of mind.
Outside they found Gertrude vomiting behind the building, her body rejecting the truth it had just been forced to consume.
I cannot breathe, she gasped between wretches.
I cannot breathe knowing what we were part of.
Inside raised a shaking hand.
How many? She asked in English, her voice barely audible.
How many people died in these places? Chen consulted her documents.
We do not know the final count yet, but estimates suggest millions, mostly Jews, but also Roma homosexuals, political prisoners, disabled people, anyone the regime deemed undesirable.
The number was too large to comprehend, too massive to fit inside any framework of understanding that the women possessed.
The days following the revelation about the concentration camps were the darkest since the women’s arrival at Camp Shelby.
The mess hall, which had become a place of community and connection, now felt heavy with a grief so profound that even the American staff struggled to navigate it.
The Saturday root beer floats were cancelled by mutual unspoken agreement.
No one could imagine participating in something joyful while processing such horror.
The German women moved through their daily routines like automatons, their faces masks of devastation.
Lisa stopped coming to English lessons.
She spent hours alone in the barracks, staring at nothing, occasionally writing in a journal that she filled with questions that had no satisfactory answers.
How had she not known? How could an entire system of murder operate within her country while ordinary citizens went about their lives? She had prided herself on being educated, informed, aware.
Yet, she had been completely blind to the greatest evil happening right under her nose.
What did that say about her? About all of them? Brun Hilda withdrew into herself in a different way.
She threw herself into work with manic intensity, volunteering for every available duty, scrubbing floors until her hands were raw, as if physical labor could somehow expedate the guilt that consumed her.
She had been a nurse dedicated to healing and preserving life, but she had served a regime that murdered on an industrial scale.
How could those two realities coexist? How could she have been so naive? The American staff watched their prisoner spiral into crisis with concern and uncertainty.
Private Castello tried to offer comfort but found her efforts rejected.
You cannot understand, one prisoner told her flatly.
Your country did not do this.
You can feel sympathy, but you cannot understand what it means to discover that everything you believed about yourself was built on lies.
The words were harsh, but accurate, and Mary retreated, unsure how to bridge this new chasm that had opened between them.
Sergeant Chen called for another meeting a week after the initial revelation.
The women gathered reluctantly, their faces reflecting dread about what new horrors might be shared.
But Chen’s purpose was different this time.
“I did not show you these truths to destroy you,” she said through Mr.
Fischer’s translation.
“I showed you because you have a choice to make about who you will be now that you know.
You cannot change the past.
You cannot undo what was done, but you can choose how you respond to this knowledge.” She spoke about responsibility versus guilt, about the difference between being complicit through ignorance and being actively evil.
You did not know about these camps that ignorance does not absolve you entirely.
But it also does not make you the same as those who planned and executed these murders.
The question now is what you do with this knowledge.
Do you retreat into denial? Do you let guilt paralyze you into inaction? or do you find a way to honor those who died by becoming people who actively oppose such evil in whatever ways you can? Her words did not immediately lift the darkness, but they provided something the women desperately needed, a framework for moving forward.
Winter settled over Mississippi with unusual cold, mirroring the internal chill that had gripped the German prisoners since learning the truth about their country’s atrocities.
But slowly, almost imperceptibly, life began to resume a semblance of normaly.
The women returned to their work duties, to their English lessons, and eventually to Saturday evening root beer floats, though the gatherings now carried a different weight.
The sweetness tasted the same, but it was consumed with the knowledge of how much suffering had occurred while they had remained ignorant.
By January of 1945, the war in Europe was clearly entering its final phase.
News reached Camp Shelby of Allied advances deep into German territory, of cities bombed into rubble, of civilian populations fleeing westward to escape the approaching Soviet forces.
The women received occasional letters from family members when such letters could get through, and the messages painted pictures of devastation and chaos.
Germany was being destroyed, its infrastructure shattered, its population scattered, and starving.
The official word came in February, repatriation procedures would begin for all German prisoners of war.
Once hostilities formally concluded, the women would be processed and sent back to their homeland within months of Germany’s surrender, which now seemed inevitable.
The announcement forced each woman to confront a question she had been avoiding.
Did she want to go home? And more fundamentally, where was home now? Lisa Lata sat in the barracks one evening discussing this with Brun Hilda and Gertrude.
I have been writing to my parents, she said quietly.
They survived the bombing of Erfort, but they lost everything.
They live in a single room now, sharing it with another family.
They have no heat, very little food.
My father cannot teach anymore because the university is destroyed.
She paused, her fingers tracing patterns on her blanket.
They say they want me to come home, but I read between the lines.
They are afraid of what I will find there.
Brun Hilda shared her own correspondence.
My mother writes that Castle is unrecognizable.
The hospital where I trained is gone.
Most of the the city center is rubble.
She asks if I can bring food when I return, as if American prison camps would let us take supplies.
Her voice held a bitter edge.
She does not understand that we have been eating better here than anyone in Germany has for years.
Gertrude had received no letters at all.
Her attempts to locate her family in Halle had yielded no response, and she feared the worst.
