Let me dry you.
The towel moves lower.
16 women stop breathing.
Hedwig’s back hits the shower wall.
Cold tile.
Colder fear.
The American soldier stands in the doorway, arms full of white towels, steam curling around his shoulders like something from a nightmare she can’t wake from.
She’s heard what Americans do.
Every woman here has.
Erston Don Allesandre.
The Americans take what they want.
First the clothes, then everything else.
378 German women in US custody by January 1945.
Only 12 at this camp.
She’s one of them.
The soldier’s name is stitched above his pocket.
Kowalic.
She can’t pronounce it.
Doesn’t matter.
Names don’t matter when you’re naked and surrounded.
But something’s wrong.
He’s not moving closer.
His boots stay planted at the threshold.
His eyes, they’re looking at the ceiling.
Not at her, not at any of them.
Patina, 31, former army typist, whispers from the corner.
Was mocked air? What’s he doing? Nobody knows.
The steam hisses from old pipes.
Hedwig’s teeth chatter so hard she tastes copper.
Her hands won’t stop shaking.
Frostbite already creeping into her fingertips.
Blue beneath the nails.
Private Thomas Kowalik, 23, from a Polish neighborhood in Chicago, shifts his weight, nervous like he’s the one who’s trapped.
That makes no sense.
He clears his throat, speaks.
The words are English, meaningless sounds, but his tone, it’s almost apologetic.
He gestures at the towels, then at them, then at himself.
Then he shakes his head, points at his own chest, shakes his head again.
Dora, 19, the youngest, starts crying.
Quiet sobs.
Her shoulders shake.
Pinished.
Please don’t.
Thomas flinches.
Actually flinches like her words hurt him.
Then he does something none of them expect.
He sets the towels on the wooden bench, steps back all the way to the wall, turns around, faces the corner, his back to 16 naked women.
The pipes clang.
Someone’s breath catches.
Hedwig stares at his shoulder blades, waiting for the trick, the trap.
The moment he spins around, laughing with others pouring through the door.
30 seconds pass.
A minute.
He doesn’t move.
Dosstein trick.
Betina hisses.
This is a trick.
But Hedwig’s not sure anymore because his hands, she can see them trembling just like hers.
Then the door slams open.
A woman in American uniform steps through.
Same rank, same towels, and she’s furious.
You didn’t tell them.
The woman’s voice cracks like a rifle shot.
Thomas turns, face red.
I tried.
They don’t speak English.
So you just stood there with towels while they’re terrified.
Her name is Corporal Vivian Callahan, 29, parents from Munich, assigned to this camp specifically because she speaks German.
She pushes past Thomas, towels tucked under her arm and faces the women.
Neander and Fasen, nobody will touch you.
The words land, but nobody believes them.
847 PS died of hypothermia in Allied custody that winter.
New regulation straight from medical command.
No prisoner exits wet in temperatures below freezing.
Mandatory drying protocol.
Supervised.
But try explaining that to women who’ve been told for years what Americans do to captured females.
Viven holds up a towel slowly like approaching wounded animals.
This is medical against hypothermia.
Do you understand? Hedick’s eyes flick between Vivien and Thomas.
He’s still in the corner, hands at his sides, not moving.
Betina’s voice is acid.
Why should we believe you? Viven pauses, looks at the towel in her hands, then at the women, and does something insane.
She unbuttons her own jacket, pulls her shirt over her head, stands there in her undershirt, goosebumps rising, steam swirling around her.
Then she takes the towel and dries her own arms, her own neck, demonstrates.
Say to dear, so nicked Xanderas.
See like this, nothing else.
The room goes silent.
Even the pipes stop clanging.
Gerta, 26, former teacher, steps forward first.
Her feet leave wet prints on the concrete.
She stops in front of Viven, reaches out, takes the towel.
Hedwig watches Gerta dry herself.
Methodical, mechanical, eyes never leaving Viven’s face.
When she’s done, she hands the towel back.
Danka, one word, but it cracks something open.
Dora moves next, then Margaret.
Then two others whose names Hedwig doesn’t know yet.
Thomas stays in his corner.
Viven stays dressed in her undershirt, shivering now, but not moving to put her jacket back on.
Not until they’re done.
Hedwig still hasn’t moved.
Can’t move because she sees what the others don’t.
The way Thomas’s fists clench every time a woman flinches.
The way Viven keeps glancing at the door like she’s expecting someone.
Something else is happening here.
Something they’re not saying.
Then Hedwig notices her own feet blue.
The frostbite is spreading and she still can’t make herself reach for the towel.
If you’re free to leave, I’d rather freeze.
