On this particular afternoon, we had served some outfits that were part of the 106th Infantry Division near the village of Vielsalm. Most of the men were young and relatively green, having just arrived in the fall. From the moment we arrived, something felt off; the low morale hung in the air like a sickness. Men sat playing cards by small fires, but there were no easy smiles or laughs like we regularly saw at other camps.
We did all we could to lift their spirits and kept serving coffee and doughnuts, cigarettes and candy until we had nothing left. Poor Dottie played her guitar for them with nearly frozen fingers. Barbara even got in on the act as the men passed her around and unsuccessfully tried to get her to play fetch. As we were packing up, the commanding officer, Major General Andrew Jones, came up to us just before we were ready to leave.
“You girls made my men’s day,” he said. “It’s been a rough run; many of these fellas are young—almost all of them are under twenty-two years old and new here. And this weather isn’t helping their mood. God help the lot of them if we see any real action.”
“This weather isn’t good for anyone’s mood,” I said.
“I have to ask a favor,” he said. “I know there’s another mail delivery coming soon, several truckloads into Bastogne. When it arrives, is there a chance you could make a special delivery to us? It would be the boost they need. Serve ’em some more coffee, pass out the mail. You know how it is—mail’s a lifeline to these men, especially before Christmas.”
“Of course we can do that, sir. Happy to.”
We got in the car and followed our GI driver back to our chateau. It was getting dark, and the snow was coming down, as it seemed to be every other hour. A couple of times one of us had to get out and fix the windshield wipers, which were barely adequate.
After one of these stops, I banged my hands on the steering wheel and rubbed them together to try to warm them up. The tips of my fingers were so icy cold, it was making it harder to drive.
“Fiona, I’ve been meaning to tell you: you’ve become quite the driver,” Dottie said through chattering teeth. “You drive on these slippery, treacherous roads like it’s nothing now.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I actually don’t dread it like I used to. I kind of love it, even in this weather.”
“I’m praying that the girls have the woodstove going already. I have three pairs of socks under these boots, and my toes are still numb,” Viv said.
“I would pay a thousand dollars for a hot bath,” Dottie said. “And a letter from Joe, or Christmas mail from home.”
“You heard the major about mail delivery to the 106th?” I said as we headed up the drive toward the chateau.
“Yes,” Viv said. “No way to say no to that really. Those boys were miserable.”
Desperate to get warm, we ran into the chateau as soon as we got there, saying hello to a few Clubmobile girls as we climbed the stairs to our room.
We walked in, and Blanche was huddled on her cot, wrapped in her sleeping bag like a mummy; her face the only thing visible. Frankie and Martha were in front of the woodstove on the other side of the room, trying to get it going.
“Oh, hey, girls, don’t mind me,” Blanche said. “Not feeling so great, and I’m pretty sure my hands are almost frostbitten.”
“We’re all frozen,” Frankie said as Martha continued to poke at the wood in the stove. “And this damn wood is so wet from the snow, we can’t get it—”
The room lit up as the woodstove exploded. The sound was deafening, and then there was fire, some of it engulfing Martha and Frankie, who both let out the most horrific screams.
They were both on the ground, so I grabbed my sleeping bag, and Viv and Dottie did the same as we tried to pat down the flames scorching their clothes and bodies. Girls and GIs started running into the room, and someone doused them with water as one of the GIs tamed the flames still shooting out of the woodstove.
Martha’s hands were burned beyond recognition, and she had another burn across her cheek. She was sobbing hysterically from the pain. The fire had scorched through Frankie’s pants, and her right thigh was badly burned. Tears streamed down her face, which had turned gray and ashen.
“I’m a medic!” A soldier with dark-brown hair came running in with a first aid kit and kneeled down in between them. “We’ve got to get them to the nearest station hospital now.”
“I’ll drive if you can show me the way,” I said. “We can take them in the Clubmobile.”
“Good,” the medic said. “The hospital is in Thionville, about an hour from here.”
“I’ll go with you,” Blanche said, tears streaming down her face.
