Hey everybody, guess who's still alive? Real life is still kicking my butt and while I've had the whole last week off from work (my first holiday of the year, yay), I still only had one (1) day where I wasn't busy with essays and ten thousand other commitments. But I used that day to write a large chunk of the chapter below, which is good, I suppose :) I've written most of this from memory and from my notes for my first BoB story because I couldn't bring myself to rewatch this part of the episode. I also gave myself two anxiety/panic attacks while researching the historical background, so yeah, writing this episode is incredibly hard...
I couldn't research who the people imprisoned at Kaufering IV at the time of its liberation were, or which variation of the prison badge system was used there, so the details might not be completely historically accurate for this specific camp, but otherwise, they were 100 % real.
One note-worthy fact I learned, though: The liberation of the camp is modelled after the real-life liberation of Kaufering IV by elements of the 12th Armoured Division on 27 April 1945. The set was built as an exact replica of the real camp. It was also the first time a TV show or movie showed the liberation of a camp other than Dachau or Auschwitz.
Last but not least, I want to thank all of you for your support and kind words. I'm still not in a good place, but your messages helped a lot and I couldn't be more grateful. So again, thank you all so much for reading, reviewing and generally being amazing!
Orders to move out again came the next day. Theresa, who was still rather out of sorts after a night of little sleep, went through the motions of getting her squad organised and making sure her new kids put their gear and themselves onto the correct trucks.
"Get your ass on that truck, Barker, or are you waiting for a set of stairs to appear?"
Cobb turned and gave her a funny look, unsuccessfully trying to hold in a laugh.
"Don't say it", she warned him with a disgruntled sigh, motioning for him to go ahead and mount up when Heffron made his way over to them, grinning widely.
"Hey Sarge, I just heard that 300'000 Germans surrendered", he burst out as soon as he reached her side. "Three hundred thousand!"
"Oh yeah? Wow."
They pulled themselves up onto the truck, scooting along on the benches to make room for the soldiers that clambered on after them. Somebody – Theresa suspected Luz – had started singing Blood on the Risers and one by one, the company joined in, belting the morbid lyrics with smiles on their faces.
Theresa shook her head with a half-hearted chuckle, but couldn't bring herself to sing along. The lines hit a little too close to home for once. She pulled out the letter from her mother, unfolding the paper carefully and reading the gut-punching words again.
.
After nearly breaking down in the middle of the CP, she'd made a beeline for the aid station and practically thrust the letter at a bewildered and worried Catherine, choking out "Sam's missing" before she'd dissolved into a fit of tears.
It had only been after "Mom" had calmed her down that she'd been able to read the rest of the letter, which detailed all the information her family had on the events that had led to her brother being reported MIA.
On 22 February 1945, her brother and his squadron – stationed in Southern Italy – had flown an attack on roads and train lines close behind the southern border of Germany. One of the trains had been outfitted with an AA battery. Sam's plane had been hit and he had turned to return to base. His squadron mates had lost sight of him then. According to them, the damage to his aircraft had been serious enough that there would've been little to no chance of him making it back over the Alps.
At first, Theresa had been irrationally angry at her brother. Initially flying as a navigator, Sam had then followed his superior's suggestion/order to become a pilot and fill an open position on the squadron.
"Why couldn't he stay a navigator?", she'd sobbed into the surprisingly clean handkerchief Catherine had handed her.
She'd immediately followed up by wiping her eyes and sniffling "No, that's stupid, navigator or pilot, the danger's mostly the same."
Then, after crying on Catherine's shoulder for far longer than she'd have liked, the rational side of her brain had regained the upper hand and she'd spent the rest of the day and the better part of the night telling herself that missing didn't have to mean dead. Even if his plane crashed and he hadn't ejected on time, he might have survived. And between Southern Germany and the Alps was Switzerland, a neutral country. Maybe he'd gotten help and had made his way back to his unit or home already.
Theresa clung that hope with all her might. She refused to entertain the possibility of her brother being dead. Not until she got an official notification.
.
Sighing softly to herself, she folded the letter and tucked it back into her pocket. She sent a silent prayer heavenwards, asking the Lord to put a rush order on the next letter from her family. Whoever had said "no news is good news" had probably never been in a situation like this, anxiously waiting for more information after receiving bad news.
Around her, the soldiers discussed what they wanted to do when they got back home. Word of the 300'000 Germans that had surrendered had spread like wildfire, as usual, and the general atmosphere was one of relaxed triumph. The enemy must be on his last legs – truly, this time – and the end of the war was surely near.
