Most of the troops filtered out after a short time, hands full of crystal and cutlery engraved with the letters AH, linens and silver too; sweethearts across America destined to eat for the rest of their lives using Adolf Hitler’s spoon, or sleeping on Adolf Hitler’s sheets. Dan began setting the battalion to task, turning the place into their HQ. Maps were spread out on Hitler’s desk, someone sat in the chair once occupied by Hitler’s ass and a chorus of laughter ensued.

Jess pushed on, upstairs, past the out-of-tune piano on which a GI was playing a bastardized version of “Königgrätzer Marsch,” past the switchboard that had a direct line to Berchtesgarten; Jennings tried it but nobody answered. She walked through Hitler’s almost girlish chintz bedroom and into the pristine bathroom. Everything was spotless, tiles polished, no black spots of mold, the towels and bathmat a plush white, a color Jess couldn’t remember seeing for the longest time because who had the time or the soap or the bleach required to bring things to such a state of purity? The anger roiled stronger than ever.

She walked back out into the bedroom and picked up a framed photograph of the Führer. She took this into the bathroom, propping it up against the wall on the far side of the bathtub rim. Then she stood with her filthy paratroop boots on the white bathmat, marking it brown and muddy and soiled.

She set her camera down on the vanity and was undoing the buttons of her shirt, water splashing warm and clean into the bath, when Dan came in.

“What are you doing?” he asked as she slipped off her shirt.

“Using Hitler’s bath,” she said calmly. “And you’re just in time to photograph it. You don’t need to shut the door. I don’t care who sees me.”

None of this was about her naked body, which felt, right then, asexual. It was about making a statement to the world.

She took off the rest of her clothes and dumped them on the stool. She left her boots, cloddish and stout, on the delicate bathmat. Then she sank into the water, only her bare shoulders and grimy face visible above the rim.

“The Rollei’s there,” she said to Dan. “You know how to use it. Make sure you get him,” she pointed to the photograph of Hitler, “in the shot. And me. And my boots. And the dirt I’ve left on his heretofore undefiled room.”

She picked up a washcloth and rubbed it across her shoulder blades, watching muck bleed into the white cloth. And Dan did as she asked him, taking a series of shots that didn’t diminish her anger, but perhaps showed the world something of how she, and everyone else, must feel.

* * *

The photograph caused a sensation. It was reproduced everywhere, featuring in all her fellow correspondents’ newspapers. And this time, nobody accused her of using her feminine wiles to get the shot. Who would want to see a haggard male journalist in a bathtub? She’d used her looks and her body, she knew—even though all that was visible was her naked back and shoulders—to say, on behalf of all those who could not, We are the victors. To give Hitler the finger, preserved in an image for all time, inescapable. And when Warren Stone bawled her out in front of the entire press camp, stopping just short of calling her a slut, every person there leapt to her defense. Which didn’t endear her to Warren, as she well knew.