How a Group of Terrified German “Comfort Girls” Prisoners of War Refused to Take Their Clothes Off for American Guards and Broke Down When the Soldiers Answered With Privacy Screens, Female Nurses, and an Unexpected Lesson in Respect

By the time the trucks turned off the main road and rattled through the sagging gates of the prisoner camp, Liesel Hartmann had rehearsed one sentence so many times it felt carved into her bones.

“Wir ziehen uns nicht aus.”
We won’t take our clothes off.

She mouthed the words now, silently, as the canvas flaps at the back of the truck flapped and snapped in the cold March wind. Around her, the other women huddled shoulder to shoulder on the rough wooden benches, gray coats pulled tight, scarves covering hair that hadn’t been properly washed in weeks.

They had been called many names since the unit clerk first wrote “comfort girls” on the roster beside their numbers. Some had been pretty once—kitchen girls, factory workers, shop assistants. Others, like Liesel, had been village girls who thought they were signing up to peel potatoes and mend uniforms near the front.

The truth had arrived with locked doors, drunk laughter in hallways, and orders that used the word “duty” in ways that made their stomachs churn.

“Camp helpers,” the officers had said at first.

Later, when everyone stopped pretending, the label changed. “Comfort girls.” As if they were a service, like cigarettes or music on a broken gramophone.

Now even that name felt too neat for what had been done to them and what they’d been forced to endure.

The truck lurched over a rut, jostling them.

“Watch it,” muttered Anke, the woman squeezed in on Liesel’s left. Anke was twenty-two, with sharp cheekbones and eyes too old for her face. She had been a waitress in Cologne once, proud of her quick hands and quicker jokes. Now she flinched at sudden movement like a shell-shocked soldier.

“Sorry,” the driver called back in accented German. “Road’s worse than my sergeant’s temper.”

An American.

Even after days under their control, the word still scraped at Liesel’s ears.

In training, they had been shown grainy films and heard speeches about the Americans. Soft. Undisciplined. Obsessed with jazz and chewing gum. And yet, somehow, everywhere, landing from the sea and falling from the sky.

Later, as the war swung hard in the wrong direction, the stories darkened. The enemy was painted with crueler strokes. Wild. Unrestrained. Men who would take what they wanted and laugh afterward. Women were told—firmly, repeatedly—that capture was a fate worse than death.

Looking at the open back of the truck, Liesel thought grimly that the war had never asked what they wanted. It had just taken them in a different uniform.

“Do you think they know?” whispered Greta from the other side of Anke. Greta had been a clerk in a small town office, fond of neat stacks of paper and tidy rules. Her neatness had not survived the last two years. Her rules had been smashed entirely.

“Know what?” Anke asked.

“What we’re…what we were,” Greta said softly. “That unit. That house.”

Liesel kept her eyes on the slice of sky visible through the flap.

“They know enough to keep us separate,” she said. “Different truck. Different lists. They know we’re not regular prisoners.”

Anke snorted a humorless laugh.

“Not regular anything,” she said.

Liesel’s hand drifted to the thin cotton dress under her coat, fingers closing on the fabric at her collar. She thought of the last two nights before capture, when the officers had been jumpy, drinking more, talking too loudly.

“If the Americans take this place, do not expect mercy,” one had said, swaying slightly. “You will see what real animals are like.”

He had looked at her with a dark, knowing smile.

She had looked away.

Now, as the truck jerked to a halt, that smile flickered at the edges of her memory like a shadow she couldn’t quite kick away.

The flap was yanked open. Cold air knifed in, smelling of mud, smoke, and a faint sharp scent she couldn’t immediately place—disinfectant, maybe.

“Out you get,” called a voice in English. Then, in rough German: “Langsam. Slowly. Be careful.”

An American guard stood framed in the opening. He was tall, with broad shoulders under an olive drab jacket and a helmet that sat low on his brow. A scarf was wrapped around his neck. His face, dusty and unshaven, looked like it had been made to smile more than it currently did.

He held his rifle in one hand, barrel pointed down, the other arm outstretched to steady anyone who needed help.

“Come on,” he urged. “We don’t got all day. It’s cold out here.”

Liesel’s legs felt stiff as she slid off the bench and edged toward the back of the truck. When she reached the guard, she ignored the offered hand and jumped down on her own, landing harder than she’d intended. Pain shot up her shins.

The guard winced on her behalf.

“You all right, Fräulein?” he asked.

She straightened, chin up.

“I can stand,” she said in German. “That is enough.”

He nodded, switched to English, and called over his shoulder, “Hey, Mac, let’s get ’em lined up, huh? The captain’s waiting.”

