Hold my belt tight.
Five words.
17 women stop breathing.
Marta’s fingers hover an inch from the American soldier’s waist.
She’s 22.
Vermach signals clerk.
3 days ago she was decoding transmissions.
Now she’s standing in a freezing Belgian barracks with her hand trembling near an enemy soldier’s buckle.
The leather caks as he shifts weight.
380,000 German PS in American custody by April 1945.
Only 600 are women.
Marta is one of them.
So is Dora, 19, Luftvafa auxiliary, walked 200 km from the eastern front with glass still embedded in her left heel.
She’s standing three feet behind Marta, watching, waiting for what comes next.
The Americans take what they want.
That’s what they told us.
Every woman in this room heard the same warnings.
Training camp, propaganda films, whispered stories from the Eastern Front about what soldiers do when they win.
The Soviets, the Americans, all the same.
That’s what the officers said.
Marta’s heart slams against her ribs.
The soldier, Sergeant Tucker, 28, wedding ring visible, slight accent she can’t place, hasn’t explained anything.
He walked in, pointed at Marta, said those five words.
Hold my belt tight.
Her throat tightens.
She can’t swallow.
The room smells like diesel fuel and wet wool and something metallic.
Fear, probably her own.
Dora’s breath hitches behind her.
The other 15 women stand frozen against the wooden walls.
Some are crying silently.
Elsa, 31, former nurse, oldest in the group, has her eyes closed.
Her lips are moving.
Praying maybe or counting.
Marta doesn’t know.
Tucker’s belt is standard issue.
Brass buckle.
Brown leather worn soft at the edges.
Her fingers finally make contact.
The leather is warm from his body.
Her stomach drops.
This is it.
This is what they warned us about.
She grips the belt, pulls it taut like he asked.
Her knuckles go white.
His other hand moves, not toward her, behind his back, reaching for something she can’t see.
Dora makes a sound, half gasp, half whimper.
Someone near the window starts hyperventilating.
Marta’s knees threaten to buckle.
She’s heard stories.
Everyone has.
What happens to women when armies take what they want? The belt is just the beginning.
First they make you participate, then they make you complicit, then they break you.
His hand comes back around.
She braces for a weapon, a blade, something worse.
His hand comes back around.
Marta flinches.
Not a knife, not a pistol, paper rolled tight.
Rubber band holding it together.
She’s still gripping his belt.
Knuckles white.
Heart hammering so loud she’s certain he can hear it.
The paper crinkles as he unrolls it.
Her eyes flick down, can’t help it, and she sees typed words, English, lists, checkboxes.
What the hell is happening? Tucker smooths the paper against his thigh.
Still hasn’t spoken.
Behind her, Dora’s breathing has gone shallow and fast.
Hilsa has stopped praying, opened her eyes.
She’s staring at the document like it might explode.
Corporal Vance, 24, translator, standing by the door, clears his throat.
His German is terrible.
Broken syllables, wrong emphasis, but he tries.
Inspection.
Commander comes.
He, Vance, gestures vaguely at Tucker’s midsection.
Uniform must be correct.
Regulation.
Martyr’s brain stalls.
Inspection.
Geneva Convention 1929.
Male guards cannot be alone with female PS without female personnel present.
Violation means court marshal.
That’s why Vance is here.
Witness protocol.
Tucker isn’t breaking rules.
He’s following them.
But why didn’t he just explain? Waram clear.
Waram actors.
Why doesn’t he explain? Why won’t he say anything? Marta’s fingers are still locked on the belt.
Tucker glances down, his cheeks flush red.
Embarrassment, she realizes, not menace.
He’s embarrassed.
Caught needing help with his uniform in front of prisoners.
Women.
The brass buckle is cold against her thumb now.
The warmth she felt before.
Gone.
Replaced by something she can’t name.
Confusion.
Relief.
Anger at herself for the relief.
Tucker tucks his shirt tighter, adjusts his jacket.
The checklist flutters in his hand.
