—Martha Gellhorn

Twenty-five

MUNICH, APRIL 1945

The next day the war floundered on, Dan hurrying back to his men at dawn, cursing at having to send them out on a patrol that none of them wanted to make. It would take just one sniper and the end of the war, so close, would become something unreachable; they’d be in heaven or hell instead.

Jess returned to the press camp, keeping the incredible secret of her engagement to Dan more closely guarded than the papers in the Reichstag. She was unable to concentrate on anything, so she set out with Marty, driving through nearby towns, purposeless except that sometimes, they both knew, the best stories came from the most unexpected places.

In one tiny town, a German woman raced over to their jeep, calling out, “Soldier women! Help me! Please!”

Jess stopped the jeep and both she and Martha jumped out. “Is someone hurt?” Jess asked, thinking they’d need an ambulance, or a medic, wondering how far they were from the nearest hospital.

Then the sound of terrified screaming tore through Jess’s ears and the woman pointed desperately at a locked door. Behind the door, a sharp American voice commanded, “Stop clawing, you little bitch, or I’m gonna break your bloody neck.”

Jess and Martha banged on the door in unison, their cries matching the intensity of those coming from behind the door. It flew open and a GI peered out, gun raised, a girl sobbing in the bed behind him.

“I’ve got a pistol and there ain’t nobody going to stop me having her or any other German gal I want.” He continued to rant, claiming the girl was simply the spoils of victory and Jess knew that she didn’t have the stomach to photograph his foul mouth or his splenetic, hostile face because there was no humanity whatsoever in this moment and therefore nobody would ever be able to look upon it.

What had seemed so momentous in Paris in August last year had become a pyrrhic victory as the victors proved every day that their morals were often little better than those they had defeated.

The GI slammed the door shut.

“You stay there,” Jess said to Martha. She sprinted back to the jeep, speeding on until she found an officer. She filled him in through her panting breath, pointing to where he should go to stop what was happening.

He stared at her for a long moment, long enough for Jess to start shouting, as if he were deaf and hadn’t heard her. The noise attracted a crowd and that was the only thing that seemed to make the major react. He called for a jeep but before he climbed in, he leaned down close to Jess and said viciously, “The most stinking part of this whole stinking war business is that there should be women anywhere near it.”

He drove off in the right direction, Jess screaming after him, “Damn you! It’s not the women who are the problem!”