The camp beyond the truck looked, at first glance, like every other military compound Liesel had seen in the last three years. Long, low wooden barracks. Fences made of thick wire. Guard towers at the corners. Smoke stuttering from chimneys. Men in uniform moving in purposeful lines.

But there were differences.

The Americans had built their fence in a double line, with a strip of raked dirt between the two sets of wire. The ground there was smooth, as if someone walked it every day. The barracks windows were open a crack, letting air in. Laundry lines stretched between poles, sheets and shirts flapping in the wind.

And everywhere—everywhere—she smelled soap.

“Form a line!” called a German voice.

Liesel turned, surprised.

A man in a faded Wehrmacht coat stood near the truck, a red cross armband on his sleeve. His hair was more gray than brown, his face lined. A prisoner too, but one with some authority.

“I am Stabsarzt Weber,” he said. “Former army doctor. Now…assistant to the American medical staff.” The last phrase tasted strange in his mouth. “They want you processed. Names. Numbers. Health. Then you will be taken to your quarters.”

“Quarters,” Anke muttered. “That sounds so polite.”

Greta’s fingers laced with Liesel’s, squeezing.

They shuffled into a line.

A few yards away, beyond another stretch of wire, male German prisoners watched with unreadable faces. Some turned away. Others stared openly, their expressions flickering between pity and contempt.

“Look at them,” someone said, not quite under his breath. “The officers’ little puppets.”

“They’ll find new masters soon enough,” another murmured.

Liesel kept her gaze straight ahead, jaw clenched.

She had heard worse whispered behind doors. Names that clung like mud. She had learned to walk through them as if wading through deep water—each step heavy, but necessary.

An American officer approached, accompanied by two enlisted men with clipboards. He was in his thirties, with a thin mustache and an air of exhaustion that settled in his shoulders.

“I’m Captain Reed,” he said in slow, careful German. “You are now prisoners of the United States Army. You will be treated in accordance with regulations. That means food, shelter, and medical care. It also means you follow our rules.”

Liesel watched his mouth move, parsing the words.

Food. Shelter. Medical care.

The last made the back of her neck prickle.

Medical care.

She pictured rough hands, curt orders, her body treated as a problem to be solved rather than a person to be helped. She had lived that before, in rooms that smelled of cheap cologne and stale smoke.

The captain continued.

“You will go through disinfection and health screening,” he said. “All prisoners do. There is sickness everywhere. We will not have an outbreak in this camp. After that, you will be assigned to barracks.”

He glanced down at his clipboard.

“This group,” he added, “has been designated…special category.”

The German doctor, Weber, cleared his throat.

“The Americans know where you came from,” he said in German, softer now. “The unit. The…house.”

He didn’t say more. He didn’t have to.

A murmur passed through the women.

Liesel’s heart thudded faster.

Special category.

Of course.

She lifted her chin, bracing for the next sentence.

“Because of that,” Captain Reed went on, “you will have additional medical examinations. For your benefit, and ours. We need to make sure you are not carrying infections. We also need to make sure you’re not being…overlooked.”

The pause before “overlooked” was telling.

He knew, at least in outline, what had been done to them.

“We have female nurses,” he added, almost hastily. “They will assist. You will not be…exposed to anyone unnecessarily.”

The promise slid over the surface of Liesel’s mind without finding purchase.

In her experience, promises about protection lasted only as long as it took for a door to close.

Weber stepped forward again.

“You will go to the bathhouse in groups,” he said. “You will remove your clothing, place it in sacks, and walk through the delousing showers. Then the nurses will examine you.”

The words crashed into the wall Liesel had built in her head.

Remove your clothing.

She didn’t hear the rest.

Something in her lungs locked.

She tasted metal.

“No,” she said.

The sound surprised her. It came out louder than she’d expected, cutting through the cold air like a knife.

Heads turned.

“What?” Weber asked, startled.

“No,” she repeated, voice shaking but strong. “We won’t take our clothes off.”

Anke sucked in a breath beside her.

Greta’s hand tightened painfully around hers.

Liesel heard herself more clearly now, as if she were standing outside her own body.

“We won’t take our clothes off,” she said loudly, in German, the sentence that had sat on her tongue since the truck. “We know what happens when doors close. We know what ‘special treatment’ means.”

She looked straight at Captain Reed.

“You have the guns,” she said. “You have the fences. You can do whatever you like. But we won’t help you. We won’t undress on command again.”

Her heart hammered so hard she thought she might faint.

A flicker of something—shock?—passed over Reed’s face.

The American guards shifted, glancing at each other.

“Captain?” one murmured in English. “What’s she saying?”