What do I want to do when I get back? A question Theresa hadn't asked herself since- she couldn't remember giving the subject any serious consideration since they had left the States. A few remarks here and there, daydreams uttered in hushed voices in a foxhole… nothing more. And then, it had mostly been about things they missed or looked forward to seeing again. Making plans had felt too much like tempting fate.
Before the war, before she'd joined the Army, Theresa had had some general plans for the future. Find a nice job, marry Thomas, maybe go to college, start a family. Then Pearl Harbor had happened and within a couple of months, she'd been bound for basic training to become a paratrooper.
About a year later, the last time she'd gone home to Scottsbluff, shortly before they'd shipped out to Europe, she'd been a 19-year-old Corporal with a pair of shiny jump wings, a spring in her step and a stubbornly defiant tilt to her chin when facing the side of her family that had been against her enlisting from the get-go.
Now, she was a 21-year-old Sergeant who had lost the very last of her puppy fat and the naïve outlook of "Berlin by Christmas". She was a squad leader with a scar from a sniper's bullet on her shoulder and countless memories of pain, death and terror in her mind.
Babe nudged her. "What about you, Sarge?"
"What about me?", she asked back, having momentarily lost track of the conversation.
"Any plans for when you get home?"
She shrugged. "It's not exactly a plan, but I think I'd like to go to college."
"Yeah? What're you gonna study?"
"I have no idea."
Cobb glibly threw in that sitting in a classroom all day couldn't be worse than garrison sentry duty.
His casual but no less snarky tone pulled a laugh from her. He had a point there. The Army had equipped them with numerous skills, one of them being how to cope with boredom or the kind of droning speeches that were made up of lots of words but very little content.
.
Levinson leaned forward. "Does anybody know where we're going?"
He was met with a chorus of more or less dispassionate No's.
"Welcome to the U.S. Army", Ramirez offered drily from two seats down. "We'll find out where we're going when we get there."
"Yeah, and most of the time you can't pronounce the name anyway", Skinny added.
"Right, like that place in Holland… on the Island." Babe shook his head and pulled a face. "That sounded like grinding gears."
Theresa pulled a face as well, but for a different reason. The mention of Schoonderlogt, or the 'Island', as it had been dubbed, reminded her of what she still considered her biggest failure as a squad sergeant. Not properly enforcing light and sound discipline on that patrol. Alley getting hit by that potato masher. Being forced to pull rank on Liebgott, who had thought it perfectly reasonable to go into battle with a shrapnel wound to the neck. Jessica practically violating the Geneva Convention.
Thinking back to last October – Gosh, had it really only been six months? – made her think of Bill Guarnere getting shot in the ass, the madman having stolen a motorcycle to travel along the line more quickly.
Maxine had been worried and exasperated and late that night, she'd told her: "You know, if someone told me two years ago that one of my best friends was going to be a Philly Staff Sergeant with a reckless streak a mile wide and an unbelievable love for gossip… I'd have laughed at them."
"Max, if somebody told me in basic that one day I'd be the squad leader of Joseph Liebgott and Jessica Helak, I would've asked them how much they'd had to drink", Theresa had replied, making them both giggle.
.
She suppressed a yawn and closed her eyes, tuning out the rise and fall of the guys' chatter around her. It didn't look like they'd be arriving at their destination any time soon, so she might as well catch up on the sleep she lost during the night.
"Hey Sarge?"
Oh for crying out loud, what's a girl got to do to get some sleep around here?
Theresa opened an eye, then both, to frown at Rhodes. "What?"
"Did Captain Speirs really swim all alone across the river in Holland to scout the enemy territory?"
"Yeah." She pointedly settled deeper into her halfway comfortable position. A hint that seemed to fly over the kid's head because he glanced at Levinson, who looked like a star-struck guppy, before continuing: "And is it true that he caught a bullet in his leg and still swam back?"
"The hell was he supposed to do? Sit there and wait for the Krauts to capture him?", Babe muttered under his breath.
"Yes", Theresa told Rhodes emphatically, pretending not to see Cobb smirking at her cranky tone. "Now shh."
Thankfully, he got the message this time and quietly directed his questions about certain rumours and stories at the other veterans, allowing her to drift off into sleep.
A few days later, they caught up to the surrendering German army. As they drove past, Webster surged to his feet and began screaming at them, releasing all the pent-up frustration, disgust and anger. Nobody stopped him at first, many of them harbouring similar emotions. Eventually, he wore himself out and slumped back into his seat. His grumblings continued for a little longer until Catherine told him to save it for the German High Command.