Hedwig says it loud enough for everyone to hear.
Viven stops midmotion.
The towel hangs limp in her hands.
Was gazaced? What did you say? Hedwig’s voice doesn’t waver.
I won’t stand naked in front of him.
I’d rather freeze.
She means Thomas.
still in his corner, still not turning around, but still there, still breathing the same air, existing in the same space as her exposed body.
The propaganda didn’t prepare her for this.
The leaflet said Americans would assault them, rape them, photograph them for newspapers back home.
They didn’t mention towel protocols or soldiers who face walls or female MPs who strip down to prove a point.
The uncertainty is worse than the certainty.
At least terror has a shape.
This has nothing.
Viven takes a breath, glances at Thomas.
Something passes between them.
A look Hedwig can’t read.
Kowaltic.
Rouse yet.
Thomas leaves.
Doesn’t argue.
Door shuts behind him.
His footsteps fade.
Now it’s just women.
Hedwig’s shoulders drop half an inch.
She didn’t realize how tight they were until the tension released.
Besser? Viven asks.
Better? No, not better.
Just different.
Vivien approaches slowly, holds out the towel like an offering.
Dusen, your feet are blue.
Another 30 minutes and you lose the toes.
Hedwig knows.
She can feel the numbness spreading, the burning that isn’t warmth.
Frostbite took two men in her unit during the retreat.
She watched them scream when the doctors brought saws.
34% amputation rate if untreated within 2 hours.
She’d learned that statistic on the Eastern Front.
Watched it prove true 17 times.
Her hand moves before her brain agrees.
Takes the towel.
Wool.
Rough but warm.
Someone’s body heat still lingers in the fibers.
She dries her feet first.
The friction hurts.
Good hurt.
The kind that means blood is moving, then her legs, arms, wraps the towel around herself like armor.
Viven doesn’t smile.
Doesn’t say good job or see that wasn’t so bad.
She just picks up another towel and moves to Dora, who’s shivering so hard her teeth sound like a woodpecker on a dead tree.
But Hedwig catches something.
Viven’s hands.
They’re shaking too, not from cold duh angst.
Hedwick whispers.
You’re afraid too.
Viven pauses, meets her eyes.
Yayen tag.
Aernicked four deer.
Every day, but not of you.
The door opens again.
Different footsteps this time.
Heavier and they’re running.
Thomas bursts through the door, face white, breathless.
Viven, we have a problem.
He’s breaking protocol.
entering without warning.
Women still in towels, but Viven reads his face and doesn’t object.
Something’s wrong.
Something beyond regulation violations.
Was this loss? Hedwig demands.
What’s happening? Thomas doesn’t answer.
He’s already at the second door, the one that leads to the main corridor, sliding the bolt home, locking it from the inside.
Viven’s voice drops.
How many? Three, maybe four.
Howerin’s group.
Shyisa.
Hedwick doesn’t understand the names, but she understands the fear.
Viven just cursed.
The American woman who stripped down to prove safety, who spoke German like someone’s worried mother just went pale.
Get them dressed now.
The towels become tools of speed, not comfort.
Viven throws clothing at each woman.
Not their original uniforms, but American issue gray.
Warm, dry, practical.
Hedwig’s fingers won’t cooperate.
The frostbite, the shaking, the confusion.
She can barely button the shirt.
But Tina helps her.
Hands steadier than Hedwig’s eyes hard.
Where is Howeran? Vivien’s jaw tightens.
I’m Arshock.
An Not an answer, but also completely an answer.
2,300 incidents of misconduct reported in P facilities during the war.
67% resulted in discipline.
The other 33% happened when nobody reported.
Footsteps in the corridor.
Male voices laughing.
Someone jiggles the door handle.
Kowalic, open up.
We heard there’s a show in there.
Thomas doesn’t move.
His back against the door, boots planted, hands flat against the wood.
No entry.
Captain’s orders.
Captain’s not here.
The voice is slurred, drunk.
Come on, just a peek.
Hedwig’s blood turns cold.
She knows that tone.
Heard it during the retreat when German officers cornered her unit in an abandoned farmhouse.
Nishi Americana, she told herself for months.
Dunrian Warrenus.
Not the Americans.
It was our own.
But maybe it’s just men.
Any men.
all men with enough alcohol and opportunity and the certainty that no one’s watching.
Thomas’s voice is steady, low.
You’re not coming in.
The laughing stops.
What did you say to me, private? Vivien steps beside Thomas, shoulderto-shoulder, two Americans barricading a door to protect 16 German women.
Hedwig doesn’t understand the words being exchanged, but she understands the geometry, the sides being chosen.