Reed exhaled slowly.

“They think we’re…they think this is something else,” he said. “Something it’s not.”

Weber’s jaw clenched.

“Fräulein Hartmann,” he said, recognizing Liesel from the manifest. “Listen to me—”

“No,” she said again, stubbornness flaring. “We listened to men in uniforms before. Look where it brought us.”

One of the younger American guards, red-haired and freckled, frowned.

“What’s going on?” he asked in English. His name tag read HERNANDEZ. “Why are they acting like we just asked them to walk into a firing squad?”

Reed rubbed a hand over his face.

“Because where they came from,” he said quietly, “taking your clothes off in front of men was the start of a nightmare, not a hygiene measure.”

Understanding rippled through the small knot of Americans.

“Aw, hell,” muttered Hernandez.

Another guard, a tall Texan named Cooper, shook his head slowly.

“So how do we convince them that’s not what’s happening here?” he asked.

Reed straightened.

“We start by changing how we do it,” he said. “Get Sergeant Cole from the women’s ward. And Nurse Franklin. And the interpreter. If we march them straight into showers with a bunch of guys watching, we’ll just prove them right.”

He turned back to the line of women.

“You will wait here,” he said in German. “No one will touch you. No one will force anything. I give you my word. We will…adjust.”

“Adjust what?” Liesel demanded. “The color of the walls?”

He shook his head.

“We’ll show you,” he said. “Give us a little time.”

She stared at him, trying to read his face the way she’d once read customers at the bakery in her village—who was likely to snarl, who would leave a coin in the tip jar.

He looked tired. Frustrated. But not cruel.

Her experience had taught her that cruelty rarely advertised itself ahead of time.

“We don’t have time for…for…” Weber flapped his hands as he searched for a polite German word for “debate.” “The camp has a schedule. The delousing—”

“Will happen,” Reed said sharply. “But it will happen the right way. Not the easy way. Understood, Doctor?”

Weber’s lips thinned.

“Yes, Captain,” he said.

Liesel blinked.

It was the first time in years she’d seen a man in uniform override another man in uniform on behalf of women like her.

It might mean nothing.

It might mean everything.

---

Sergeant Ruth Cole walked into the briefing hut with her helmet tucked under one arm and her jaw set.

She was tired. Everyone was tired. The war in Europe was a month or two from ending, if the rumors were true, but the work had only increased—more prisoners, more wounded, more villages shattered.

“Sir?” she asked.

Captain Reed looked up from the rough sketch he’d been scribbling on a piece of scrap paper.

“Got a situation with the special category POWs,” he said. “We need your help.”

Cole pulled out a folding chair and sat.

“I guessed as much,” she said. “The whole camp just heard someone shouting in German like the Devil himself showed up at the gate.”

“That was the ringleader,” Reed said. “Name’s Hartmann. Smart. Angry. Probably the only thing holding that group together right now.”

He nodded toward Nurse Franklin, who stood by the stove, warming her hands over a tin mug of coffee.

“They’ve been ordered to go through delousing and medical exams,” Reed continued. “Standard. But given where they were picked up…” He trailed off.

Cole grimaced.

“I read the reports,” she said. “Frontline ‘rest house.’ File says ‘morale section.’ I know what that means.”

Franklin set down her mug.

“They hear ‘undress’ and think they’re about to be used all over again,” she said. “Of course they balk.”

Reed rubbed his temples.

“I can’t have them spreading lice or worse through the camp,” he said. “But I’m also not going to line them up naked under hoses in front of half my platoon. Not after the stories I’ve heard. We’re not them.”

Cole leaned forward.

“So we do it differently,” she said. “Female-only detail. Privacy screens. Clear explanation. Slow as we have to.”

“That’s going to rub some of the boys the wrong way,” Hernandez said from his seat near the door. “They already think we’re coddling these women.”

Cole shot him a look.

“Then the boys can rub sand in their eyes,” she said. “Our job isn’t to make them feel powerful. It’s to run a camp we can live with when we go home.”

Reed exhaled in something like relief.

“Exactly,” he said. “Cole, I want you in charge of the detail. Franklin, you and two other nurses. Hernandez, you’re on the door. No peeking, no wisecracks, no exceptions.”

Hernandez raised his hands.

“Hey, I’m not the one you have to worry about,” he protested. “But yeah. Got it.”

Reed looked at Cole again.

“They said ‘We won’t take our clothes off,’ ” he said quietly. “Like it was the last defense they had left. I told them we’d adjust. Don’t make me a liar.”

She squared her shoulders.

“We won’t,” she said.

---

The bathhouse looked different an hour later.

