Sit on my lap.
Three words.
The American soldier points at his thighs.
Marta’s stomach drops through the frozen floor.
She’s 21.
Vermached signals operator.
Captured 6 hours ago.
Hasn’t slept in 3 days.
Hasn’t eaten in two.
And now this.
The other women behind her go rigid.
17 German PS in a wooden barracks that smells like diesel and fear.
January 1945.
Belgium temperature minus4.
The Americans take what they want.
That’s what training said.
That’s what the officers promised.
That’s what happens when women become prisoners.
But something’s wrong with this picture.
The soldier name tag reads Hoffman isn’t looking at her body.
He’s looking at her arm, specifically her left arm, the sleeve.
and he’s holding something in his other hand that she can’t quite see.
Here’s the stat that matters.
371 German women PS processed through this camp in January 1945.
Marta is number 203 and 94% of them arrived with untreated injuries, infections, or diseases that would kill them within weeks if left alone.
Zero female medics available tonight.
just him.
Corporal Eric Hoffman, 26 years old, from Wisconsin, dairy farmer before the war.
Now he’s pointing at his lap and waiting.
Marta’s legs won’t move.
Behind her, Ranata Schultz, 34, army nurse, been a P for 11 days, whispers in German.
What’s in his hand? Can you see? Marta squints.
The light is bad.
Single bulb swinging overhead.
Shadows move across his face.
Metal.
Something metal.
Small.
Cylindrical.
Her throat tightens.
Rinata pushes closer.
Is that a syringe? Marta breathes.
It’s a syringe.
The word travels through the group like electricity.
17 women, 17 different reactions.
Some relax, some tense harder.
One girl, barely 19, Breijgit signals.
Core starts shaking so hard her teeth click.
Because syringes mean different things to different people.
To some, medicine.
To others, experiments.
Hoffman still hasn’t moved.
Still pointing at his lap.
Still waiting.
Patient as a farmer waiting for rain.
Behind him on a metal tray she couldn’t see from the doorway.
12 syringes.
12 glass vials.
12 alcohol swabs laid out in perfect rows.
Not a weapon.
Not what she expected.
But propaganda doesn’t die easy.
And right now, every cell in Marta’s body is screaming the same warning her commanders drilled into her for three years.
Then she sees what’s written on the vial, and nothing makes sense anymore.
Typhoid vaccine.
US Army Medical Corps.
Eight words on a glass vial.
Marta reads them twice, three times.
Her brain refuses to process.
Hoffman taps his lap again.
Sit.
arm height, needle work.
His German is terrible, broken.
But she understands.
There’s no examination table, no medical bed, no chair except the wooden stool he’s sitting on.
The lap isn’t about power.
It’s about geometry.
She needs to be at arm height for the injection.
But 3 years of propaganda doesn’t evaporate because of a label.
Barum’s highland interfined.
Why would they heal us? We’re the enemy.
Reinata pushes forward.
I was a nurse before.
Her voice is steady.
Professional.
Show me the vial.
Hoffman hands it over without hesitation.
Ranata examines it, holds it to the light, checks the seal, reads the batch number.
It’s real, she says quietly.
Standard typhoid vaccination.
I administered hundreds of these before.
Stalingrad.
Here’s the math that matters.
Typhoid killed 62,000 German soldiers on the Eastern Front.
One vaccine equals 94% survival rate.
US Army protocol mandates vaccination for all PS within 48 hours of capture.
Not because they care about Germans, because typhoid spreads.
One infected prisoner can contaminate an entire camp, including American guards.
This isn’t mercy.
It’s logistics.
But it feels like mercy.
And that’s worse.
Marta’s hands won’t stop trembling.
She looks back at the other women.
Breit is still shaking.
A older woman, Ilsa, 41, quartermaster core, has her arms crossed, jaw set, refusing to move.
And in the corner, barely visible in the shadows, the youngest one.
Annalie, 19, hasn’t spoken since capture, hasn’t eaten, just stares at walls.