“Should Dottie and I come too?” Viv said, devastated as we watched the medic tend to our poor friends. Dottie was kneeling next to them, stroking Martha’s hair, trying to comfort her, but she was still crying hysterically.
“No, it’s a long drive, and the Cheyenne’s going to be crowded as it is,” I said to Viv, giving her a quick hug. “Clean up in here, try to get some sleep for both of us.”
Some GIs came back with stretchers so they could carry the girls downstairs to the truck. The medic, named Wyatt, gave them both morphine for the pain.
We got them settled in the back with Wyatt, and Blanche sat up front with me. Wyatt gave me basic directions, and I put the cat-eye headlights on and started down the road to the field hospital.
“Blanche, what happened?” I said. We had been driving in silence for about a half hour. Martha and Frankie were quiet now, and Wyatt the medic was taking good care of them.
“I know exactly what happened,” Blanche said. She had a mustard-colored military blanket wrapped around her. “We came in damn near frozen to death; I couldn’t even help them, my hands hurt so bad from the cold. We were desperate to warm up, but the wood was so wet it wouldn’t light for anything. Finally, Frankie and Martha decided to pour some gasoline on it, only a little at a time. I told them it was a bad idea. I should have insisted we call a GI to help.” She started to sob. “This is my fault.”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “This was an accident; you cannot blame yourself.”
We arrived at the station hospital, which had the look of a small, well-kept medical clinic. They whisked Frankie and Martha inside to tend to their injuries, and Blanche and I thanked Wyatt and sat in the makeshift waiting room to wait for the doctor.
We had only been there an hour when casualties started coming in, first just a few and then one after another until the clinic went from calm and quiet to mass confusion.
“Why were these soldiers moved?” I heard one Red Cross nurse ask a doctor. “They should be at the field hospital near the front.”
“Unless the field hospital is full,” the doctor said, a grave look on his face.
The nurse looked up at him to see if he was serious.
“What in God’s name is happening?” she asked him.
Those questions were echoed through the night as more injured kept coming in and the doctors and nurses worked at a feverish pace to try to keep up with the flow.
I walked outside for some air and heard the roar of military vehicles on the road in massive numbers.
“Do you know what’s happening?” I asked a nurse who had stepped outside for a cigarette.
“No idea,” she said. “Nothing good.”
“Can we help somehow? My friend and I feel helpless in there.”
“Follow me,” she said.
Blanche and I spent the rest of the night taking orders from the incredible nurses, helping in any way we could, whether it was fetching bandages for them, holding the hand of a young man getting shrapnel removed, or helping a GI sip water from a straw. All the while, we anxiously waited to talk to the doctor tending to Martha and Frankie. He finally called us over around 3:00 a.m., when there was a lull in activity.
“Your friend Martha has third-degree burns on her hands. They’re going to require skin grafts and plastic surgery,” the doctor told us. “We’ve got to move her to London for that. Frankie’s burns aren’t as bad—first degree—but she’ll be here at least for a couple of days.”
Seeing our sadness, he gave us a sympathetic smile. “They’re lucky to be alive. It could have been much worse. They’re both sleeping now, and you should go get some rest yourselves.”
They had Frankie and Martha in beds next to each other; they were sound asleep, with loose bandages on Martha’s hands and face and on Frankie’s leg. They looked younger, more vulnerable, sleeping in their hospital gowns. We left notes of encouragement on the table in between their beds and shed some tears as we kissed them both good-bye on their foreheads. Then Blanche and I found an urn of stale coffee and had a quick cup before we started the drive back to the chateau. Wyatt the medic had already hitched a ride back an hour before. It was well before dawn, but the roads were now even more crowded with convoys of vehicles, all headed in the same direction as us.
“What the hell is going on? I thought it was supposed to be quiet around here,” Blanche said.
“My guess?” I said. “The Nazis decided this dense forest was the perfect place for a surprise attack.”
“Just in time for Christmas,” Blanche said, sounding tired and depressed.
“You should sleep. Who knows how long it’s going to take us to get back?” I said. “And who knows what will be waiting for us when we do.”
Chapter Twenty-Three