The men’s side, still in use, was loud and chaotic—steam billowing, shouted jokes bouncing off the tiled walls, naked bodies moving through water and soap with the careless familiarity of soldiers who had long since stopped caring who saw what.

On the women’s side, Cole orchestrated a small transformation.

Privacy screens—wooden frames stretched with canvas salvaged from damaged tents—were lined up in a row, creating individual cubicles. Clean towels were piled neatly on a table. A crate of new undergarments and simple dresses, supplied from Red Cross stores, sat open nearby.

Nurse Franklin and two other women from the medical staff checked the water temperature in the overhead nozzles, adjusting valves until the spray registered as warm, not scalding or freezing.

Hernandez stood at the entrance, arms folded, eyes fixed on the far wall as if it were the most interesting thing he’d seen all week.

When Cole was satisfied, she walked to the gate where the special category prisoners waited.

They stood clustered together in their gray coats, shoulders hunched, eyes wary. Liesel was at the front, jaw clenched.

Behind them, a few male German prisoners watched from a distance, curiosity and unease mixed in their expressions.

Cole cleared her throat.

“I am Sergeant Ruth Cole,” she said in German. Her accent was rough but serviceable; she’d learned the basics from Midwestern parents who’d grown up speaking it at home. “I am in charge of your…bad day.”

A few women blinked in surprise at the sound of their own language from a female American voice.

Liesel narrowed her eyes.

“And what does that mean?” she asked.

“It means we have to do some unpleasant things,” Cole said. “Baths. Delousing. Medical exams. Not because you are…special entertainment anymore. Because there is disease out there and we don’t want it in here.”

She jerked her head toward the camp beyond.

“But we are not going to do it the way you are used to,” she added. “There will be no men inside. Only female nurses and me. You will have privacy screens. If someone tries to take advantage, you shout. I will come running, and then there will be trouble. For them.”

A murmur ran through the group.

“Why should we believe you?” Anke asked quietly. “Men said we were safe before. Those promises broke like glass.”

Cole nodded slowly.

“I can’t fix what they did,” she said. “I can’t make you trust me with words. So I won’t ask you to. I’ll show you. One group at a time. The first can come back and tell the rest what they saw. If I lie, you can throw potatoes at me in the chow line for the rest of the war.”

The line of prisoners shifted.

Greta leaned toward Liesel.

“Maybe we should go last,” she whispered.

Liesel surprised herself.

“We go first,” she said. “I’m tired of waiting to see what happens to us from behind.”

She stepped forward.

“We’ll come,” she told Cole. “On one condition.”

Cole raised an eyebrow.

“You are negotiating from a very bad position, Fräulein Hartmann,” she said. “But all right. What is your condition?”

“You stay,” Liesel said. “The whole time. You don’t leave us alone in there with strangers, even if they are women. If something goes wrong, I want the person who made the promise to see it.”

Cole considered.

“Deal,” she said.

She gestured toward the gate.

“First ten,” she said. “The rest wait. No one will be forced. But everyone will have to do this sooner or later if they want to stay here and not in a quarantine tent.”

The first ten women—Liesel, Anke, Greta, and seven others—stepped forward.

As they walked toward the bathhouse, under the watch of American guards who kept their eyes studiously averted, Liesel’s legs felt both heavy and light. Each step brought her closer to a space she had learned to fear and now had been told to reclaim.

Inside the bathhouse, the warmth hit her first.

Steam curled in the air, carrying the clean, sharp smell she’d noticed earlier. The floor was rough tile. The nozzles overhead gleamed dully.

And the only people present were women.

Nurse Franklin, a sturdy woman with her dark hair pinned neatly under her cap, smiled cautiously.

“Willkommen,” she said in German that was worse than Cole’s but still comprehensible. “It is…a good day to be clean.”

The joke was lame.

The attempt mattered.

Cole stood near the entrance, hands on her hips.

“You will go one by one behind a screen,” she said. “You undress. Hang your clothes on the peg. We will give you a sack with a number. Your clothes go in there for delousing—we will not burn them unless they are crawling. You step under the water. Soap. Rinse. Dry. New underthings, new dress. Then you walk out the other door, where Nurse Franklin will do a quick exam. No one will see you naked except the nurse helping you, and only as much as needed.”

She met Liesel’s eyes.

“No one here is going to enjoy this,” she said. “We’re just trying to keep you alive and maybe make you feel a little more human.”

Liesel swallowed.

The words pricked behind her eyes.

“Who goes first?” Franklin asked.

For a heartbeat, no one moved.

Then Liesel stepped forward again.

“I will,” she said.

Her heart thudded in her chest like a drum.

