Lotte returned to the larger groups of men being loaded onto the trains, trying to rid herself of her tears before anyone else saw them. She couldn’t wipe them away without drawing attention to herself, so she kept her head down and blinked them away.
She’d volunteered for this work, but she’d never once thought it would be so gut-wrenching and heart-rending. Thousands upon thousands of defeated and disillusioned soldiers walking into captivity. One look into their dreary faces was enough to make her stomach clench.
Marking down their names on her list, she struggled to ignore that each check represented another human fate. Lotte did what she could to bring those prisoners a tiny bit of comfort. The water bucket at her station was always full, and she reminded every prisoner to drink his