This is not what the propaganda said would happen.
Then a new voice, deeper, cold with authority.
Stand down, Sergeant, right now.
The corridor goes silent.
Thomas exhales.
Viven closes her eyes and the door stays locked.
The door unlocks from outside.
Captain Emmett Gallagher, 44 years old, three Bronze Stars, two daughters back in Virginia.
He stands in the doorway like a man who’s seen this before and hates that he has to see it again.
Howerin barracks.
Now you’re confined until I decide what to do with you.
Shuffling footsteps, a muttered curse, then silence.
Gallagher steps inside, closes the door behind him, doesn’t lock it, doesn’t need to.
His presence is the lock.
He surveys the room.
16 women in borrowed American clothes.
Thomas and Vivien still at the door, breathing hard, steam long gone, replaced by the cold reality of what almost happened.
His eyes land on Hedwig.
She’s the only one still on the floor, legs folded beneath her, towel clutched to her chest, eyes fixed on some middle distance that isn’t this room, isn’t this year, might not even be this war anymore.
Gallagher removes his jacket slowly.
No sudden movements.
He walks toward her like approaching a wounded deer, kneels, holds out the jacket, doesn’t say a word.
Hedwig stares at it.
Olive drab, warm.
The collar smells like tobacco and something else.
Soap, maybe clean.
Warum, she whispers.
Why? He doesn’t understand German, but he understands the question.
Because you’re cold.
That’s the only reason, Vivien translates.
Hedwig’s hand shakes as she takes the jacket, wraps it around her shoulders over the towel.
Two layers of American military warmth over German propaganda wounds.
Gallagher stands, addresses Viven.
How bad? Frostbite on six of them.
Too severe.
This one, she nods at Hedwig.
Was refusing care until 5 minutes ago.
Trauma? Vivien hesitates.
She hasn’t said, “But I recognize the signs.
” Gallagher processes 4,200 PS that winter.
His policy is simple.
Every prisoner is someone’s child, someone’s sister, someone’s mother.
Treat them the way you’d want your own treated if the roles reversed.
Zero reported incidents under his command.
Not because incidents don’t happen, because he makes damn sure they don’t.
He turns to Thomas.
You lock the door.
Yes, sir.
Good man.
Two words.
Thomas’s shoulders drop.
First approval he’s received since volunteering for a duty no one wanted.
Gallagher moves toward the door, pauses, looks back at Hedwig.
She’s clutching his jacket like it’s the first safe thing she’s touched in months.
Maybe it is.
Make sure they eat something hot tonight.
Extra rations.
He leaves.
The door closes.
And for the first time in 16 hours, Hedwig exhales, but Vivien is watching her with a question in her eyes, one she’s not asking yet.
They’re in the barracks now.
Wooden bunks, wool blankets, a small stove throwing orange light across 16 faces.
Hedwig sits apart from the others.
Still wearing Gallagher’s jacket, still holding the towel.
Viven brings her coffee, real coffee, not the garbage they’d been drinking for 2 years.
Steam rises from the tin cup.
Hedwick wraps her hands around it, but doesn’t drink.
Danssten, you can talk to me.
Hedwick laughs.
Hollow cracked.
About what? About what they told me or about what they did to me? Vivian’s face shifts.
Recognition.
Not surprised.
She’s been trained for this, but something deeper.
Confirmation of a suspicion she’d hoped was wrong.
Wear hat.
Dear was Angotan.
Who did something to you? The stove crackles.
Flames lick at the wood.
Somewhere outside, boots crunch on frozen ground.
The camp settles into the routines of night.
Hedwig’s voice is flat, dead, like she’s reciting facts from a textbook instead of her own body.
Nick the Americer, not the Americans.
Vivian goes still.
our own officers.
During the retreat, they said it was our duty for morale.
12,000 German women soldiers assaulted by retreating Vermuck forces 1944 to 1945, unreported, unacknowledged, buried under propaganda that blamed advancing enemies for crimes committed by countrymen.
Vivian’s hands curl into fists, her coffee cup forgotten on the floor.
And then they told you the Americans would do the same thing.
So we’d fight to the death.
So we’d never surrender.
The propaganda wasn’t just lies.
It was armor built on wounds already inflicted, designed to make surrender feel worse than the abuse already survived.
But Tina has been listening.
Her face is white.
She crosses to Hedwick, sits beside her.
Mere o.
Me too.
Dora looks up from her bunk, eyes red, nods.
Three women, three silent confessions in a barracks heated by American coal, wrapped in American blankets, wearing American clothes.