The last time she’d been told to undress in a communal room, there had been laughter in the corridor that made her skin crawl and a bottle clinking against a table.

Now, as she ducked behind the screen and unbuttoned her coat, she heard only the soft hiss of water and the rustle of fabric.

Her hands shook as she folded her dress and hung it carefully on the peg. Her thin slip followed. The air against her skin felt too bright, like walking into winter light.

She hesitated at the edge of the spray.

Nurse Franklin appeared at the edge of the canvas, not stepping inside.

“Are you all right?” she asked gently.

Liesel shrugged, arms wrapped around herself.

“I feel like meat in a butcher’s shop,” she said.

Franklin’s mouth tightened.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “That is not what we want. Here.”

She reached past the screen and flicked the valve.

Warm water cascaded down, pattering on the tile.

“Take your time,” Franklin said. “You tell me if you need to stop. No one is rushing you.”

Liesel stepped forward.

The water hit her shoulders, hot enough to sting.

It felt…wonderful.

Soap, rough and plain, slid between her fingers. She rubbed it over her arms, her chest, her legs, scrubbing at the layers of sweat, dirt, and fear that had settled there like a second skin.

For a moment, as she tipped her head back and let the water run through her hair, she could almost pretend she was a girl again, standing in the washtub behind her parents’ house while her mother scolded her for playing in the creek.

She drew a shaky breath.

It wasn’t magic.

The scars on her body—the bruises, the fading finger marks on her wrists, the ache in her hips—remained. The memories did not slide off with the grime.

But it was the first time in years she had been naked in a space that did not feel like a threat.

That counted for something.

When she stepped out, wrapped in a towel, Franklin handed her a plain cotton chemise and a simple dress. Both were slightly too big. Both were clean.

Liesel slipped them on, fingers clumsy from unfamiliar softness.

“Next door,” Franklin said. “I just need to check a few things. Nothing fancy. No knives involved, I promise.”

Liesel forced a smile.

“I have survived worse,” she said.

In the exam room, Franklin’s touch was clinical, efficient. She listened to Liesel’s heart, pressed gently on her abdomen, checked for fever, for swollen glands. When she hesitated before examining the bruises on Liesel’s thighs, she glanced up.

“May I?” she asked.

No one had asked before.

Liesel nodded.

Franklin’s face did not change when she saw the fading marks. She did not look away. She did not say, “What did you do?” She said, “This looks like it hurt,” and “You’re healing well,” and “If you have pain or bleeding, you come to us. Do you understand?”

The question lodged in Liesel’s throat.

“Why?” she managed. “Why…are you doing this? For us?”

Franklin straightened, pulling the sheet back over Liesel’s knees.

“Because my mother raised me better,” she said. “Because my brother is fighting in the Pacific, and if he ever ends up in a camp like this, I hope someone treats him like a person. Because I signed up to be a nurse, not a judge.”

She shrugged.

“And because if we start deciding some people are too dirty to deserve care,” she added, “we’re not so different from the ones who marched into neighboring countries and didn’t look back.”

The words landed like small stones in Liesel’s chest.

She had heard plenty of speeches in the last ten years. Most had made her feel smaller.

This one made her feel…seen.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

Franklin nodded as if accepting thanks for something ordinary, like passing the salt at a table.

“Send the next one in when you’re ready,” she said. “And tell them I don’t bite.”

---

Back in the waiting area, the other women watched Liesel emerge from the exam room with an intensity that made her skin prickle.

She was aware of many things at once—the way the clean cotton of the dress brushed her knees, the lingering warmth of the shower on her skin, the faint scent of soap and something floral from the little splash of disinfectant Franklin had dabbed on her bruises.

Most of all, she was aware that she was untouched. No one had grabbed her. No one had laughed. No one had called her names.

Anke stepped forward.

“Well?” she demanded. “What happened?”

Liesel opened her mouth, then closed it.

She had planned, on the truck, to shout if they were mistreated. To hit, claw, scream. To make sure the others knew.

Now she realized she needed to do the opposite.

“They kept their word,” she said simply. “There were only women. There were screens. The water was hot. The nurse was…kind.”

Greta’s eyes filled with sudden tears.

“Kind?” she repeated. “To us?”

Liesel nodded.

“No one asked me to smile,” she said. “No one asked me to…pretend. They just wanted to make sure I was not sick.”

She gestured toward Cole, who had remained by the door, arms folded, watching.

“And she stayed,” Liesel added. “The whole time.”

Anke studied Cole.

“You did not leave?” she asked in halting English.

Cole shook her head.

“A promise is a promise,” she said.

Something in Anke’s shoulders unclenched.

“Then I go next,” she said.