Marta finally sees what’s written at the top.
Uniform inspection.
Commanding officer visit.
0900 hours.
That’s in 20 minutes.
She lets go of the belt, steps back.
Her legs feel like water.
Elsa moves closer, whispers in Marta’s ear.
Voice like gravel.
They’re playing with us.
The real order comes next.
This is theater.
Marta wants to believe she’s wrong.
But Elsa has been captured longest.
12 days she’s seen more, heard more, survived things she won’t discuss.
When Elsa speaks, the others listen.
The document is just paper.
The belt is just leather.
But something else is coming.
Has to be.
Outside, an engine rumbles.
Truck getting closer.
The wooden walls vibrate.
Tucker folds his checklist.
Walks out.
doesn’t look back.
Vance stays, shifts his weight, won’t meet anyone’s eyes.
Then he says, “All women line up outside now.
” Ali Fraen on Tretton.
All women line up.
Elsa was right.
Something’s coming.
Marta’s boots crunch on frozen mud as she takes position.
17 women in a row, breath visible, shoulders hunched against wind that cuts through wool like it’s paper.
The truck rumbles closer.
Diesel fumes hit first, thick, oily, coating the back of her throat.
Dora stands beside her, shaking, not from cold.
The truck stops.
Canvas flaps in the wind.
Two American soldiers jump down from the cab.
Then they open the back.
Marta’s stomach drops.
Dasstein trickstlish dunderllock.
This is a trick.
First kindness, then the blow.
She braces for weapons, chains, medical equipment.
The propaganda pamphlets described it all.
Americans experiment on prisoners, extract fluids, inject diseases, test chemicals.
The leaflets had photographs, bodies opened on metal tables.
A soldier reaches into the truck bed, pulls out a blanket, gray wool, US Army stamp on the corner.
He tosses it to Elsa.
She catches it, stares at it like it’s poisoned.
Another blanket.
Another Captain Web.
40 logistics officer, clipboard in hand, counts as they’re distributed.
2.
3 million blankets issued to PS in the European theater that winter.
Women’s camps got priority.
Three per woman.
Men got one and a half.
Marta’s blanket lands in her arms.
It smells like mothballs and storage.
Clean, no stains, no holes.
Why? Another soldier unloads boxes, cardboard, red cross symbols on the sides.
Web calls out items as they’re stacked.
Soap, sanitary supplies, toothbrushes, combs.
Dora makes a sound.
Half laugh, half sobb.
17 women who expected violence are receiving hygiene kits.
Marta wraps the blanket around her shoulders.
Wool scratches her neck.
Warmth seeps through.
Her body wants to relax, but her mind won’t let it.
This doesn’t make sense.
Their own army gave them less.
Final weeks of the war.
Rations cut, supplies diverted, women’s auxiliaries treated like afterthoughts.
She’d been eating watered down soup and stale bread for a month before capture.
Now her enemy is giving her soap.
Dora takes a blanket, presses it to her face, breathes deep.
Her eyes are wet.
Marta watches Webb check boxes on his clipboard.
Efficient, bored, almost like this is routine, normal.
Then Dora freezes.
She’s staring at her blanket at the tag sewn into the corner.
Her face goes pale.
Marta steps closer, reads the tag.
Property of US Army Medical Corps.
Medical.
Dora’s legs buckle.
Medical course.
Dora’s knees hit frozen mud.
blanket clutched to her chest, eyes locked on that tag like it’s a death sentence.
Marta’s heart stops.
My mother told me better dead than captured.
Now I understand why.
Nazi propaganda printed 12 million leaflets in Ningington 44 alone.
warnings about American medical experiments, photographs of mutilated bodies, detailed descriptions of torture disguised as treatment.
78% of captured German soldiers believed it initially.
These women are no different.
Elsa helps Dora stand.
Her voice is steady, but her hands shake.
It’s just a blanket, just wool, nothing more.
But Dora’s eyes are somewhere else.