Hoffman notices her looking.
One at a time, he says, “You first.
Show them safe.
Show them safe.
” Like she’s a demonstration, a proof of concept.
First woman vaccinated proves the others won’t die.
Marta’s legs move before her brain agrees.
She walks forward, sits on the edge of his knee, barely touching, ready to bolt.
His hands are warm.
She didn’t expect that.
The barracks are freezing, but his hands are warm and steady, and they don’t go anywhere except her sleeve.
He rolls it up.
Swabs, alcohol.
The smell hits sharp and clean.
Small pinch, he says.
Then done.
The needle slides in, burns for half a second, then nothing.
He’s already reaching for a bandage when Annalise starts screaming.
Analise scream isn’t fear, it’s memory.
She’s pressed against the wooden wall, hands clawing at planks, eyes locked on the syringe like it’s a weapon pointed at her skull.
Marta jumps off Hoffman’s knee.
Renate moves toward Annalie, but the girl keeps screaming.
Raw animal sounds that don’t stop for breath.
What’s wrong with her? Hoffman stands, syringe still in hand.
Wrong move.
Annalie sees it and the screaming gets worse.
Nifty.
Nodle.
Nifty.
Nodle.
Not the needle.
Not the needle.
I saw what they do.
Rinata freezes.
Her face goes white.
Here’s what Marta doesn’t know yet.
Annalie was stationed 30 km from a camp in Poland.
Not a P camp.
The other kind.
The kind with chimneys.
The kind where medical experiments meant something that still wakes people screaming 40 years later.
Annalie never went inside.
But she saw the trucks.
saw what came out.
Saw doctors in white coats carrying syringes the size of her forearm.
Now any needle triggers the memory.
Hoffman doesn’t understand German.
But he understands trauma.
He’s seen it in American soldiers.
The thousand-y stare.
The flinch response.
The way the body remembers what the mind tries to forget.
He puts down the syringe slowly, hands visible.
Then he does something no American soldier is trained to do.
He kneels.
Not to examine her, not to restrain her, just kneels.
High level, six feet away, hands on his own knees, waiting.
The screaming stutters, stops.
Annalie is still pressed against the wall, chest heaving, but she’s watching him now.
Renate, Hoffman says without looking away from Annalie.
Translate exactly what I say.
Renata nods.
I am not going to touch you.
Pause for translation.
I am not going to come closer.
Pause.
The needle is on the tray.
I will not pick it up again.
Pause.
You are safe here.
See into your zikir.
Safe.
The word hangs in the frozen air.
Annalie’s breathing slows one notch then another.
Elsa the quartermaster, arms still crossed, mutters from the corner.
Propaganda.
He’s playing a role.
They all do.
But Breijgit is watching Hoffman’s face, watching his hands, watching the way he doesn’t move, doesn’t blink, doesn’t rush.
If it’s propaganda, Breijit whispers.
It’s the most patient propaganda I’ve ever seen.
Hoffman stays on his knees.
8 minutes 9 10.
Then Annalie asks a question that changes everything.
Will you do it to yourself first? Six words.
Annalie’s voice is barely a whisper.
Rinade translates.
Hoffman doesn’t hesitate.
Yes.
He stands, walks to the tray, picks up a fresh syringe, fills it from a new vial.
Same batch, same label, holds it up so Annalie can see.
Then he rolls up his own sleeve.
The room goes silent.
17 women watching one American soldier inject himself with the same medicine he’s asking them to take.
The needle slides into his forearm.
He presses the plunger, pulls it out.
A single drop of blood wells up.
He doesn’t wipe it.
Same vaccine, he says.
Same needle, same arm.
Now you know.
Not relaxed.
Not yet.
But something shifts.
The wall behind her isn’t a protection anymore.
It’s just a wall.
I’ll do it, she whispers.
But she won’t come to him.
Won’t sit on the stool.
Won’t let him touch her.
So Hoffman adapts.
Renate.
He holds out the syringe.
You were a nurse.
You do it.