Meanwhile, further back in the convoy, Mia let her gaze sweep over the ordered ranks, scanning the faces, a part of her mind on the dented dog tag she had pulled off a corpse in Nuenen.
The officers and wounded rode in horse-drawn carts. The rest, many of them wearing bandages, marched. Most didn't pay the passing convoy any heed, keeping their head high, their gaze forward and their expression neutral. But Mia looked closer and saw soldiers trading glances and little smiles. One grinned at something his comrade murmured and nodded. Even from the distance, she could see the relief on their faces, in their posture. They're just glad it's over.
She didn't recognise any of them though. She didn't know whether to be glad about that.
.
An hour or two later, they witnessed some French soldiers shove a pair of SS soldiers out of a barn by the roadside. The two Nazis were forced to their knees, the French taking aim.
Mia quickly looked away.
Twin gunshots rang out.
The replacements flinched.
Her stomach turned and she stared down into her lap, at her clenched hands. She rubbed away the faint sensation of blood that wasn't there and wondered if she'd become so used to death and violence that she'd stopped feeling anything other than leaden weariness.
.
Grant observed the other occupants of the truck. The replacements, every last one of them, were dazed with shock and horror. Mercier looked indifferent, like he hadn't just witnessed a summary execution. Mia appeared lost in thought, a tiny crease between her brows, her gaze distant and slightly out of focus. Her fingers picked absently at a thread on the hem of her sleeve. Carson wore an expression of grim resignation as he lit a cigarette. Ana María toyed with the chain of her dog tags; a habit carried over from fiddling with her little gold cross pendant, which had been stolen from her footlocker sometime during Market Garden.
Biting back a sigh, he explained to the replacements that the SS were the worst of the worst of the enemy. That only those who wholeheartedly believed in the Führer and his crazy blood-thirsty ideologies joined the SS. It didn't change the fact that the new guys had just seen their first death or that those French soldiers had just committed a war crime, but maybe it would make it a little easier on the new kids if they understood the reason behind it.
"I guess those 300'000 Krauts would rather surrender to us than to the French", Mercier commented.
Carson nodded. "Or the Soviets. Or the Polish. They overran that country in a month."
"I heard that they have lots of women in the Soviet military", Ana María said. "Even in armoured infantry and such."
As the topic drifted into less solemn spheres, Chuck glanced at Mia again. She met his gaze and the corner of her mouth rose into a faint, lopsided smile that looked far too bleak and world-weary on the face of a young woman that back home would be barely old enough to drink. He tried not to think of the fact that they all, newest replacements aside, had been affected – changed, aged, scarred – by the things they had experienced in this war.
Little did he know that only a scant few hours later, they would be blindsided by a completely different type of horror, a side of the war that none of them could have imagined.
The first thing they noticed, apart from the stifling atmosphere, was the silence. Bird had been chirping, whistling and singing all over the forest and in the meadows when they had arrived in the quaint, romantic town of Landsberg, a little under 40 miles west of Munich.
Now, as they rumbled along a dirt road, mere minutes after Perconte had burst into town, frantically looking for Winters, Speirs, any officer, there was no more birdsong. No insects buzzing. Nothing. Just an oppressive stillness blanketing the area, shrouding their row of trucks and jeeps into a hush.
The smell was next. A foul stench that brought up images of corpses in the baking sun, of burnt houses and unaired infirmaries. It only got worse the closer they got to wherever Perconte was navigating the lead jeep that was steered by Major Winters, Captains Nixon and Speirs the other passengers. Soldiers grimaced, coughed and gagged.
The trees grew thinner and drier, bushes and lush grass giving way to dead leaves and needles littering the ground. The forest looked sick, almost like the stench and its origin had poisoned the surrounding nature. The sun had disappeared, the sky overcast where there had only been the occasional fluffy cloud just hours before.
A bad omen, Ana María couldn't help but think, a sick feeling of foreboding in her stomach.
Through the gaps in the treeline, they caught glimpses of some sort of building or structure. But it wasn't until they rounded a bend in the road and they emerged out of the woods into a huge clearing that they could see the full size of it.
A large compound, surrounded by two fence lines, topped with barbed wire, 12 or maybe even 15 feet high. A square guard tower in each corner, facing the inside of the enclosed area instead of the open surroundings outside the double fence. A strange haze hung in the air, reducing visibility to maybe 15 yards beyond the fence line. The ground was brown and muddy, everything washed out, like the colours had been leeched away.