“I have nothing to return to,” she said flatly.
No family, no no home, no city that still stands.
What would I do there? Wander through ruins looking for ghosts? The bleakness in her voice reflected a despair that went beyond personal loss to encompass the complete destruction of everything she had known.
The American staff noticed the growing anxiety among their prisoners and tried to provide what support they could.
Sergeant Chen arranged for additional correspondence privileges, hoping that more communication with families might ease the women’s fears.
But often the letters only made things worse.
Each one bringing news of more loss, more destruction, more reasons to dread the return.
April brought news of Germany’s impending surrender, and with it concrete timelines for repatriation.
The German women at Camp Shelby learned they would be processed through displaced persons camps in Europe before being released to find their way back to whatever remained of their homes.
Transportation would be arranged for late May or early June, giving them roughly 6 weeks to prepare for their departure.
The announcement should have brought relief, a promise of freedom after months of captivity.
Instead, it triggered intense emotional turmoil that manifested in sleepless nights and endless circular discussions.
The Saturday evening root beer float gathering took on new significance as the women grappled with their uncertain futures.
They had spent months building connections with the American staff, learning a new language, discovering aspects of themselves they had never known existed.
They had confronted terrible truths about their country and begun the painful work of reconciling their past actions with their present understanding.
Now they were being asked to leave all that progress behind and return to a Germany that no longer existed in any form they would recognize.
It was Brun Hilda who first articulated what several of them had been thinking but were afraid to voice.
“What if we asked to stay longer?” she said quietly during one of their evening discussions.
What if we explained that we need more time before we are ready to go back? That Germany is too chaotic right now and we would be safer remaining here until things stabilize.
The suggestion hung in the air like a dangerous confession.
To ask to remain in enemy captivity when freedom was being offered seemed like a betrayal of everything they were supposed to believe about duty and homeland.
But as they discussed the idea further, it became clear that several women shared Brunhilda’s reluctance to leave, not because they wanted to avoid Germany entirely, but because they genuinely feared what they would find there, and questioned whether they were emotionally prepared to face it.
Leiselada had been wrestling with similar thoughts.
Her English had become fluent, and she had been assisting with administrative work that gave her a sense of purpose she had never experienced in her old life.
The Americans had treated her with respect, had valued her skills and intelligence in ways that German military hierarchy never had.
More than that, she had found something at Camp Shelby that she realized she had been missing her entire life.
the freedom to question, to grow, to become someone different than who she had been raised to be.
Gertrude surprised everyone by being the most adamant about staying.
“I have nothing in Germany,” she said bluntly.
“No family, no home, no future.
” “Here, I have work that matters.
I have people who treat me like I am worth something, despite what my country did.
Why would I choose to return to ruins when I could stay somewhere I have a chance to build something new? The decision about whether to request delayed repatriation divided the German women into distinct groups, each with their own reasoning and fears.
Sergeant Chen had forwarded their unprecedented request to higher authorities, explaining the complex emotional and practical considerations involved.
The response came back after 2 weeks of tense waiting.
The women could choose to delay their return, but they would need to formally state their reasons and undergo psychological evaluation to ensure their decisions were sound rather than coerced or mentally unstable.
Nine women led by Lisa Lada, Brun Hilda, and Gertrude formally requested to remain at Camp Shelby indefinitely.
Their written statements, carefully composed with help from Mr.
Fiser explained their reasoning with painful honesty.
They did not feel emotionally prepared to face the devastation in Germany.
They feared being unable to find housing or employment in the chaos of occupation.
They wanted time to process what they had learned about their country’s crimes before returning to a place where everyone was complicit in varying degrees.
Most importantly, they had begun psychological healing at Camp Shelby that they feared would be interrupted by premature return.
The remaining women chose repatriation for equally valid reasons.
Mgard, despite her own ambivalence, felt a duty to return and help rebuild.
“Someone has to go back,” she said during one of their final group discussions.
Someone has to do the work of making Germany into something better than it was.
If everyone who learned these lessons stays in America, who will teach them to the people who remained? Her argument resonated with several others who felt that their transformation in American captivity had equipped them to be agents of change in their homeland.
The women who chose to stay underwent psychological evaluations with a military psychiatrist who had been brought in specifically for this purpose.
Dr.
Elizabeth Warren spent hours interviewing each woman individually, assessing their mental state and trying to determine whether their requests stemmed from genuine conviction or from trauma-induced inability to face reality.
Her final report concluded that while all the women showed signs of psychological stress, their decisions to stay were rational and based on legitimate concerns about their safety and well-being in post-war Germany.
Private Costello found herself unexpectedly emotional about the impending separation.
She had grown close to several of the women, particularly Brun Hilda, whose transformation from withdrawn and traumatized to cautiously hopeful had been profound to witness.
I want you to know, Mary told Brunhilda during one of their last kitchen sessions together, that watching you heal has taught me things about forgiveness and human capacity for change that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
Brun Hilda embraced her, something that would have been unthinkable months earlier.
You saved my life, she said simply.
Not just with the medicine when I was sick, but with the root beer floats, with the kindness, with seeing me as a person instead of an enemy.