Renate stares at him.
I’m a prisoner.
You’re a nurse.
He places the syringe in her palm.
She trusts you.
I don’t need credit.
I need her vaccinated before Typhoid takes this whole barracks.
Here’s the protocol he’s violating.
Ps cannot administer medical treatment to other PS.
Military regulation, court marshal offense.
If anyone reports him, his career is over.
Sergeant Thomas Chen, 31, supervising officer watching from the doorway, clears his throat.
Hoffman looks at him.
Chen looks at Annalie, looks at Renat holding the syringe.
I didn’t see anything, Chen says quietly.
Finish the vaccinations.
I’ll be outside.
He leaves.
Renat’s hands are shaking now.
I haven’t done this in 2 years.
Muscle memory.
Hoffman says it comes back.
Annalie extends her arm slowly, eyes never leaving Renata’s face.
The injection takes 3 seconds.
Annalie doesn’t scream, doesn’t flinch, just watches the needle go in and come out like she’s observing from very far away.
Done.
Rinatar breathes.
Annalie looks at the tiny drop of blood on her arm, touches it with one finger.
Real physical proof that something happened and she survived.
Who’s next? Ranata asks.
Breit steps forward, then Elsa.
Then three more women Marta doesn’t know.
But in the corner, one woman hasn’t moved, hasn’t spoken, has been watching everything with eyes that hold secrets.
Her name is Doraththa, and she’s about to run.
Doraththa hits the door before anyone can react.
Bare feet on frozen ground, night gown flapping.
She’d rather die of typhoid than let anyone touch her with a needle.
Two MPs move to chase.
Hoffman blocks them.
Don’t.
She’s escaping.
She’s running from the syringe, not the camp.
Different thing.
He grabs his coat.
I’ll go.
Here’s what Hoffman doesn’t know about Dorothia Kesler, 29.
Signals core.
She walked 400 miles from the Eastern Front.
Not marching, fleeing.
Specifically, fleeing Soviet soldiers who taught her what men do when they win.
She surrendered to Americans because she’d heard they were different, hoped they were different, prayed they were different.
Now a man is asking her to sit on his lap and she cannot make her legs stop running.
I didn’t run from the Russians to experience the same thing here.
Her feet are bleeding.
The snow burns.
She doesn’t care.
Behind her, a single set of footsteps.
Not running, walking.
She ducks behind a supply truck, presses her back against cold metal.
Her breath comes in ragged gasps that fog the air and give away her position.
The footsteps stop.
She peers around the truck.
Hoffman is standing 10 ft away, hands raised, palms out, empty.
No syringe, no weapon, nothing.
He doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, just stands there in the snow, breath fogging, hands up, waiting.
One minute passes.
Two, three.
Her legs are shaking.
Not from cold, from confusion.
Enemies don’t wait.
Enemies take.
That’s what she learned.
That’s what her body knows.
But he’s waiting.
Renat appears at the barracks door, walks slowly across the snow, stops halfway between Hoffman and the truck.
He’s not going to touch you, Renady calls in German.
I’ll do the injection just like with Annalie.
He won’t come near you.
Doroththea’s voice cracks.
Why does he care? We’re the enemy.
Rinade is quiet for a moment.
Then Typhoid doesn’t ask which side you fought on.
If you die, you might take others with you.
He’s protecting his own men by protecting you.
Not mercy.
Logistics.
Somehow that’s easier to believe.
7 minutes now.
Hoffman hasn’t moved.
His hands are turning red from cold.
Why doesn’t he just leave? Dorotha whispers.
Because you’re his patient, Renati says.
And he doesn’t leave patience.
Doraththa steps out from behind the truck.
But she has one condition.
No men, none, not even watching.
Doraththa’s voice shakes, but the words are still.
Renata translates.
Hoffman nods once.
Okay.
He turns to the MPs to Sergeant Chen who’s returned to the doorway to every male soldier within earshot.
Clear out all of you.
Ranata handles this barracks alone.
Chen frowns.