And then they saw the prisoners.
"Dios mío", Ana María breathed, crossing herself as she stared at the people leaning against the inner fence.
.
They pulled to a halt next to the complex, dismounting in a daze.
The prisoners, maybe two dozen skeletal figures with shaved heads, dressed in ragged one-size pants and shirts, the dark grey and dirty white horizontal stripes fitting far too well into the dreary, desolate scene, watched them unmoving. Sunken eyes followed the soldiers as they came closer, hollow, gaunt faces showing only watchful, cautious apprehension. The clothes, threadbare and frayed, dwarfed their emaciated frames, bones and joints jutting out starkly under sallow skin. A coloured patch in the shape of an inverted triangle or a star was stitched onto every shirt where a breast pocket usually was.
Louise couldn't take her eyes off those spectres. Her stomach churned and roiled, from the stench, from horror. She couldn't think past the question What is this place? that pounded against the walls of her skull in time with her heartbeat. She reached out, feeling like she was sleep-walking, trapped in an inconceivable nightmare, and squeezed Liebgott's hand. This was real. Whatever this was, it was real. She wanted to be sick.
He squeezed back, his grip almost painful, hand shaking ever so slightly.
Above the gate, the only entrance to the prison camp, wrought-iron letters formed three words. Nobody noticed them, everyone too transfixed by this horrific, incomprehensible place the patrol had stumbled across.
Winters gave orders to open the gates.
Christenson, lead scout of the patrol, snapped the heavy chains with a pair of bolt cutters. Perconte tossed them aside like they had personally offended him. Mindful of the prisoners, they slowly pushed the gate open, carefully waiting for the men to shuffle out of the way.
Winters, always a man to lead from the front, was the first to set foot into the compound. The rest of the company trailed behind him in a stunned procession.
.
More prisoners came towards them. Some had no shirts, their collarbones and ribcages painfully, impossibly prominent. Others had wrapped a ratty blanket around their bony hips to preserve at least a modicum of dignity. Many could hardly walk, swaying on too thin legs. The further they walked into the camp, the worse it got.
The ground was a mixture of mud, ash and human remains, the air putrid with the smell of decay, excrements, burnt flesh and sickness. There were corpses everywhere, haphazard piles of waxy, stick-figure thin bodies discarded carelessly like broken dolls. Most of them were naked.
Catherine fought down a rush of nausea. She had seen her share of dead bodies lying crumpled on roads, in fields and floating in the water. She had seen lines of corpses in Bastogne, had taken boots and coats and scarves off them herself. But she couldn't think of a single time where the dead had been so neglected, so defiled. Tears welled up in her eyes and she didn't bother wiping them away even as she went to find her fellow medics. Water, food and blankets needed to be organised, triage set up, backup – lots of backup, manpower and medical expertise, as much as they could get – called.
A light breeze swept through the compound, dispersing the fog and revealing the full extent of the camp. Two rows of low huts were built into ditches, the roofs rising up to come level with the ground. The only windows were a set of grimy panes in the doors. The ditches lining the main 'road' were littered with corpses, too.
More prisoners emerged, staggering out of the huts, across the planks that connected the huts to the main road. It was a seemingly endless stream, some of the men alone, some in small clusters, holding each other upright with the last dredges of strength their frail bodies contained.
One man stumbled forward and nearly fell before he reached Theresa, practically collapsing into her arms. He clung to her and even when his knees went out from under him, he was so light that she had no trouble supporting his weight. "You are real", he rasped out in heavily accented English, spindly fingers grasping at the back of her jacket.
She murmured meaningless platitudes when he wept into her shoulder, thanking her in a voice that carried so much pain that it took her breath away.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she held him and they continued to fall even after he had wandered off. She had always cried easily and had worked hard to build her composure in order to avoid ridicule and being seen as weak or faint-hearted, but right now, she couldn't bring herself to care. So tears continued to trickle down her face until she had no more left while she walked the length of the camp, bile burning behind her sternum.
.
Louise, usually never at a loss for words, was speechless, mind gone blank in the face of such indescribable, unimaginable horror.
The scorched, still smouldering huts and the overwhelming smell of burnt flesh almost made her vomit. The sight of the charred remains inside the ruins succeeded. Retching, she turned downwind and threw up.
Johnny Martin found her, braced her as she spat out a mouthful of bile.
