“So what do we do now?” Dottie asked him in a soft voice. She looked as nervous as I felt.
“Make some coffee?” he said, giving her a smile, trying to calm her. “Pitch in at the dispensary? Lord knows the medics need the help.”
We all looked at him in silence, trying to absorb what he was saying.
“Look, I’ll try to get you out of here by tomorrow, but understand you may be walking out. Pack a musette bag, be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. I’ll have one of the guys bring over an incendiary device for your Clubmobile. If the Krauts do capture us, they’re not getting any of your supplies.”
An officer called out for him from the large tent that had been transformed into command post headquarters, and the major said good-bye and left.
“This can’t be happening,” Dottie said. She adjusted her scarf. Her hands were shaking, but this time not from the cold.
“Oh, it’s happening,” Viv said. She was pacing, swearing under her breath.
“Did he just say he wants us to bomb the Cheyenne?” I said with a groan, covering my face with my hands. “We’ve got all that mail for the other troops with us.”
We sat in stunned silence for a few minutes, and then the cold started to seep into my bones.
“All right, we might as well make ourselves useful,” I said, jumping up and down to warm myself up. “After we get our musette bags packed, let’s make some coffee and see what we can do to help with the injured.”
“But wait, what happens if we don’t get out?” Dottie asked, still trying to understand what had just happened.
Viv looked at me and shrugged.
“You mean if we get captured too?” I said. “Don’t even think about it. I promise you, we are getting the hell out of here one way or another.”
Even as I said it out loud, I wasn’t at all convinced it was true.
For the rest of the day, we did what the major suggested and pitched in, first making coffee for a few hundred soldiers coming back shaken and filthy from the line, and then helping the medics in the dispensary that evening. We were busy making soup for the wounded soldiers being brought in when we learned that we had been completely cut off, surrounded by the Germans on all sides. The news was expected at that point, and when it was announced, we just looked at each other with grim acceptance.
That night we brought our bedrolls into the mess hall and found a quiet corner to set up in. We settled into our sleeping bags, but I couldn’t fall asleep. The reality of our situation seemed clearer in the darkness of the hall as I listened to the sounds of battle just outside the walls. We were in a camp surrounded by the Germans, and, based on reports, the front lines were barely keeping them at bay. We could be captured at any moment.
“I’m going to have to wash my hair in my helmet tomorrow; I’m feeling desperate,” Viv whispered.
“Me too,” Dottie said.
“Girls, I told you, we’re going to get out of here,” I said. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Oh, really?” Viv said, her voice angry. “It’s time to stop lying to yourself, Fi. We could be wearing prison garb by tomorrow.”
“Oh please, Viv, we’re not going to be wearing prison garb,” I said, annoyed.
“You don’t know that,” Viv said, sitting up now and raising her voice. “You don’t know anything! We have as much chance of dying as we do of getting out of here.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“You don’t really believe that, do you, Viv?” Dottie asked. We were all sitting up now, facing each other in the shadows of the mess hall.
“Oh, yes I do, and I think we all better come to terms with the fact,” Viv said, still angry and emotional. “You saw the injuries today—they’re not happening a hundred miles away. They’re happening right down the goddamn road. So frankly, Fiona, I’m tired of your whole Pollyanna act, like you’re going to figure it all out and get us out of here. The fact is, we have absolutely no control over what is happening right outside this mess hall, and we had better prepare for the worst.”
“My whole Pollyanna act? Really?” I said, furious at her words. “Would you prefer I curl up in a ball and cry? We might not have control, but I prefer trying to figure out how to take action over feeling hopeless. I prefer trying to find a way to get the hell out of here so that we won’t get killed. Maybe you should focus on that too, instead of being so negative and miserable.”
“Stop. That’s enough, both of you,” Dottie said, in a voice that I imagined she used with her elementary school classes. “This conversation is over. It’s only going to get uglier if it continues. We’re all exhausted and scared about what’s going to happen, but arguing about it won’t help. Go to sleep. Not another word.”
I started to open my mouth but thought better of it and just sighed, lay down, and rolled over so I didn’t have to face Viv. I heard her huff and do the same. That was the last thing I remembered.
The next morning, Viv and I still weren’t talking as the three of us made more coffee for the men. Dottie was eyeing both of us with annoyance as we talked to the soldiers we were serving but not to each other. Before lunch, Stan, the mess sergeant, came by to see us.
“We’ve hardly got any food left. You gals have anything?” he asked. He had a shiny bald head and a frayed apron that barely fit around his chubby frame.
“We’ve got Red Cross doughnut flour and no electricity to make doughnuts. You can have it all,” I said.
“Better than nothing. I guess we’ll make pancakes,” he said, as we helped him lug all of our bags of flour into the mess hall.
As the three of us helped him mix the doughnut flour into something resembling chunky pancake batter, I couldn’t stand the tension between me and Viv anymore, so I was the first to speak.
“You’re right, I might do the Pollyanna act sometimes, but it’s only because I don’t know what the hell else to do,” I said, grabbing Viv’s elbow as she passed by to get more flour. “I just feel desperate to get out of here. And if I don’t stay positive, I might lose my mind. Or start crying and never stop.”
“And I’m sorry I was acting nasty,” Viv said. “Dottie was right. I’m just exhausted and worried and so sick of this weather, sick of everything.”
“We all are,” I said as we hugged.
“Thank God,” Dottie said, watching as she mixed batter in a large metal bowl at the counter across from us. “Bad enough we’re stuck here, I cannot deal with you two fighting.”
“Enough with the hugging; where’s that bag of flour?” Stan barked.
“Oh, getting it now,” Viv said, as she hurried over to where we had stored them.
The next several days, all of them freezing cold and snowy, blurred together as we tried not to think about being captured and kept ourselves busy in any way we could—making coffee, assisting the medics, cooking hundreds of pancakes with the mess sergeant. And of course, we did everything we could to try and comfort the soldiers. We helped tend to the wounded and tried our best to lift the spirits of the tank men and the hundreds of soldiers coming back from the line, still shaky and dazed from combat.
On Sunday morning, we woke up in our corner of the mess hall after a fitful night listening to the fighting.
“Is it me, or does it sound like it’s even closer today?” Dottie whispered.
“It’s not you,” Viv said.
“My God,” I said, looking out the window at the whiteness. “It’s snowing sideways. You can barely see anything.”
“I have good news and bad news,” Stan said, arriving just as we put the coffee on. “The good news is that an armored division and an airborne division arrived in the middle of the night. The place is thick with troops, and hopefully we’ll break through soon, because these boys are sick of K rations and coffee, and so am I. They can’t drop us any supplies by air until this goddamn weather clears.”
“What’s the bad news?” asked Dottie, eyebrows raised.
“The bad news is that German gunfire is getting closer by the hour.” And just at that moment, we heard the sound of artillery shelling coming from somewhere on the north side of the building.
“Fantastic,” Viv said.
“Maybe today will be the day we get out of here,” I said.
“Yeah, you’ve been saying that all week, Pollyanna,” said Viv.
“I know, I know,” I said, elbowing her. “But I am going to track down Major Jones and talk to him, see if there are any groups that are going to try to leave the area soon. Maybe we can follow them out.”
We helped Stan on the chow line. Soldiers were lining up, covered with snow and rubbing their hands together, trying to warm themselves.
“Things could be worse,” a GI said to his friend as I handed him a cup of coffee. “We could be over with the Twenty-Eighth Infantry in Clervaux. I heard those guys got decimated.”