Protocol says protocol says female PS get female medical personnel whenever possible.
Hoffman gestures at Renati.
She’s female.
She’s medical.
Make it possible.
Deutsche.
A German treats a German with American medicine.
The men leave one by one until it’s just Rinata standing in the snow, syringe tray in her hands and 17 women watching from the barracks door.
Doraththa walks back inside on bleeding feet, sits on the wooden stool, extends her arm, doesn’t look at the needle.
Small pinch, Renata says softly.
Then done.
3 seconds over.
Dorothia stares at the bandage.
That’s it.
That’s it.
Here’s the number that matters.
23 women vaccinated that night by Renata Schultz, P, former Vermach nurse.
Zero complications, zero complaints, zero reports of the protocol violation that made it possible.
Bridget goes next, then Elsa, then a woman named Margaret, who hasn’t spoken since capture.
Then two sisters, Alfreda and Valtrad, who hold hands through both injections.
By midnight, Ranata has vaccinated everyone in the barracks except one, Gerta, 41.
Sitting in the far corner, arms wrapped around her knees, shaking her head.
I won’t take it, Renati approaches slowly.
The typhoid will kill you.
Maybe that’s what I deserve.
The words hang in the frozen air.
The other women exchange glances, confused, uncomfortable.
Marta steps forward.
What do you mean deserve? Gerta doesn’t answer, but Annalie, the girl who screamed at the syringe, is staring at Gerta with an expression that makes Marta’s stomach drop.
Recognition, not personal recognition.
Something worse.
Category recognition.
The way you recognize a type of person, a type of uniform, a type of guilt.
Where were you stationed? Annalie’s voice is flat.
Dead.
Gera flinches.
Before capture, Annalie presses.
Where? Administrative work.
Filing.
Nothing.
Where? Long pause.
The wind howls outside.
Snow rattles against thin walls.
Ravensbrook.
Gerta whispers.
Annalie’s face goes white.
Reinata’s hand tightens on the syringe and suddenly the barracks feels smaller, colder, more dangerous than any battlefield.
I didn’t.
Gerta starts.
Don’t.
Annalie cuts her off.
Don’t say you didn’t know.
Ravensbrook.
The name lands like a grenade.
Marta knows that name.
Every German knows that name.
Women’s camp.
50,000 dead.
Medical experiments.
Forced labor.
things that don’t get spoken aloud.
I only sorted files, papers, names.
Annalie laughs.
Harsh, broken names.
You sorted names.
Do you know where those names went? Do you know what happened to the names you filed? Gerta’s hands are shaking.
I was conscripted.
I didn’t volunteer.
I didn’t choose.
Neither did they.
The barrack splits.
Some women step back from Gerta like she’s contagious.
Others, Ilsa, Margarett, look uncertain.
Complicity isn’t simple.
They all wore uniforms.
They all served the same machine.
Rinata still holds the syringe.
She needs the vaccine.
Let her die.
Annalie spits.
If she dies of typhoid here, it spreads.
Renat’s voice is clinical nurse mode.
to all of us, to the Americans, to the next prisoners who use this barracks.
Her guilt doesn’t make her less contagious.
Here’s the math nobody wants to calculate.
One typhoid carrier in confined quarters can infect 47 people within 72 hours.
Gerta’s conscience is irrelevant to bacteriology.
I don’t deserve American medicine, Gerta whispers.
Not after what German medicine did.
Marta remembers the syringe, the one Annalie screamed at, the experiments Annalie referenced without naming.
Now she understands why Gerta won’t take the needle.
It’s not fear, it’s penance.
You don’t get to choose this death, Doraththa says suddenly.
Everyone turns.
The runner, the one who fled into the snow.
Now she’s standing over Gerta with an expression that’s hard to read.
Dying of typhoid isn’t punishment.
It’s escape.
Dorothia crouches down eye level.
You want punishment? Live.
Stand trial.
Tell them what you filed.
What names? What happened to them? That’s punishment.
Gerta stares at her.