Out of the corner of her watering eyes, she saw him look around, trying to figure out what had made her sick. "Don't-" She fisted a hand into the front of his jacket, desperate to keep him from seeing what she'd seen. "Don't look in there", she stammered, her voice sounding shaky and a little shrill to her own ears.
"Okay."
He helped her up and they walked away in silence. There were no words for this situation, this place.
Looking for a translator because Dick wanted to ask one of the more steady-looking, coherent prisoners a few questions, Mia was the first German speaker Nix came across. She was helping a man who sat on the ground, cradling a shorter, younger man in his lap. She spread a blanket over the prone man, then handed the sitting man her canteen.
Nix gently touched her shoulder and drew her away with a tilt of his head.
She quietly gave the prisoner some instructions, then rose to her feet and joined him a few steps away.
"You alright?", he asked.
Her dark blue eyes flickered over to him and she nodded. He was fairly certain that it was a lie, but there was no use in calling her on it. "Alright, c'mon. Dick needs a translator."
She took a deep breath and silently fell into step with him.
He led the medic over to where Dick was standing with Speirs and Christenson, and two prisoners that appeared by the smallest margin less sickly than the others. They looked expectantly at her when they joined them. Glancing at Speirs, then at Dick, Mia introduced herself to the two prisoners.
"Wir wollen helfen", one of them said, his companion earnestly bobbing his head.
Mia nodded and explained "They say they want to help, sir" before turning to the prisoner again, who ran a hand over his head in anxious agitation as he spoke. "He said the guards left suddenly this morning…" She switched to German, listened, shifted ever so slightly as if bracing herself against what the man told her. "They burned some of the huts first. With the prisoners still in them, sir. Alive."
"Jesus Christ." Nixon's voice wobbled. That explained the fog.
Mia remained focused on the man in front of her. Whatever he was saying made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Nix couldn't imagine how harrowing it must be for her to not only bear the brunt of the prisoner's emotions that were linked with his tale of atrocities but to also have to repeat everything in English.
"Some prisoners tried to stop the guards. Some of them were killed."
The prisoner's voice went husky, his eyes filled with tears.
"The guards didn't–" Her account faltered briefly as she tried to keep up with the prisoner's rapid, increasingly tremulous speech– "They didn't have enough munition for all the prisoners, so they killed as many as they could and then left the camp."
She asked a question, Nixon guessing from her tone that it was to double-check that she'd understood the man correctly. The man nodded and Mia said: "They locked the gate behind them and went south."
"Someone in town must have told them we were coming", Speirs concluded, stony expression marred by pained frown.
Nixon agreed grimly. "Yeah, I think so."
There was simply no other explanation why the guards would leave out of the blue, only mere hours before the US Army rolled into town.
With a brisk nod, Winters signalled his own agreement.
.
She should feel something, Mia thought as she watched the prisoner make a valiant effort to compose himself. She knew she should feel something. Horror, grief, rage, pain, anything. Instead, she just felt cold. Not the sharp doused in ice water kind of cold. Not the burning, creeping cold of Bastogne.
Instead, it was a dull, numbing cold of being outside in a chilly spring night without a jacket because it had been warm during the day.
"Would you ask him, ah", Winters said to her, carefully choosing his words, "ask him what kind of camp this is?"
"Was für ein Lager ist das hier?", she asked.
The second prisoner, who had remained silent until now, spoke up: "Ein Krankenlager. So haben sie es genannt." He shrugged, rubbed the back of his neck.
"Die Krankenabteilung von einem Arbeitslager", the first man clarified, pointing to the gate, or more precisely at the slogan displayed above it.
Arbeit macht frei, Mia read. A cold shudder prickled along her arms. Nodding her understanding, she relayed their answers as best she could. "It's a… work camp. This is the infirmary."
Someone made a strangled noise, momentarily pulling her attention towards her audience.
"The infirmary?", Nixon echoed, sounding baffled and outraged and sick all at once. A muscle jumped in Speirs' jaw as he seemed to struggle to contain his emotions. Behind them, Christenson looked thunderstruck.
"That's what they called it, yes sir." She didn't notice that she was trembling.
Winters cleared his throat. "Um, what- uh, why are they here?"
Mia refocused on the two prisoners. "Warum–" She paused, rephrased the question. "Was für Gefangene sind hier?"
"Alle, die nicht dem Arierbild entsprechen", the first man supplied.
The mention of the word 'Arier' sent an icy thrum down her spine, a sneaking suspicion forming in her mind, which was confirmed as the prisoner continued.
