Bauer patted his knee. “Well, it looks as if the Americans are taking good care of you.”
“I have no complaints, sir.”
Bauer stood up, feeling his knees crack in the cold. “Take care of yourself, Feldt.”
“I will, sir.”
Bauer reached the end of the row and nodded at his escort, a clerk who spoke a little German, and then the two of them started their return trip through the hospital.
He was almost back to the door, looking forward to some fresh air after the stuffy air inside, when he heard a shrill shout.
“It’s him! That’s the German son of a bitch who had us shot!”
Startled, Bauer looked around and spotted a man on a nest of blankets who had managed to raise himself on an elbow and point accusingly at Bauer.
So there had been a survivor after all. He had warned that fool Messner about that.
Bauer’s escort didn’t seem to know what to make of it, and Bauer himself didn’t know what to do except to keep walking. The wounded man was still pointing and shouting, “Someone stop that Nazi son of a bitch!”
As it turned out, the wounded soldier’s outburst was not going unnoticed. A doctor went over to the shouting wounded man and crouched beside him. The officer seemed to quickly parse the story, because he looked up at Bauer with a scowl.
The doctor got to his feet and pivoted toward Bauer.
“You there!” he called.
Bauer realized that his situation as a prisoner had just taken a turn for the worse.
There was a brief respite for the soldiers in Bastogne when a few bags of mail managed to get through. So far there had been airdrops of medicine, food, and ammo. Now there was also mail, because the army understood that morale was a powerful weapon.
There was little else that gladdened hearts so much as a letter from home. The words might be written by a wife, by a sweetheart, or by a mother. It didn’t matter. What really resonated was the idea that someone back home cared, had made the effort to write words on a page, and now the physical piece of paper that had been in their hands had miraculously arrived on the front lines. Many of the letters were written on the thin paper known as Victory mail, or “V-mail,” to speed the process of delivering mail.
As they gathered in the street for mail call, a few soldiers were lucky enough to receive letters from home. This time, among the sniper squad that was now part of Team SNAFU, it was Hank who got mail in the form of a letter from his mother.
The faint whiff of ink and paper made its way to Hank’s nose as he held the letter. It was a familiar, comforting smell that reminded him of home and simpler times. The words made home seem close and yet also a million miles away.
The letter had been written before Christmas, and his mother described the preparations back home, from plans for baking cookies to the perennial debate between his parents over what variety of Christmas tree was best. Balsam or fir? As he read it, tears came to his eyes. Nobody said anything about the tears.
“It all sounds so normal back home,” Hank said. “Yet here we are fighting in the cold and snow. It doesn’t even seem possible.”
Yet it was that idea of life back home that kept them going. They remembered a place where you could pray freely, speak your mind, and not live in fear of being shot at. What was there to fight for, if not for that?
Other than a package that Cole had received that contained a bowie knife made by Hollis Bailey back home, Cole never received any mail. His family wasn’t the writing type, and Cole wasn’t the reading type.
Vaccaro sighed. He hadn’t received a letter either. He looked on a bit enviously at the others savoring each word from home.
“I guess nobody in my family had time to write with the holidays,” he said.
“What about all your girlfriends?” Cole prompted. The way that Vaccaro bragged, you would have thought that he had to fight off the girls back home.
“Maybe I broke their hearts and they can’t bear to write to me,” he said.
But as it turned out, the mail sack included a handful of letters and packages addressed to “Any GI.” The corporal who had distributed the mail went around handing them out. He gave a package to Cole, who stared at it, not quite knowing what to do.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” Vaccaro wondered.
“Who’s it from?”
“I guess people back home haven’t totally forgotten that we’re out here fighting for them.”
Cole slid a calloused finger under a loose corner of the brown paper wrapper and tore it open. There was a scarf inside hand-knitted in shades of brown and yellow, with a bold red stripe worked in. Against the drab, slushy backdrop of Bastogne, the scarf was like a bright bird glimpsed in a wintry forest.
Also inside was a letter.
He handed it over to Vaccaro. “Better read that,” he said. “It might be from one of your girlfriends after all.”
Vaccaro looked at the letter with curiosity. It was addressed to “Dear Soldier” in a neat, somewhat childlike handwriting.
“You better read that aloud, Vaccaro!” someone urged.
