Jess supposed she was right so they drove north, only to discover, as the noise of shelling and bombing and gunning grew louder, that the stories were true. The Allies really had needed to launch an Ardennes counteroffensive to hold their lines, and it was failing. The women met a tank near a bombed house, the tank crew perched on top to get the best view of a village being blown up just down the hill.

“This whole area’s full of Krauts,” one of the soldiers said to Jess. “I wouldn’t take that road. Although who knows which road you should take. We don’t even know where the infantry is, let alone where the front is. But they said thirty Panzers are coming down that road. So…” He shrugged, fatalistic, as if thirty Panzers against one Sherman tank wasn’t a big deal.

“We’ll go back,” Jess said to Catherine, knowing that such a fluid situation wasn’t the best way to initiate someone into battle.

She turned the jeep around and, not long after, had to jump out and hit the ditch when a Stuka flew overhead, shooting. The noise was so loud and the concussion so fierce that it robbed their breath. Catherine clutched Jess’s hand.

“You okay?” Jess asked.

Catherine nodded.

As they were cautiously preparing to stand, another jeep, driving furiously, churning up dirt and snow, pulled to a halt. Jess waved when she recognized Iris Carpenter and Lee Carson in the vehicle. Emile, whom Jess thankfully hadn’t seen since Paris, was with them, hunched in the passenger seat of the jeep, cameras around his neck as if he’d actually been working rather than playing cruel jokes on singers, as had been his main occupation at the Hotel Scribe.

“We’re pulling out of Spa,” Iris said. She and Lee had both managed to stick with the press camp and ignore the crude First Army Press Song which was sung daily by the male correspondents—Jess suspected this had a lot to do with a certain relationship Iris had formed with one of the PROs up there. “Headquarters and the press camp is moving to Liège.”

“Christ,” Jess said. “Things are bad.”

“Come and see.” Iris beckoned.

“Let’s just go,” Emile muttered.

Lee rolled her eyes. “You wanted a ride out of Spa,” she said impatiently to Emile. “It means you go where we go.”

Jess and Catherine followed Lee up the hill to a ridge where a flood of traffic appeared. Bumper to bumper, the most dangerous way to travel with the Luftwaffe strafing above, a convoy of retreating U.S. Army trucks and tanks was coming toward them.

“We’re leaving,” Jess said to Catherine, knowing there was nothing more perilous than sitting in a slow-moving column of vehicles, unable to speed up if needed.

Before they could, the Stukas screamed through the air once more. The Sherman tank they’d seen earlier, the one whose crew they’d spoken with, was bombed barely one hundred yards away. The sound was hellish and they all dived for the ground, covering their heads with their arms but not before Jess, and Catherine too, saw the tank light up and incinerate before anyone could get out of it. Jess knew that every single man had died in the infernal flames.