The hum of the green Dodge Dart’s engine was the only sound cutting through the heavy, humid air of the Hubei mountains. It was May 1976, the final, exhausting months...
The November wind off the West Texas plains did not blow; it scraped. It carried a fine, alkaline dust that found its way through the chinks of the barracks at...
The Freight Train to Mississippi The January wind off the Mississippi Delta did not blow; it scraped. It carried the scent of damp pine, red clay, and the heavy, metallic...
The November Cold The tires of the heavy military transport truck ground against the frozen gravel of northern New Hampshire, a sound like teeth chewing on ice. Inside the canvas-covered...
The truck smelled of rusted iron, damp canvas, and the sharp, sour tang of thirty-two women who had not washed properly since they were pulled out of the shattered hedgerows...
The Ghost of Appetite The transport truck groaned as it shifted gears, its tires churning through the thick, heavy mud of the Mississippi backcountry. Inside the canvas-shrouded bed, forty-three women...
The Empty Eyes The truck groaned as it shifted gears, its tires churning through the heavy autumn mud of south New Jersey. Inside the canvas-covered bed, fifty-four German women sat...
The sky over the Kansas prairie was an immense, unbroken dome of pale blue, so vast that it made Elise Kohler feel entirely microscopic. For hours, the canvas-topped transport truck...
The Horizon of Alien Sand The Arizona desert stretched endlessly under a sky so vast it seemed impossible. For twenty-three German women stepping off the dusty military transport truck, the...
The air at four thousand feet did not just feel cold; it felt heavy, thick with the kind of freezing fog that clings to the needles of Douglas firs until...