The Americans are documenting everything.
Dorotha continues.
Every camp, every guard, every file clerk who just sorted papers.
Your testimony matters.
Dead women don’t testify.
Totify.
Gera’s shoulders shake.
Tears streak through the grime on her face.
Rinata waits.
Syringe ready.
I watched.
Gerta whispers.
I watched them take women to the medical block.
I filed their names.
I never filed them coming out.
I knew what that meant.
I knew.
Annalie turns away.
Can’t look at her.
But Dorotha doesn’t move.
Arm? She says quietly.
Give Ranata your arm.
Gerta extends her arm, trembling, sobbing.
The needle goes in.
3 seconds.
Done.
Outside, Hoffman hears the silence and knows something has changed.
Dawn breaks gray and frozen.
Hoffman returns with coffee.
Real coffee.
Not, not acorn substitute.
Actual American coffee that smells like another planet.
He hands cups through the doorway, doesn’t enter.
Respects the no men boundary that somehow became permanent overnight.
Everyone vaccinated? Renate nods.
Everyone.
He notices her face.
The exhaustion there isn’t physical.
Something happened.
Einerfen war in Ravensbrook.
One of us was at Ravensbrook.
Hoffman’s German has improved since last night.
Or maybe some words translate themselves.
He’s quiet for a long moment.
Then, will she talk to intelligence officers about what she saw? Renad glances back at Gera, still huddled in the corner, coffee untouched.
She says she’ll testify when the trials come.
Good.
His voice is flat, professional.
But Martya catches something underneath, a tightness that says this isn’t the first time he’s heard camp names from prisoners.
Here’s what the women don’t know yet.
US Army intelligence has been collecting testimony for months, building cases, documenting.
Every file clerk, every guard, every administrative worker who claims innocence, they’re cataloging all of it.
Gerta’s names matter, the ones she filed, the ones that never came out.
There’s something else, Hoffman says.
Medical inspection, 2 hours.
need to check for injuries, infections, conditions that need treatment beyond vaccination.
The women tense medical inspection, more touching, more exposure.
Renate does it, Marta says immediately.
Hoffman nods.
Already arranged.
Female nurse from headquarters arrives at 0900.
Until then, Renata handles triage.
I’ll provide supplies.
He hands over a medical kit, bandages, antiseptic, aspirin, sulfa tablets, the wonder drug that’s saving thousands of allied lives daily.
Sulfa, Ranati breathes.
We haven’t seen sulfa in 18 months.
Standard issue now.
Hoffman doesn’t understand why she’s staring at the tablets like they’re made of gold.
On the Eastern front, German medics ran out of everything.
Bandages were rewashed.
Surgeries happened without anesthesia.
Sulfa was a rumor.
Here it’s standard issue.
They have more medicine for prisoners than we had for our own soldiers.
Marta looks at the kit, looks at the coffee, looks at the man standing in the doorway who won’t enter without permission.
Something cracks inside her.
Not trust, not yet.
But the wall of certainty she’s carried for 3 years develops a fracture.
Renat opens the kit.
Inside beneath the supplies is a form.
Medical intake, name, age, injuries, conditions, and at the bottom a box labeled requests, concerns.
Doraththa sees it first.
They’re asking what we need.
Three women laugh, bitter, exhausted.
What do prisoners request? Better cells, softer chains.
But Ranata reads the fine print.
Medical requests, dietary restrictions, religious accommodations, pre-existing conditions requiring ongoing treatment.
This is real, she says slowly.
They’re building medical files, individual files, like patients, not prisoners.
Viient nicked vigafna.
Bridget grabs the form, scans it.
There’s a section for She stops, goes pale.
What? Previous trauma requiring psychological support.
The barracks goes silent.
Psychological support for enemy prisoners in the middle of a war.
Annalie takes the form, stares at the checkbox like it might bite.
PTSD isn’t a term yet.
Won’t exist for decades.
But the army knows something is wrong with soldiers who scream at shadows.
knows something breaks in people who see too much.
