They Were Bigger Than Expected — And That Made All the Difference

…all the difference.

Because that simple, almost accidental phrase from a frightened 24-year-old German POW—“They’re bigger than we expected”—became the doorway through which an entire worldview collapsed and something new began.

At first it had meant height, muscle, the shock of meeting men who looked nothing like propaganda cartoons. But later it meant something else entirely. It meant strength expressed as discipline, decency, and restraint. It meant discovering that the enemies she had been taught to fear were—in the ways that mattered most—larger in spirit, too.

The lesson did not change the outcome of the war, but it helped shape the peace.

For the women sent to Camp Rustin, that encounter with unexpected humanity disrupted years of indoctrination more effectively than lectures or interrogations ever could. The contrast between what they had been taught to expect—brutality, humiliation, vengeance—and what they actually received left a deep and lasting mark.

A Quiet, Unintentional Act of Reconstruction

When the women of Barracks Four returned to Germany, they carried with them stories that circulated quietly through ruined cities and refugee lines:

“The Americans fed us—properly.”

“The guards were disciplined, not cruel.”

“They treated us according to rules, not emotions.”

“They didn’t starve us even though they easily could have.”

These stories whispered their way into a broken country trying to understand how it had collapsed so completely. They complicated old narratives. They forced new conversations. In a nation wrestling with responsibility, guilt, shame, and reconstruction, memories of unexpected dignity became a small thread in a much larger fabric—one woven from millions of personal experiences.

A Photograph That Said Everything

The surviving photograph from Camp Rustin still startles historians.

Nineteen thin German women.
Six broad-shouldered American guards.
Uniforms crisp. Boots polished.
No smiles. No threats.
Just people.

The guards appear physically overwhelming—yet their posture communicates professionalism, not domination. The women look worn but calm. In the expressions captured on that July afternoon in 1945, there is no hatred, no fear. Only the quiet acknowledgement that the war was over and something else—something uncertain—was beginning.

The photograph has been analyzed endlessly:

Not for its composition, which is ordinary.

Not for its subjects, who were not famous.

But because it captures the hinge between war and peace, between ideology and reality, between defeat and rebuilding.

It shows enemies who discovered each other’s humanity long before diplomats signed formal papers.

Strength Without Cruelty

What Erica learned—what many German POWs learned in American camps—was profoundly destabilizing in the best possible way:

Strength and cruelty are not the same.
Strength does not need cruelty.
Cruelty is what fills the vacuum when strength is absent.

It is easy to be harsh when fragile.
It is easy to be merciless when afraid.
But to be strong and choose restraint—that is power of a different kind.

This was the unintentional education that Erica and thousands of others received: not from lectures, but from routine, predictable, almost boring professionalism.

The Ripple Effect

Historians have since argued that this POW experience—duplicated hundreds of times across the United States—had subtle but measurable consequences:

It softened postwar interactions.

It helped ease the psychological transition from enemy to ally.

It showed an entire generation of prisoners what a stable, democratic system looked like in daily practice.

It undercut the moral authority of the ideology they returned home from.

No one at Camp Rustin set out to remake Germany. They were simply following regulations. But those regulations were based on principles: humane treatment, dignity, and discipline.

Principles are contagious.

The Lasting Correspondence

The letters found among Erica’s belongings—carefully saved across decades—show that the effects of Camp Rustin did not end when she left Louisiana. The connection between her and Sergeant Riley became a living testament to the idea that enemies are only enemies because they are told to be, not because they must be.

Their friendship—built on honesty, loss, and the capacity to see past uniforms—became part of the legacy she passed to her children and grandchildren:

that wars end

that people can change

that nations can rebuild

and that mercy, when chosen deliberately, outlasts hatred

The Final Lesson

When Erica died in 2003, her daughter read her words aloud:

“You were bigger than we expected—
not just in stature, but in the generosity
you showed to those you had defeated.”

That sentence, pulled from an old letter she wrote to Riley, may be one of the most profound descriptions of postwar reconciliation ever written—not by a diplomat or historian, but by a woman who had lived through both ends of the conflict.

In the end, what endured was not the size of the guards or the strength of the American army, but the decision—made daily, consistently, without fanfare—to treat prisoners as human beings.

It was that decision, repeated quietly across thousands of interactions, that helped turn former enemies into partners in rebuilding a shattered world.

It was the difference mercy made.

It was what being “bigger than expected” truly meant.