Somewhere the leaflets took her.
operating tables, restrained limbs, doctors who smile while they cut.
Marta’s blanket suddenly feels heavy, suffocating.
The warmth she felt moments ago turns to sweat, a new voice, female, American accent, but the words are German, fluent, precise, no hesitation.
Those blankets came from a hospital supply depot.
That’s all it means.
Marta turns.
Dr.
Petra Hoffman, 35, US Army nurse, German American.
Her parents fled Munich in 1920.
She grew up speaking both languages.
Now she’s assigned to women’s P intake, standing 10 ft away with hands raised, palms out, non-threatening.
I know what you were told, Hoffman continues.
I know about the leaflets, the warnings, the photographs.
Dora stares at her, tears freezing on her cheeks.
They were lies.
All of it designed to make you fight harder.
Die rather than surrender.
Elsa steps forward, voice sharp.
And we should believe you because because I’m going to explain everything, every step before it happens.
Hoffman glances at Marta, then at the barracks door, then back.
There’s a soldier, Sergeant Tucker.
He asked one of you to hold his belt earlier.
Yes.
Marta nods, throat too tight to speak.
He doesn’t speak German.
Corporal Vance’s translation was too slow.
Tucker felt foolish, standing there, needing help with his uniform, unable to explain himself.
A pause.
Wind howls between buildings.
He wasn’t being cruel.
He was embarrassed.
Marta’s brain struggles to process this.
the terror she felt, the stories racing through her head, all because a man couldn’t tuck his shirt properly and didn’t know how to say so.
Hoffman takes a breath.
Tomorrow morning, medical examination, all of you.
Dora drops the blanket.
I promise no harm will come, but I understand if you don’t believe me yet.
White walls, metal table, instruments laid out in a row.
Marta’s legs refused to move.
The door behind her is open.
She could run.
Except there’s nowhere to go.
Except there are guards outside except running confirms what the leaflet said that she should be afraid.
Dr.
Hoffman stands beside the table, calm, hands visible.
Tuberculosis screening first.
I’m going to place this.
She holds up a stethoscope against your back.
You’ll breathe deep.
That’s all.
Marta steps forward.
Heart slamming.
Every cell screaming to flee.
The stethoscope is cold.
Metal kiss against her spine.
She flinches.
Deep breath.
She breathes.
Hoffman listens.
Moves the instrument.
Listens again.
Good.
No signs of infection.
Next lice check.
TB screening saved an estimated 4200 German P lives in US custody.
Without treatment, mortality rate was 40%.
with treatment under three.
Marta didn’t know this, couldn’t know.
All she knows is that nothing hurts yet.
Hoffman checks her scalp.
Gentle fingers through unwashed hair.
Clear.
No infestation.
Behind Marta, other women wait.
Dora’s turn is next.
Then Elsa.
Then Jazella, 20, youngest in the group, former typist.
She hasn’t spoken since capture.
Not one word in 12 days.
She explains everything, every movement.
That almost makes it worse.
When does the real pain come? Dental examination.
Hoffman uses a small mirror, wooden stick to check teeth.
No drilling, no extraction, just observation and notes on a clipboard.
Nurse Whitfield, 29, from Alabama, hands Marta a paper cup.
Water, rinse, spit.
That’s it.
Marta stands there waiting for more.
Waiting for the trick Elsa promised.
Nothing comes.
Dora goes through the same process.
Breathing, scalp check, teeth, eyes.
She emerges, shaking, but unharmed.
Gazella is last.
She walks to the table like a ghost.
Hollow eyes, skeletal frame.
When Hoffman reaches for the stethoscope, Gazella flinches so hard she nearly falls.
Hoffman pauses, studies her face.
What happened to you? Silence before capture.
What happened? Gazella’s lips move, but no sound comes.
Elsa steps forward, puts a hand on Gazella’s shoulder.
She doesn’t speak.
Not since we found her.
East of Berlin, 3 weeks ago.
Hoffman nods slowly, makes a note, doesn’t push.