Within an hour, all ten women had been through the process.

Some came out quiet, faces closed as they processed the sensation of being touched without being taken. Others stumbled, eyes red, tears mixing with steam as years of tension leaked out in drops.

At one point, as Greta emerged, she leaned against the wall and began to sob in great, heaving gasps she couldn’t seem to control.

Cole stepped forward.

“Breathe,” she said in German, placing a hand lightly on Greta’s shoulder. “In. Out. No one is hurting you.”

Greta shook her head.

“That’s the problem,” she choked out. “No one is hurting me. I don’t remember how that feels.”

Cole’s throat tightened.

She squeezed Greta’s shoulder.

“Get used to it,” she said softly. “You deserve it.”

By the time the first group was dressed and led back to the gate, their hair damp, their faces flushed from heat and emotion, the women waiting outside looked at them as if they were returning from a foreign land.

“Well?” someone called. “Liars? Fools? Survivors?”

Liesel stepped forward.

“We kept our clothes off,” she said. “On our own terms. And for once, it was not a weapon against us.”

She gestured toward the bathhouse.

“They have set it up so no men can see,” she said. “They gave us new clothes. They checked our health. They did not touch us for themselves.”

She paused.

“I am not saying trust them,” she added. “Not yet. But this one thing—they did right.”

A ripple of disbelief, then cautious hope, moved through the line.

Liesel could see the calculations happening in their eyes—the weighing of fear against the weight of dirt on their skin, the memory of nights in the old house against the sight of her standing here, intact.

An older woman at the back, her hair streaked with gray, spoke up.

“They will still send us home with these labels trailing after us,” she said. “Comfort girls. That will not wash off.”

“No,” Liesel agreed. “But at least today, the water belongs to us.”

---

News travels in camps the way steam travels in pipes—quietly, persistently, finding cracks.

Within days, the story of the “women’s showers” had spread beyond the special category barracks.

Men in the main compound nudged each other at mealtimes.

“They made screens?” one said, incredulous. “For them?”

“Female guards,” another added. “My cousin in the next ward says one of them swears like a dockworker and marches like a drill sergeant.”

“Americans,” a third snorted. “Always doing things differently.”

Some said it with derision.

Some with grudging respect.

Some, privately, with a stirring of something like envy. They thought of their own first bath in the camp, rough and public, with guards making jokes and no one caring who stared.

For the special category women, the showers became more than a hygiene ritual.

They became a small, structured rebellion against the way their bodies had been used.

They negotiated, gently but firmly, for more changes.

No more whistles from guards at roll call. A separate path to the infirmary so they didn’t have to run the gauntlet of certain prisoners’ stares. A female interpreter at medical exams whenever possible.

Not all requests were granted. Supplies were limited. Manpower more so.

But enough were that they began, slowly, to believe that “no” was a word with teeth again, not just a sound swallowed by laughter.

Captain Reed wrote long, careful reports to his superiors.

“Implementing gender-sensitive procedures in POW facilities is slowing down intake and increasing paperwork,” one communique read. “However, the benefits in terms of camp stability, compliance, and long-term reputation for humane treatment should not be underestimated. Our actions now will be remembered—by them and by our own men.”

He received terse replies.

Some simply said, “Noted.”

One, from a general who had seen too many funeral flags folded, said, “Do what lets you sleep at night, Captain. If that means rearranging bathhouses, rearrange them.”

Reed pinned that one above his desk.

---

Liesel’s dreams changed, slowly.

At first, they stayed the same—dark corridors, locked doors, hands grabbing at her in the half-light. She woke with her heart racing, the taste of panic in her mouth, sometimes biting her own tongue to keep from screaming.

But as the weeks passed, new images crept in.

Water cascading onto tile.

A nurse’s voice saying, “You can tell me if it hurts.”

Sergeant Cole’s stocky silhouette standing between her and a guard who had gotten too curious, her voice sharp as she said, “Eyes front, Private, unless you want to be peeling potatoes until 1950.”

She began, for the first time, to imagine a future in which her body was mostly hers.

Not wholly. Some things could not be given back.

But mostly.

That was something.

Once, after a particularly rough night, she found herself in the infirmary with a racing pulse and a dull ache in her chest.

Rivera, the American doctor who had replaced Harris when the latter was transferred, listened to her heart with his stethoscope, then to her halting explanation.

“You’re having nightmares,” he said. “Your body thinks you’re still in danger, even when you’re not.”

“I am in danger,” she pointed out. “Look where I am.”

He smiled wryly.

“Fair enough,” he said. “You’re in less danger than you were a few months ago. That’s something.”

He hesitated.

