“I agree, we should,” I said, looking at the poor colonel. “How’s your truck?”
“It’s okay; it didn’t take as much damage for sure,” said the first soldier. “We can still get these supplies to the front anyway.”
The soldiers helped us hook up the jeep’s trailer to the back of the Cheyenne, and we thanked them and said our good-byes.
“Oh and Merry Christmas!” one of them called out as they drove away.
“My God, it’s Christmas Eve,” Viv said, looking stunned as she climbed into the cab next to me. “For the first time in my life, I had completely forgotten.”
“Me too,” I said, remembering my parents and my sisters sitting around the fireplace, drinking punch and opening gifts. Thinking of Danny and Peter, wherever they were. A deep melancholy overcame me.
“All right, so find a farmhouse?” I said, taking a deep breath, gripping the wheel to ground myself in reality.
“Yes, empty house or not empty?”
“At this point, I think we should just go with the first one we find,” I said.
I drove a little slower and more cautiously, now all too aware that another vehicle could come out of the darkness and hit us head-on.
“There, through the woods,” Viv said, rolling down the passenger’s side window and pointing ahead to the right. “I see lights; I bet there’s a turn coming up for it.”
We almost missed the narrow, unmarked road. When we turned down it, the trees closed in on us, snowy branches scraping both sides of the Cheyenne. They cleared in front of a stone cottage lit from within. To the right of it was a fenced-in field, a red wooden barn on the far side.
“Pray that they’re friendly,” I said. Dottie stayed with the colonel. Hoffman, Viv, and I approached the front door and knocked.
A boy of about thirteen years old answered and eyed us warily. He was tall and handsome with sandy-brown hair and freckles. A petite, middle-aged blonde woman came up behind him and glared at us.
“Ja? Was machst du hier?” the woman asked.
“Uh, Americans,” I said, pointing to myself, wishing I spoke German.
“I thought you were Americans,” the boy said, looking us over, at our mud-stained field jackets, at Hoffman’s freshly bandaged face.
“You speak English,” I said.
“And Dutch and French too,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
I told him our tale, explaining that we had an injured officer in the back of our truck. He nodded and turned to his mother, translating for her. Her expression softened as he told her, but they were still on guard. She eyed us, deciding our fate. She looked at her son and said, “Hol zwei Hühner.” Then she looked at us and added, “Bring deine Freunde hinein.”
I looked at the son, and he smiled.
“She said I have to go get two chickens and you can bring your friends inside,” he said. “I’m Fritz, and my mother’s name is Elisabeth. I’ll be right back.” Then he ran past us to the barn.
When we opened the back of the Cheyenne, the colonel stirred and groaned, the temporary bandages Dottie had placed on his wounds soaked with blood. We carefully lifted him out of the back of the truck and carried him down the path to the front door of the cottage.
Elisabeth opened the door for us and was alarmed when she saw the colonel’s condition. She motioned for us to bring him to a small settee in the corner of the large sitting area and brought over a green plaid wool blanket.
The first floor of the cottage was lit only by candlelight and had whitewashed stone walls and low ceilings with large dark beams. Next to the settee there were several chairs of various sizes assembled around a roaring fireplace. There was a big wooden table at the back of the room flanked by benches, and behind the table was a door to a small kitchen.
Viv fetched the first aid supplies, and Dottie sprinkled antiseptic sulfa powder on the colonel’s wounds as I helped Hoffman bandage him up again.
“I’m going to give him a shot of morphine. He’s going to be in a lot of pain when he wakes up,” Hoffman said. We had all been so cold for so long, we huddled by the fire and tried to defrost ourselves.
“I had forgotten what it felt like to be warm,” Viv said with a sigh.
Fritz came back with two freshly killed chickens that he presented proudly to his mother. He walked into the kitchen with her, and they continued speaking German.
