Chapter 33. Peace Hopes Renewed

Immediately after the fighting ended in Bastogne, the goose-stepping arrogance of our German prisoners was transformed to amenability and the attention of the 95^th staff and patients focused on battles to the east, leading toward Berlin instead of on the German pockets north of us.  It took about a month of hard work because of patient load and re-orientation to watching military movement through the mountains and river valleys to the west of us before we became upbeat and thinking about peace.

By March in our sleep quarters we Red Cross gals had been provided a table against the wall and there I could find time to write an occasional full letter home.  One surviving letter mentioned that I had had a day off and enjoyed playing the Officer’s Club piano, sight-reading some of my new Debussy sheet music.  When first in Paris I found that sheet music of classical French composers could be bought for a steal.

Occasionally after 5p.m. with a feel of spring in the air I had taken a walk into a nearby village, was charmed to see snowdrops, new to me, among the other bulb beauties, daffodils and narcissus in such abundance.

Our French villages near Belgium and Germany indeed were picturesque.  Every morning the homemakers hung bedding out the upper windows for airing.  The farmhouse nearby stood alone as in the US.  All buildings were connected like our townhouses today, for safety from previous ages no doubt.  Thus their barns, feed lots, and storage lofts formed the lower parts of their private living quarters.  The smell of manure permeated the countryside.

March also brought me chances to catch a Jeep ride accompanying an officer or GI on an errand to such nearby places as Commercy, St. Dizier, Ligny, and once or twice to Reims.  Best of all that spring, I worked extra hours to be able to travel up to Liege, Belgium where Neill, my older brother, was a doctor in the highly rated all Michigan University Medical School-staffed 91^st General Hospital, which had been brought over from Bristol, England.

For the trip up and back to Belgium I got permission to sit beside the GI driver of a 21-ton army truck.  We lumbered along enjoying the beautiful spring countryside, lively with spring flowers and bursting greenery, although disturbing small villages with only a main street running through them.  Typically, the main street was so narrow that there was barely standing room between the sidewalk and our wide-bodied Red Ball truck.  My GI driver in each case crept along very slowly and most carefully.

Nevertheless a traumatic thing happened in one Belgian village.  As earlier when we passed through, housewives appeared at their doors to see what was happening.  Near the middle of this small village, my driver and I heard a soft, pained dog wail.  Instantly the housewives, kids, and old people swarmed out of the doors.  Screaming with hate they shook fists at us and banged on the sides of the truck, making threats.  I felt ill to know we had run over a puppy and even sicker to see how the GI was suffering.  There had been no chance whatever of our seeing a small dog from our truck seat high above the heavy wheels of the big truck.