“Have you thought about what you’ll do after?” he asked. “When the war’s over and they send you home?”

The word “home” felt like an unfamiliar garment.

“What is there for me?” she asked. “My village will know. Someone will have told them. People talk. They will say I went looking for…for this life. That I wanted it. That I enjoyed officers and uniforms and gifts.”

She spat the last word, bitter.

Rivera’s lips pressed together.

“There will be people who say that,” he agreed. “Some because they’re cruel. Some because it’s easier to blame you than to face what their side did. Maybe even some on my side will say it. People are excellent at lying to themselves.”

He leaned forward.

“But there will also be people who need you,” he said. “Girls who went through the same thing and didn’t end up in a clean camp with privacy screens. Women who think they’re alone. You’ll know better.”

She frowned.

“I am no nurse,” she said. “No doctor. What can I do for anyone?”

“Sometimes you don’t need a white coat to help,” he said. “Sometimes you just need to be the first one in the room who says, ‘I believe you.’ ”

The phrase lodged in her chest.

She had never heard it before from anyone.

She repeated it silently.

I believe you.

She wasn’t sure she believed herself yet.

But she wanted to.

---

Repatriation came on a warm day in late summer.

The war in Europe had been over for months. Speeches had been made. Flags had changed. New uniforms had appeared in old streets.

The camp received a list of names.

Those fit to travel would be sent back across the border in controlled convoys, handed over to local authorities who were still deciding what justice and rebuilding looked like in a country full of ruins.

Liesel’s name was on it.

“What will you do?” Anke asked the night before they left, lying on her cot with her arms folded behind her head.

They had been assigned to the same barracks since that first day. Close quarters had worn away some of the sharper edges between them, replacing them with something like family.

“Find work,” Liesel said. “Something with my hands. I used to bake bread.”

“People always need bread,” Greta murmured from the bunk above. “Even when they are angry.”

“And you?” Liesel asked.

Anke shrugged.

“Maybe I find a job where no one touches me,” she said. “Librarian. Train conductor. Shepherd on a lonely hill.”

Greta snorted.

“You’d yell at the sheep for walking too close,” she said.

“Exactly,” Anke replied.

They fell silent.

“What if they…ask questions?” Greta said softly. “Back there. What do we say? To mothers. To brothers. To neighbors.”

Liesel stared at the ceiling.

“We tell the truth,” she said. “Or as much as we can stand. We say there was a house with locked doors and we were in it, and that anyone who says we wanted that is lying.”

“And if they don’t listen?” Anke asked.

“Then we listen to each other,” Liesel said.

In the morning, as they stood by the gate with small bundles of belongings, Sergeant Cole and Nurse Franklin came to say goodbye.

Cole shoved her hands into her pockets.

“You’re really leaving,” she said in German. “Guess we’ll have to find someone else to throw potatoes at me.”

Liesel smiled.

“I don’t think I’ll ever waste potatoes on you,” she said. “They’re too precious.”

Franklin stepped forward, pressing a small parcel into Liesel’s hand.

“For you,” she said. “Soap. Comb. A handkerchief. Little things that are easy to lose when the world changes again.”

Liesel swallowed the lump in her throat.

“Thank you,” she said. “For…for everything. For staying.”

Franklin shook her head.

“You don’t owe us thanks,” she said. “You didn’t owe anyone what they took from you. Remember that.”

Cole hesitated.

“If anyone gives you trouble back home,” she added bluntly, “remember this place. Remember that at least for a while, you had rank in my book. Anyone who can survive what you did and still walk straight has more backbone than half my platoon.”

Liesel blinked rapidly.

She wanted to say something profound. Something that would capture the knot of gratitude, anger, hope, and grief in her chest.

All that came out was, “I will remember the screens.”

It sounded small.

But Cole nodded, understanding.

“Good,” she said. “So will I.”

As the truck pulled away, rattling toward a border that existed on maps and in men’s minds more than in the landscape itself, Liesel looked back through the slats.

She saw the bathhouse, its roof catching the morning sun.

She saw the line of women at the pump, laughing as one splashed another with water.

She saw a place where, however briefly, the sentence “We won’t take our clothes off” had been answered not with threats, but with patient rearrangement of doors and curtains.

For the first time in a long time, she believed that refusal could be the start of something better, not just another path into darkness.

---

Years later, in a small German city threaded with rebuilt streets and new train lines, a woman in her forties sat at a kitchen table covered in flour.

The room smelled of yeast and coffee. Sunlight filtered through lace curtains, casting delicate patterns on the walls.

Liesel kneaded dough deftly, her hands strong and sure. On the counter behind her, two loaves cooled in pans, their crusts crackling softly.