They’re offering help to Germans.
It’s a trick, Elsa says.
They document our weaknesses.
Use them later.
For what? Dorothia shoots back.
We’re already captured, already lost.
What leverage do they gain from knowing I can’t sleep? Here’s the statistic that rewrites everything.
US Army Medical Protocol, 1945.
All PS, regardless of nationality, entitled to same medical care as American soldiers of equivalent rank.
Not better, not worse, same.
It’s not mercy, it’s policy.
But policy consistently applied starts to feel like mercy after 3 years of a war where mercy was propaganda and kindness was weakness.
Marta fills out her form.
Name: Marta Vogler.
Age: 21.
Injuries, frostbite, left foot, shrapnel fragments, right shoulder conditions, malnutrition, requests, tsh concerns, none.
She hesitates at the last box.
Previous trauma, what counts as trauma, the bombing of her hometown, the letter about her brother, the sound of Soviet artillery that still echoes when she closes her eyes.
The friend who stepped on a mine and wasn’t a friend anymore.
Wasn’t anything anymore.
Just red and screaming and then silent.
She leaves it blank.
Dorothia doesn’t.
She writes for 3 minutes straight.
Fills the box.
Continues on the back.
When she’s done, her hands are shaking, but her jaw is set.
Let them read it, she says.
Let them know what their allies did while they were still planning D-Day.
The Americans weren’t in Europe yet when the worst happened to her.
She knows that.
They all know that.
But somebody needs to document it.
And the enemy who asks questions is better than the enemy who doesn’t.
Hoffman collects the forms at 9.
Doesn’t read them in front of the women.
Nurse arrives in 10 minutes.
He says her name is Lieutenant Sarah Chen.
Female Chinese American.
Nothing they expected.
Three months later, Frankfurt war crimes documentation center.
Gera Meyer sits at a wooden table.
American stenographer across from her.
Translator beside her.
Stack of files between them.
Her files.
The names she sorted at Ravensbrook.
Ishaba.
I filed the names.
I never saw them come back.
The stenographer types.
Click, click, click.
Every word captured.
Every confession recorded.
Marta is three rooms away giving her own testimony, not about camps, about troop movements, communication codes, things useful for historical record.
But she requested to be present when Gerta finishes.
She doesn’t know why.
Maybe witness, maybe closure, maybe she needs to see the ending.
Hoffman is there, too.
Promoted now.
Sergeant still working medical processing, but today he’s observing.
The Army wants to know if their vaccination protocols worked, whether the PWS who went through his station survived, recovered, integrated.
Here’s the answer.
Of 371 women processed that January night, 368 submitted written testimony.
Zero died of typhoid.
Zero died of malreatment.
14 required hospitalization.
All recovered.
23 reported their psychological trauma for official documentation.
and Gerta.
Gerta talked for six hours straight.
Named names, not prisoner names, guard names, doctor names, the ones who ran the medical block, the ones she watched, but never stopped.
They made us sit on his lap.
The translator pauses at Gerta’s words.
Clarify.
Gerta almost smiles, bitter, broken.
The American medic, vaccination station.
There were no chairs.
He made us sit on his lap to reach our arms.
She waits, watches the stenographer’s face.
We thought it meant something else.
We were trained to expect monsters.
Instead, we found She stops, searches for the word medicine.
We found medicine.
The stenographer types it.
every word.
It will go into the record, the official history, proof that sometimes the story is different than the propaganda.
Marta watches from the doorway.
Hoffman stands beside her.
Did you know? She asks quietly.
That night, did you know what that phrase would sound like to us? He shakes his head.
I knew you needed vaccines.
Didn’t know what you expected.
Monsters, she says.
We expected monsters.
He doesn’t answer, doesn’t need to.
Three years of war, millions dead, propaganda on all sides.
And one January night in Belgium, a man pointed at his lap and said, “Sit.
” And everything about what they believed started to crack.
The most dangerous weapon that night wasn’t a syringe.
It was assumption.