The examination ends.
No pain, no torture, no experiments.
Martya should feel relieved.
Instead, she feels hollow, untethered.
Everything she believed proven wrong in 30 minutes.
Hoffman sets down her clipboard.
There’s one more thing.
It involves your clothes.
Remove your uniform.
Three words.
The room crystallizes into ice.
Marta’s hands fly to her collar.
Protective.
Instinctive.
The wool of her Vermach jacket suddenly feels like the only barrier between her body and something terrible.
Dora backs against the wall.
Ilsa’s jaw tightens.
I’ve lived in this uniform for 5 years.
Without it, I’m no one.
Hoffman raises both hands.
Listen, all of it before you panic.
But panic is already spreading.
Gazella has started shaking so violently that Elsa has to hold her upright.
Someone near the door, a woman named Hera, 26, former factory worker, begins to cry.
“Your uniforms carry lice,” Hoffman says firmly.
“Tyus, you understand? Typhus kills.
” Delousing process killed 99.
7% of typhus carrying lice.
In camps without it, the disease claimed 1 in 12 PSWs.
In US camps with the procedure, 1 in 4,000.
We’re not taking your clothes to humiliate you.
We’re saving your lives.
Private Marsh 21.
Laundry detail.
Wheels in a canvas cart.
Clean civilian clothes stacked inside.
Dresses, blouses, skirts.
No military insignia, no national symbols, just fabric.
Hoffman gestures to a privacy screen in the corner.
One at a time behind the screen.
Remove the uniform.
Place it in the cart.
Put on clean clothes.
No one will watch.
Marta moves first.
Doesn’t know why.
Maybe because the alternative, standing frozen, feels worse.
Behind the screen, she unbuttons her jacket.
Fingers fumbling.
Buttons click against each other.
The wool slides off her shoulders.
Then the shirt.
Then the rest.
She stands in undergarments that haven’t been washed in two weeks.
The clean dress is cotton, blue flowers on white, pre-war pattern.
Someone’s grandmother wore this once.
Marta pulls it over her head.
The fabric whispers against her skin.
She steps out.
Elsa stares at her.
You look German.
Marta finishes.
Just German.
Not Vermach.
Not anything.
One by one, the others follow.
Hera, Dora, Ilsa, even Gella, though she needs help from Nurse Whitfield.
The uniforms pile in the cart.
Gray wool, brass buttons, eagles, and insignia that meant everything 3 weeks ago.
Now just laundry.
Marta touches her waist where her belt used to sit.
They took that too, she asks.
Can I keep the buckle? Just the buckle.
Marsh shakes his head.
Sorry.
regulations.
All military items go to processing.
The buckle brass.
Her name etched on the back.
Gone.
Elsa catches her reflection in a window.
Clean dress.
Civilian.
For the first time in 12 days, she smiles.
White bread.
Marta stares at it.
Golden crust, soft center, steam rising from the surface.
Beside it, butter.
Real butter.
Yellow, not gray.
a pat shaped like a tiny rectangle.
She thinks she’s hallucinating.
Dora picks up a piece, bites, chews slowly.
Tears spill down her cheeks.
She doesn’t wipe them.
and our enemies feed us.
US P rations, 3,300 calories per day.
Vermacht women’s auxiliary rations in late 1944, 1,200 calories.
American prisoners were eating nearly three times what German soldiers received.
Marta’s hand shakes as she reaches for the bread.
Sergeant Fischer, 34, Messaul supervisor, former restaurant owner from Chicago, ladles something onto her tray.
Stew.
Chunks of meat visible.
Actual meat.
Coffee is at the end, he says.
Points.
Coffee.
Marta walks like a sleepwalker, pours brown liquid into a metal cup, smells it.
Rich, bitter, real.
Behind her, someone is sobbing openly.
One of the newer women, L 23, captured four days ago.
Her stomach is too shrunken to eat.
She holds the bread in both hands and stares at it like a sacred object.
