FALL PASSED QUIETLY but winter did not: 1944 was ending and the Allied troops were preparing to advance into Germany. Our maids came in the morning and told us their boys in France and the Pacific wrote letters that said they felt walled in by the jungle, that their ship would soon sail, that their destroyer had seen action and they were doing just fine.
AND ONE DAY we heard that the Germans attacked in Belgium near Malmédy and Allied communication was cut. We wrote home inquiring about our friends, our brothers, and our cousins, as we often did when the news became too much. More updates came: that Germans dressed in Allied uniforms drove U.S. tanks, using white tape to falsely indicate minefields, which cut off roadways. An American troop, weak from the cold, took off their weapons and raised their hands to the sky. German troops told them to stand in a field near the crossroads, and shot the unarmed prisoners. We heard of prison camps, of people being underfed, killed, and used for scientific research. We thought, dirty Axis.
THERE WAS THIS, and another fight on the other side of the world, in the Pacific, where Japan was occupying large sections of southern China. U.S. air forces were bombing Iwo Jima. We’d hear these things, feel rushes of emotion, or feel it was fairly normal at this point, and life resumed. A notice in bold to conserve water, a flyer for the latest movie, and the drama of the garbage collectors versus the neighborhood dogs.
ON OUR WALK back from the commissary on Christmas Eve we saw our husband’s friend Robert packing two green suitcases and a canvas bag into an Army car. Robert, we called. Where you headed? It was possible he could be going anywhere—someplace he could not tell us—but this was not a weekend bag, this was, perhaps, all he owned. Home, he said. We gave him a look. He said he was worried about his wife whom he had left behind in Poland. But as he said this he did not look at us. Something seemed odd—was it possible he was lying? He had not told us of his departure earlier and this seemed to be quite sudden, but we wished him a safe trip. We relayed the news to our husbands that evening, who seemed surprisingly unsurprised.