I will never forget that.
May 20th, 1945 arrived with weather that seemed deliberately perfect for farewells.
Clear skies, moderate temperature, a gentle breeze that carried the scent of honeysuckle from the camp perimeter.
The women who had chosen repatriation spent their final morning packing meager belongings and writing last letters to family members, informing them of their imminent return.
Those who were staying helped with preparations, their faces reflecting complex mixtures of relief, guilt, and profound sadness about the separation.
Sergeant Chen had arranged for one final gathering in the messaul before the transport trucks arrived.
Private Costello and Corporal Yamamoto had prepared an elaborate spread of root beer floats, making enough for everyone to have two if they wanted.
The tall glasses lined the tables like soldiers in formation.
The ice cream already beginning to melt slightly in the warm kitchen, creating those familiar swirls of white through brown that had become symbolic of so much more than simple refreshment.
The women gathered quietly, both groups intermingling rather than separating by their choices.
Mgard stood between Liselotta and Gertrude, holding their hands.
“I understand why you are staying,” she said softly in German.
Part of me wishes I had your courage to choose a completely new path, but I think my path lies in going back, in being part of whatever Germany becomes next.
Lisa Lata squeezed her hand.
And I understand why you are going.
Both choices take courage.
Both choices matter.
Private Morrison raised her glass in an impromptu toast.
To the bravest women I have ever met, she said, her voice thick with emotion.
You have taught us that enemies can become friends, that transformation is possible even in the darkest times, and that sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is admit you were wrong and choose to become better.
Mr.
Fiser translated, “Though many of the German women now understood enough English to grasp the sentiment, before the translation finished, they drank their root beer float slowly, savoring every sip, knowing this particular ritual was ending.
Stories were shared, memories recounted.
Someone remembered Brun Hilda’s first breakdown.
How shocking it had been, how it had changed everything.
Brun Hilda laughed through her tears.
“I was so embarrassed,” she admitted.
“I thought I had shown terrible weakness.
I did not understand that breaking open was necessary before I could begin to heal.” The transport trucks arrived too soon.
The women who were leaving gathered their bags and formed a line, but it was a loose, informal line, nothing like the rigid military formations they had maintained when they first arrived.
They embraced those who were staying, promised to write, made plans that might never materialize, but provided comfort nonetheless.
Gertrude held for a long moment, whispering something in German that made them both cry harder.
As the trucks pulled away, those remaining stood watching until the vehicles disappeared from view.
The camp felt suddenly emptier, as if something vital had been extracted.
23 years later, in the summer of 1968, a reunion took place that would have seemed impossible during the dark days of World War II.
Leiselada Hartwig Morrison, now an American citizen, married to the son of Private Alice Morrison, stood in the arrivals terminal at Boston’s Logan Airport, waiting for a flight from Frankfurt.
Beside her stood Brunilda Angelchen, who had married Sergeant Francis Chen’s younger brother and worked as a psychiatric nurse specializing in trauma recovery.
Gertrude had passed away 5 years earlier from cancer, but her legacy lived on through the German American Cultural Center she had founded in Worcester.
The flight arrived and among the passengers emerging was Bachmann, noward Hoffman, a teacher in Vizboden, who had spent two decades working to ensure German students learned the full truth about their country’s history.
She had married a fellow teacher, a man who had been a child during the war, and shared her commitment to education as prevention against future atrocities.
Behind her came three of the other women who had chosen repatriation, each carrying their own stories of how they had helped rebuild Germany into something fundamentally different from what it had been.
The reunion happened at a restaurant in Cambridge, a place chosen because it had improbably begun serving root beer floats the previous year as part of an old-fashioned American dessert menu.
The women, now in their late 40s and early 50s, sat around a large table with tall glasses before them, and the years fell away.
They spoke in a mixture of English and German.
their facility with both languages reflecting the lives they had built, bridging two cultures.
“Do you remember?” Urmgard said, holding up her glass, “How completely confused we were the first time we saw these? How we thought the Americans were trying to poison us with strange laboratory experiments.
” The table erupted in laughter, the kind of deep, genuine laughter that comes from shared memory and survived trauma.
Brun Hilda wiped tears from her eyes.
I remember thinking the bubbles meant it was dangerous, and the way it fizzed when the ice cream touched the soda seemed like some kind of chemical reaction we should avoid.
Liselada grew more serious.
But really, it changed everything, did it not? That first root beer float.
It was the beginning of understanding that everything we had been taught was wrong, that Americans were not monsters, that abundance was not evil, that kindness could exist even between enemies.
The others nodded, the weight of that recognition still powerful after more than two decades.
The root beer float had become shorthand for a much larger transformation, a symbol of the moment when their carefully constructed worldview had begun to crumble.
They talked late into the evening, sharing stories of their very different but parallel journeys.
Those who had stayed in America spoke about the challenges of building new identities, of learning to be American while honoring their German heritage.
Those who had returned spoke about the harder work of rebuilding a country from moral ruins, of teaching new generations to be better than their parents’ generation had 10.