Elsa sits beside Marta, doesn’t speak, just eats methodically, carefully, like someone who knows this might not last.
Then Marta notices Hera, plate untouched, fork beside it, hands flat on the table, staring at nothing.
Hera.
No response.
Hera, eat something.
Silence, then quietly.
I can’t.
Why? Hera’s jaw tightens.
Her missing fingers.
Machine accident.
Martyr remembers.
Curl against the wood.
My brother France.
He was in a military hospital outside Dresden.
Denied rations.
Priority went to soldiers who could still fight.
A pause.
He starved.
My little brother starved in a German hospital while German officers ate dinner three floors above him.
Metal trays clank somewhere in the hall.
Someone laughs.
Americans probably.
The sound feels wrong.
And now my enemy feeds me.
Marta has no response because there isn’t one.
She takes a bite of bread.
It tastes like guilt.
The door opens.
Cold air rushes in.
An officer enters.
American, tall, gray at the temples.
He’s holding a paper, a list.
He calls out names.
Marta, Shriber, Dora Hartman, Hilsa Brunt, Giza, Lacraza, Hera Meyer.
Five names, five women.
Marta’s bread falls to the tray.
Come with me.
Five names, one list.
Marta’s legs carry her toward the officer before her brain agrees to move.
The hallway is colder than the mess hall.
Concrete walls, bear bulbs overhead.
Her new civilian shoes, someone else’s before this, click against the floor.
Dora walks beside her, breathing fast.
Elsa follows, steady as stone.
Jisella hasn’t spoken.
Still, her brings up the rear, eyes dry now, something harder in her expression.
Major Brennan, 45, intelligence officer, ink stains on his fingers, leads them to a room at the end of the hall.
Wooden table, five chairs, papers stacked in neat piles.
Sit.
They sit.
Zolon’s Arbiteon leashen.
They want us to work, not punish.
Brennan opens a file, reads aloud.
The United States Army requires German language speakers for occupation administration, translation, documentation, civilian coordination.
We’re offering positions to qualified PSWs.
Marta’s brain stalls, resets, stalls again.
Jobs.
US Army hired 8,400 former German PS as translators and administrators during occupation.
340 were women.
pay same as American civilian contractors.
“You were Vermach signals clerk,” Brennan says to Marta.
“Fluent in both languages, shorthand typing, correct?” She nods, doesn’t trust her voice.
“We need people who can process displaced person’s paperwork, thousands of refugees, Germans, Poles, French.
Someone has to translate their stories.
” He moves to Dora.
Luftwafa, auxiliary, telephone operations.
Yes.
Dora swallows.
Yes.
Same work, different desk.
Then Elsa, then Hera.
Skills cataloged, positions assigned.
Finally, Jazella.
Brennan studies her.
The silence stretches.
Elsa starts to speak to explain that Jazella doesn’t talk.
Hasn’t talked since.
I can work.
Three words.
First words in 12 days.
Everyone freezes.
Jazela’s voice is rusty.
Broken glass scraped across wood.
but real.
I can work.
I want to work.
Brennan’s pen pauses midstroke.
Good.
He closes the file, stands, moves toward the door, then stops.
Jazela’s voice again.
Stronger now.
Why are you treating us like this? We were your enemies.
The question hangs in the air like smoke.
Brennan doesn’t answer immediately.
He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a photograph worn at the edges, creased in the middle.
A woman, American uniform, Red Cross armband.
My sister, he says, nurse captured by Germans near Bastonia in 43.
Marta’s chest tightens.
They treated her humanely, fed her, let her treat wounded Germans, didn’t harm her.
He puts the photograph away.
When I have power over German prisoners, I return the favor.
His sister, captured by Germans, treated like a human being.
Marta stares at the photograph he’s already putting away.
A woman in American uniform.
Red cross armband smile that looks nothing like war.
His enemy gave him something and now he’s giving it back to us.
Brennan sits back down.
The chair caks outside.