The enemy that was supposed to destroy them is feeding them, clothing them, protecting them from their own countrymen’s drunken soldiers.
Hedwig finally takes a sip of coffee.
It burns her throat.
Good burn.
Living burn.
But Thomas, whose standing guard outside, heard everything through the thin wooden walls and his fists are bleeding from hitting the barrack siding.
Viven finds Thomas outside, knuckles split, blood freezing on his skin.
You heard? It’s not a question.
The walls are thin enough to hear whispers.
What Hedwig said wasn’t a whisper.
Thomas stares at the sky.
Stars visible through gaps in the clouds.
Same stars his sister saw, he thinks, right before she died.
My sister was a refugee, 43, crossing from Poland to the American zone.
Viven waits, doesn’t push.
She didn’t make it.
Hypothermia.
They found her two miles from the checkpoint.
Two miles, his voice cracks.
She was wet.
It had been raining.
Nobody gave her anything dry.
212 refugees died of exposure within sight of Allied checkpoints in 1943.
Regulations changed after that.
Too late for Anakalic.
Too late for thousands.
Not too late for Hedwick.
That’s why you volunteered for towel duty.
Thomas nods.
Nobody else wanted it.
They laughed, called it women’s work.
I just kept thinking, if someone had been there for Anna, if someone had just handed her a blanket, a towel, anything.
Vivien looks at his bleeding hands.
You should get those wrapped.
I’m fine.
You’re not fine.
You’re freezing and you’re bleeding and you just heard something that made you punch a wall until your knuckles split.
Thomas finally looks at her, eyes wet.
Not from the cold.
They were assaulted by their own people and then told we’d do the same thing.
That’s why she wouldn’t take the towel.
That’s why she’d rather freeze.
See, Trugan Unra unifor said they wore our uniforms, not ours.
Theirs.
German uniforms.
German officers, German crimes blamed on American soldiers.
3,400 propaganda leaflets produced in the final six months of the war.
89% contained fabricated or misattributed atrocities designed to make surrender feel worse than death.
It worked too well.
“We can’t fix what happened to them,” Vivian says quietly.
“But we can make sure it doesn’t happen here.
” Thomas looks back at the barracks.
Thin wooden walls, orange light flickering through gaps.
Howerins still in camp, just confined to barracks.
He’ll be out by morning.
his buddies, too.
Captain Gallagher will handle it.
Will he or will it get buried like everything else? Viven doesn’t answer because she doesn’t know.
Inside, someone is crying.
Quiet sobs through thin walls.
Thomas moves toward the door, stops.
I’m not going in.
I just I want them to know someone’s out here watching, making sure.
He sits on the frozen ground, back against the door all night, morning, gray light through frosted windows.
Captain Gallagher stands in the mesh hall.
Every soldier in camp assembled, breath visible in the cold.
Sergeant Howerin, Corporal Weiss, Private Morrison step forward.
Three men shuffle from the ranks, faces defiant.
Howerin smirks.
He’s been in trouble before, always walked away.
Not this time.
You are charged with attempted violation of Geneva Convention protocols regarding prisoner treatment.
Specifically, article 3.
You are further charged with insubordination, conduct unbecoming, and attempted intimidation of protected persons.
Howerin’s smirk fades.
Sir, we didn’t touch anyone.
You tried.
That’s enough.
Gallagher’s voice could cut steel.
214 disciplinary actions for P mistreatment in the US Army that year.
67% resulted in demotion or discharge.
Gallagher’s rate was 100%.
Effective immediately, you are stripped of rank.
You will be transferred to a labor battalion pending full court marshall.
Your service records will reflect this incident permanently.
Morrison starts to protest.
Gallagher silences him with a look.
I have daughters, two of them about the same age as those women you wanted to peek at.
If anyone in this camp, anyone, treats a prisoner the way you attempted to, I will personally ensure you spend the rest of this war digging latrines in the coldest corner of France.
Silence.
Dismissed.
The three men are escorted out.
The messaul exhales.
Thomas stands near the back, Viven beside him.
They exchange a look.
He actually did it, Thomas whispers.
Did you doubt him? I doubted the system.
Vivien nods.
The system fails.
Individuals don’t have to.
Through the messaul window, Thomas can see the barracks.
The women are being moved today to a larger facility with proper medical care.
Female guards only.
Gallagher arranged it personally.
Hedwig stands in the doorway, still wearing his jacket.
She hasn’t given it back.
She sees Thomas watching.
Raises a hand.
Not a wave exactly.
More like an acknowledgement.
I see you too.
Thomas raises his hand in return.
Two enemies.
Two sides of a war neither of them started.