A girl of twelve sat across from her, elbows on the table, chin in her hands.

“Mama,” she said, “our history teacher talked about the war again today.”

Liesel’s fingers stilled for a moment.

“Did he?” she asked. “What did he say?”

“He showed us pictures,” the girl said. “Soldiers marching. Bombed cities. He talked about…camps.” She hesitated. “He said people did terrible things. That some women helped them. He said some of them were the enemy’s…what was the word…companions.”

Her nose wrinkled in confusion and distaste.

Liesel closed her eyes briefly.

Companions.

Such a polite word for ugly realities.

“What do you think?” she asked, resuming the kneading. “About what he said.”

The girl shrugged.

“I think it’s easier to tell simple stories,” she said. “Good and bad. Monsters and heroes. But people are messier.”

She looked at her mother.

“You were there,” she added. “You said once that you were in a camp. Not the camp he showed us, but another.”

Liesel nodded slowly.

“Yes,” she said. “I was.”

“Were you…were you one of those women?” the girl asked. “The ones they called…comfort girls?”

The old label brushed against Liesel’s skin like a draft.

She had spent years deciding how to answer that question, turning it over in her mind like a stone.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “That is what they called us. Not what we were. But what they called us.”

Her daughter’s eyes searched her face.

“Did you…want that?” she asked, voice small.

Liesel set the dough aside and wiped her hands on a cloth.

She reached across the table and took her daughter’s fingers in hers.

“No,” she said. “I did not. We were told we were going to help at the front. We ended up in a house with locked doors. Men in uniform came and did what they wanted. We were not asked. We were told it was our duty. It was not.”

The girl’s eyes filled with tears.

“Mama,” she whispered.

Liesel squeezed her fingers gently.

“Later,” she said, “the enemy captured us. The Americans. We were sure they would be the same. Men in different uniforms, same story.”

She smiled faintly.

“But they were not,” she said. “At least, not all of them. One captain listened when we said, ‘We won’t take our clothes off.’ He changed the rules instead of forcing us to break.”

She described the bathhouse. The screens. The female nurses. The way Sergeant Cole had stood with her arms folded, daring anyone to question the arrangement.

Her daughter listened, brow furrowed.

“They moved wooden frames and curtains,” she said slowly. “That doesn’t sound like much.”

“It isn’t,” Liesel agreed. “Not compared to all that had been taken. But it was the first time in a long time someone in power changed the space instead of trying to change us.”

She tapped her chest lightly.

“Here,” she said. “It was the beginning of something. A small proof that not every uniform meant danger.”

Her daughter was quiet for a moment.

“Do you still have nightmares?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” Liesel said. “But I also have different dreams now. Ones where water runs warm and someone says, ‘You’re safe,’ and I almost believe them.”

The girl smiled wryly.

“You always say ‘almost,’ ” she said.

“It keeps me honest,” Liesel replied.

She squeezed her daughter’s fingers one more time and let go.

“When you hear people talk about the war,” she said, “remember that they will miss things. They will simplify. They will make heroes out of men who did terrible things and monsters out of people who had no choices.”

She folded the dough into a neat ball.

“But also remember,” she added, “that there were small mercies. A guard who looked away instead of staring. A nurse who warmed the water a little more. A sergeant who stayed by the door just because she’d promised.”

Her daughter nodded slowly.

“I’ll remember,” she said.

As Liesel slid the new loaf into the oven, she thought of the men and women back at the camp—of Reed, Franklin, Rivera, Hernandez, and Cole. Of the fact that they might never know what their rearranged bathhouse had meant to the women who passed through it.

“We won’t take our clothes off,” they had said.

And for once, the answer had not been, “You will if you want to eat.”

It had been, “All right. Then we’ll find another way.”

In a world where so much had been decided by force, that small adjustment echoed louder than any shouted order.

Years later, when historians wrote about air battles and tanks and the grand sweep of armies, they mostly ignored stories like Liesel’s. They wrote about the Mustang fighter plane that roared across the sky and shattered the Luftwaffe, about factories and fuel lines and strategy.

There was less room, in official accounts, for a single bathhouse on a cold spring day, where a group of frightened women discovered that someone in a different uniform was willing to move screens instead of pushing them.

But for Liesel—and for those who walked beside her, soap stinging their eyes and tears mixing with steam—that day remained a turning point.

A moment in which war paused just long enough to allow a sliver of something else through.

Not victory.

Not forgiveness.

Just the simple, astonishing fact that when they said, “We won’t take our clothes off,” someone in authority answered not with violence, but with stunned understanding and a quiet promise:

“You don’t have to.”

THE END