“My mother’s making chicken and potato stew. She said you all look too thin and pale, and that he looks close to death,” Fritz said, pointing to the colonel. He sat down with us by the fire. “My father is working in Aachen, Germany, where we lived before our home was bombed. We thought you were him. I don’t think he’s going to make it home tonight.”
There was a knock at the door just then, and Fritz’s face lit up.
“Maybe he made it after all?” I said.
Fritz jumped up and went to the front door as Elisabeth came hurrying from the kitchen.
“Mehr Amerikaner?” she asked, looking at me, questioning. I shook my head—no more Americans that I knew of.
Fritz opened the door, and from where I was sitting, I caught a glimpse of three soldiers. German ones. Elisabeth glanced at us, her face white with terror. She pushed past Fritz and shut the door behind her.
Fritz was up against the door, trying to listen, terrified at what was happening on the other side.
“The penalty for harboring the enemy is execution,” he whispered, trying not to cry. “They could kill us. They could kill us all.”
The four of us were standing now. Hoffman had his hand on his gun, and he made his way closer to the door. We looked at each other, unsure what to do next but staying as quiet as possible. The colonel started to groan, and I prayed he didn’t get any louder.
We heard Elisabeth yell in German, “Es ist Heiligabend und hier wird nicht geschossen.”
“She told them it’s the holy night and there will be no shooting here,” Fritz said, his head against the door. “She’s telling them they have to leave their weapons outside.”
“They’re coming in?” Viv said. “In the house?”
“Yes,” Fritz said, looking as nervous as I felt.
The door opened, nearly knocking Fritz over, and Elisabeth walked in with the three German soldiers, their faces stony. I was struck by how young two of them were; one was tall and lanky, the other had a medium build and white-blond hair. Neither of them was more than sixteen years old. The other soldier was older and strikingly handsome, very tall with thick black hair, cobalt-blue eyes, and pale skin. He looked to be in his midtwenties.
All of us stood there in silence, and the tension in the air was so thick I could almost swat it with my hand. The colonel groaned again, and the older soldier looked over at him, and for a second his face flashed an emotion other than anger.
Elisabeth walked over to us, said something in German, and held out her hands to Hoffman.
“She said give her your weapons, they are going outside too,” Fritz said.
Hoffman handed her his gun and told Fritz the colonel was not armed.
Elisabeth took the guns outside, and when she came back in, the Germans seemed a little less on guard. Maybe it was the lure of the warm fire, but the tall, skinny soldier reached into his bag and pulled out a loaf of rye bread and handed it to Elisabeth, prompting the other young soldier to pull two bottles of red wine out of his bag.
Elisabeth thanked them, and Fritz followed her into their tiny kitchen. He returned a minute later and passed out glasses of red wine, first to the Germans, then to us. We were all standing there, awkward and tense, the Germans still close to the door, ready to make a run for their weapons if necessary.
“Oh for goodness’ sake, we can’t do this all night.” I looked at Viv, Dottie, and Hoffman and said, “Sit down.”
Hoffman shot me a look, telling me he wasn’t comfortable with this. “Sit,” I said.
I pointed to the open chairs and floor space around the fire and looked at the Germans.
“Please. Sit. It’s Christmas Eve.”
“Thank you,” the older soldier said in a strongly accented baritone voice. He translated for the younger ones, and they walked over to the fireplace, giving us nervous half smiles.
We sat quietly, warming up by the fire, sipping red wine. A silent, uneasy truce.
After a few minutes, the older soldier took a sip of wine and pointed to Colonel Brooks.
“What happened?” he asked.
Hoffman explained what had happened in the accident, and the tension in the air finally started to evaporate.
“I am a medical student, or I was. Before,” he said, frowning as he looked at the colonel. “Do you want me to take a look?”
“Yes,” Dottie said before any of us could protest. Hoffman looked at her, horrified.
“He needs more care. Tonight, it can’t wait,” Dottie said. “We have a first aid kit; he needs stitches, but I can’t . . . none of us are nurses.” She gave the German an agonized look.