Connected by a towel, a locked door, and one night where the rules held against every pressure to break.
Vika told Vivien that morning.
Sometimes the enemy proves themselves not in battle, but in the moment when no one’s watching.
Thomas proved himself.
So did Vivien.
So did Gallagher.
The trucks arrive.
Engines idling.
Time to go.
But Hedwig makes one stop first.
Frankfurt.
October 1945.
The war is five months dead.
Hedwig works in a Red Cross hospital now, not as a prisoner, as a volunteer.
3,400 former German PS work in Allied medical facilities by December.
She was the first woman.
The jacket hangs in her locker.
Gallagher’s jacket.
She never gave it back.
He never asked.
The towel is in her bag, folded carefully.
She carries it every shift.
Some habits aren’t habits.
They’re anchors.
The morning is routine.
Bandages, bed pans, soldiers from both sides healing under the same roof.
The war created the wounds.
Peace has to stitch them.
Then the ambulance arrives.
Frostbite case.
American soldier.
Severe.
Hedwick reads the chart before she sees his face.
24 male exposed during final push across the rine.
Found unconscious in a frozen ditch.
She walks to the bed, pulls back the curtain, and stops breathing.
Let me dry you.
The voice is weak, cracked, but she’d know it anywhere.
Thomas Kowalic, the soldier who faced the wall, who locked the door, who sat outside all night in freezing cold because he wanted them to know someone was watching.
His feet are wrapped in gauze.
The damage is bad, but not unsalvageable.
Not yet.
You, she whispers.
Thomas opens his eyes, takes a moment to focus, then recognition floods his face.
Headwig.
She hasn’t heard her name in his voice before.
That night he never used it.
She was just one of 16 women he was trying to protect.
Now she’s the one standing.
He’s the one in the bed.
Weiss was Datanhast, she says softly.
I know what you did.
Thomas shakes his head.
I didn’t do anything.
I just stood there.
You turned around.
That’s all.
That was enough.
She reaches into her bag, pulls out the towel.
White wool, slightly yellowed now.
5 months of carrying it everywhere.
Thomas stares at it.
You kept it.
It saved my life.
Not the towel itself, the choice it represented.
the moment when she could have frozen physically, emotionally, spiritually, and instead chose to trust.
She unfolds it carefully, like unwrapping something sacred.
Your feet need drying.
Medical protocol.
Thomas laughs.
Wet, broken, beautiful.
You’re going to dry me? Hedwick kneels beside his bed.
The same position Gallagher took.
The same offering.
Now, let me dry you, she begins.
gentle, methodical, and somewhere in that gesture, everything comes full circle.
But she has one more thing to say.
That night changed everything for me.
Thomas’s eyes are wet.
Hedwig’s hands have stopped moving.
The towel rests on his feet, warm now, circulation returning.
I thought I knew what war was.
Then I watched 16 women expect the worst from me because their own people had already done it and I couldn’t even explain that I wasn’t going to hurt them because I don’t speak German clarin Hedwig says you didn’t have to explain it.
She stands sets the towel aside looks at his chart.
You’ll keep your feet both of them but you need rest 3 weeks minimum.
And after that she meets his eyes.
After that, we’ll see.
Two years later, they’ll marry.
Small ceremony, Frankfurt City Hall.
Viven stands beside Hedwick.
Gallagher walks her down the aisle because her own father died in the bombing of Dresden, and she has no one else.
Three children follow.
Two boys, one girl.
They grow up speaking English and German interchangeably.
The girl becomes a nurse.
The boys become teachers.
All three learn the story of the towel.
The original towel, white wool, now yellow with age, hangs framed in their living room.
Beneath it, a small brass plate.
January 1945.
[Music] January 45.
The day I learned who the enemy really was.
Not the Americans, not the uniform, not the flag.
The enemy was the lie.
The propaganda that turned assault into patriotism.
The officers who hurt their own women then blamed advancing forces.
The system that made surrender feel worse than death.
847 PS died of hypothermia that winter.
Hedwig’s group, zero deaths.
12 women.
One towel protocol.
One soldier who turned around.
But one towel saved something more.
It rebuilt a person who’d been shattered by her own country.
It proved that dignity doesn’t come from grand gestures.
It comes from the choice to step back, to hand someone the towel instead of using it yourself.
They asked me once why I kept the towel.
I said because it was the first time someone asked me to dry myself instead of doing it for me.
Let me dry you.
Three words.
January 1945.
16 women stopped breathing.
But what came after? The towel that stayed folded.
The door that stayed locked, the jacket given without words, proved that war doesn’t just break people.