A truck engine turns over, fades.
Silence returns.
93,000 American PS were held by Germany in this war, he says quietly.
Survival rate in Vermach custody 96%.
In our custody for Germans 99.
7.
Numbers, just numbers.
But they land like punches.
Elsa shifts in her chair.
And the rumors, the leaflets about American experiments, propaganda designed to make you fight harder, die rather than surrender.
Hera speaks.
First time since the messaul.
We believed it.
All of it.
I know.
We were ready to.
She stops.
Swallows.
Some women killed themselves rather than be captured near Dresden.
I saw it happen.
Three of them together.
Brennan’s jaw tightens.
Marta remembers the bodies hanging from rafters in a bombed out farmhouse she’d walked past without stopping.
Everyone did.
There was no time.
No time to mourn women who chose death over this, over nothing.
Over a lie.
Hera’s voice cracks.
My brother starved in a German hospital.
Denied food because he couldn’t fight anymore.
But here you feed me three meals, real food.
She’s shaking now.
Why? I was your enemy.
I wore their uniform.
I believed their lies.
Brennan leans forward.
Because the uniform isn’t the person.
The propaganda isn’t the truth.
And your brother? He pauses.
Your brother deserved better.
You deserve better.
Something breaks and hurt his expression.
Not collapse, not tears.
something harder, something like clarity.
She picks up the pen on the table, signs the employment form.
Dr.
Hoffman enters from the hallway.
She’s been listening.
She walks to Gazella, kneels beside her chair.
I know what happened, Hoffman says softly.
Before capture, east of Berlin.
Gazella stiffens.
Not Americans.
Your own soldiers retreating looking for.
Hoffman stops.
I know.
Gazella’s breath hitches.
You don’t have to speak about it.
Not now, not ever if you don’t want to.
But know this here.
No one will hurt you ever.
Gazella looks at the employment form, picks up the pen, signs.
October 1946, Frankfurt.
Marta steps off the train onto a platform made of rubble and steel.
Her shoes, the same civilian shoes from Belgium, are worn at the SOS now.
18 months of wear.
18 months of translation work.
18 months of processing refugees who looked at her like she might understand.
She understood.
In her pocket, a photograph.
Sergeant Tucker and his wife.
He gave it to her the day before her transfer.
Said, “Show people.
When they ask what Americans are like, show them this.
She’s shown it 43 times.
I didn’t believe them when they explained, but I believe them now.
12,000 German women PSWs were repatriated between 1945 and 1946.
67% reported better treatment than expected.
23% worked for Allied reconstruction efforts for married American soldiers.
Dora was one of them.
She’s in Pennsylvania now, married to a medic named Charlie who was stationed at the Belgian camp.
They write letters.
Marta keeps them in a box under her bed.
Evidence that the impossible happens.
Jazella, the girl who didn’t speak for 12 days, now counselss other women, those who survived what she survived.
The ones whose own army became their enemy.
She found her voice and gave it to others.
Ilsa opened a clinic in Munich.
Free treatment, everyone welcome, especially those turned away by other doctors.
Hera died in March.
Typhus, not from the camp, the doussing worked, but from the chaos after refugees crammed into shelters, disease spreading faster than medicine.
She was helping treat patients when she got sick.
She was 27.
Marta carries something else in her pocket, smaller than the photograph.
brass tarnished now.
A button, not her belt buckle.
They wouldn’t let her keep that, but a button from her Vermached uniform.
She pulled it loose before they took the jacket, hid it in her palm, kept it through every search, a reminder of who she was, of what she believed, of how completely wrong she was.
Hold my belt tight.
Five words that nearly broke her.
But what came after, the blanket, the meal, the job, the photograph, built something propaganda couldn’t touch.
She walks through the destroyed city toward a building still standing.
Office of Displaced Persons.
Tomorrow she starts work, translating stories, helping people find families.
The button weighs almost nothing.
The truth it represents weighs everything.
She opens the door and steps inside.
Steps.