"Juden, Zigeuner, Emigranten", he said, gesturing vaguely to the coloured patches of fabric sewn onto his shirt – a yellow and an inverted red triangle forming a star – and that of his companion, an inverted red triangle. "Asoziale, Kommunisten, Freidenker, Oppositionelle, Kriegsgefangene..."
"Unerwünschte", added the second prisoner, the word dripping with bitterness, pain and shame.
If she hadn't been so completely numb, Mia would have felt capable of murder for the first time in her life.
.
"They're, um", she searched for the right words, "they don't fit into the Aryan image. They're Jews, Gypsies, migrants, … asocials… communists, liberals, members of the opposition, POWs. They call them Unerwünschte?" The word tasted like tar on her tongue.
"I don't know the word in English, sir", she admitted, glancing at Winters. "It means, uh, people that- that aren't wanted?"
"Criminals?", Nixon checked, but judging from his expression, he didn't seem to think it was the right term either.
She shook her head.
"Wir sind keine Verbrecher", the prisoner stressed, worried that they wouldn't understand. His companion also denied emphatically. "Wir sind ganz normale Menschen. Ärzte, Musiker, Schneider, Beamte, Bauern, Intellektuelle."
Mia relayed the message. "They're not criminals. They're normal people. Doctors, musicians, tailors, um, office workers, farmers, intellectuals."
Regular people who had probably never broken a law in their life, but whose mere existence had offended the regime. People who had been minding their own business and who had never hurt a soul, but had been branded outcasts and undesirables due to their family tree, or their lifestyle, or their morality.
"Aber das Schlimmste ist–" He teared up again, looking at her with a heartbroken, almost apologetic expression. "Es gibt noch andere Lager, allein schon hier in der Umgebung. Und", he pointed north, "das Frauenlager ist bei der nächsten Bahnstation."
There was no air in Mia's lungs as she eked out a faint "Noch mehr Lager?"
He nodded, dissolving into wails of sorrow. His companion, equally distraught, added mournfully: "Unzählige."
.
Dick's head was spinning as he tried to process the atrocities they were hearing through Doc Arricante. The young medic was listening attentively to what the prisoners were telling her. She blanched, her face taking on the colour of paper. She asked a question, voice thin as glass.
The prisoner on the right, the one that had answered their questions, burst into tears. The man on the left, who had only interjected once or twice, replied with one sorrowful word.
Mia stood frozen, a hauntingly expressionless look on her face. She was trembling ever so slightly, he realised. He called her name. It was enough to pull her out of her stunned reverie.
It took her a moment to find her voice before she could translate this last horrifying revelation. "There are more camps", she said softly, breath hitching. "Around here and elsewhere. A lot more. And there is a women's camp at the next railroad stop."
God save us.
They put together rotations to return to town and grab food, water, blankets, medicine and whatever else was needed. Lipton coordinated with the squads, Talbert checked with the medics.
"Penicillin", Catherine said, pale and harried. "All you can get." She listed off some more items, dressings and disinfectant – "high percentage alcohol works too" – among them. Along with starvation and dehydration, typhoid, spotted fever and pneumonia were her biggest concerns.
Talbert nodded, gave her a pat on the arm. "You got it, Mom."
.
Outside the fences, the officers were crowded around a radio, demanding a status update on the requested reinforcements and relaying all the information they had gained from questioning the prisoners to the higher-ups.
"The 12th Armoured should arrive at your location within the next few hours", they were told. "Medical personnel from regimental HQ is also en route, they should be there any minute."
They also got news from Fox Company. They had found the women's camp, right where the prisoners had said it was.
They were discussing stationing guards around the camp until reinforcements could get here when Speirs saw the company's five women approach. They all looked rattled, like everyone else, but determined.
"What is it, Catherine?", he asked, easily recognising her as the designated speaker for the group.
"Sir, we request permission to go to the women's camp and help there."
He couldn't say that he was surprised. A glance at Nixon and Winters told him that neither were they.
Giving it some consideration, he eventually nodded his assent. "Report back by 0900."
They chorused an affirmative.
.
Less than five minutes later, he watched them drive off. Had he made the right choice? He didn't know. The looks on their faces had left a pool of fizzing worry in his gut. Catherine, gutted and overwhelmed. Incandescent, helpless rage bubbling inside Louise. Ana María's expression practically screaming in dismay. Tear tracks on Theresa's cheeks. Mia, ashen-faced, eyes dark with agony.
They'd look out for each other, he reminded himself. And if they didn't report back tomorrow morning at 0900 on the dot, he'd go and get them himself.