“My Skin Hurt” — German POW Girl Whispered After American Medics Treated Her Burns

White Gauze Under a Texas Sky

A World War II Story of Quiet Mercy

Chapter I – The Arrival

Texas, spring 1945.

The war in Europe was nearing its end, but the young woman did not know that yet. For her, the war still lived in her body—in her hands wrapped thickly in white gauze, in the dull ache that never fully faded, in the memory of cold so deep it felt like it had burned her skin from the inside out.

She sat on a metal chair in the corner of the base hospital ward at Fort Sam Houston, seventeen years old, her blonde hair cut short in a utilitarian style that made her look younger than she was. Her eyes were fixed on the linoleum floor, pale and glossy, reflecting the harsh fluorescent lights above.

Her hands had been ruined by frostbite during a transport across the Atlantic. Three weeks in February, locked in the steel belly of a ship, packed tightly with dozens of other women. No blankets. Ice forming on the walls. Breath turning white in the darkness. Pain so constant it eventually faded into numbness.

When the American medics first unwrapped the old bandages that morning, the smell drove two of them outside. They returned moments later. They always returned.

Her name was Lisa Hartmann, and she was one of several hundred German military auxiliaries captured during the collapse of the Western Front. The telegram sent ahead had not mentioned women. The base commander had expected soldiers, mechanics, clerks.

Instead, trucks rolled through the gates carrying girls.

Some were sixteen. Some in their twenties. All wearing gray wool uniforms. All silent. All staring at the vast Texas sky as if it might crack open if they looked too hard.

Lisa had been an auxiliary nurse on the Eastern Front, later captured near Bastogne when her field hospital was overrun. She had spent months in holding facilities before being transferred across the ocean.

America, to her, was a word filled with propaganda. Violence. Cruelty. Punishment.

She waited for that punishment now.

Chapter II – The Medic

Danny Reeves was twenty-two years old and had never left the United States until the war came to him.

He grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, the kind of place where everyone knew everyone else, where the main street went quiet after dark. He had been drafted in 1943, trained as a combat medic, and then reassigned stateside when a childhood illness left him with permanent hearing damage in one ear.

For a long time, he felt ashamed of that.

His friends were fighting overseas. Some were dying. He was treating soldiers who came back broken—missing limbs, missing faces, missing parts of themselves no surgeon could repair. Eventually, the shame gave way to something else. Purpose.

When the German prisoners arrived, it was just another assignment. Medical examinations. Disease screening. Documentation.

Then he saw Lisa’s hands.

The gauze was stained dark with old blood and fluid. It had not been changed properly in weeks.

When Captain Morrison began unwrapping it, Lisa made a sound Danny would never forget—not a scream, not a cry, just a thin release of breath, as if pain had finally punched a hole through her composure.

The damage was severe. Third-degree frostbite. Infection. Dead tissue.

“She could lose her fingers,” Danny said quietly.

“Treat it immediately,” Morrison replied. “If you can save them, do it.”

Danny gathered his supplies and sat in front of her.

Lisa did not resist. She did not plead. She simply endured.

For forty minutes, Danny worked carefully. Cleaning. Removing dead tissue. Applying antiseptic. Using newly developed sulfa drugs that were still considered miracles.

He spoke softly while he worked, knowing she did not understand the words, only the tone.

“You’re doing good. Almost done. You’re real brave.”

When he finished, he wrapped her hands in clean white gauze and held them gently, checking circulation.

She looked at him—not with fear this time, but confusion.

That night, Danny tried to write to his mother about it. He never mailed the letter.

Some things were too complicated to explain.

Chapter III – The Routine

Lisa returned to the hospital ward every morning for a week.

Same chair. Same window. Same light warming her face.

Danny changed her dressings each day. Slowly. Carefully. Always watching for signs of infection.

They did not share a language, but something else developed instead—a rhythm. A quiet understanding.

By the fourth day, the swelling had gone down. The angry red lines had faded. Pink tissue began to show beneath the damaged skin.

On the fifth day, Lisa gestured toward the bandages and then toward herself.

“You want to learn?” Danny asked.

She nodded.

He showed her how to unwrap the gauze without contaminating it. How to clean the wounds. How to rewrap each finger separately.

She watched with professional focus.

When he let her try, her movements were careful but skilled. She had been trained.

“You’re a natural,” he said, smiling.

She smiled back. Briefly. Like someone rediscovering a forgotten expression.

Chapter IV – Words

By the second week, Lisa could speak a little English.

“Thank you,” she said one morning, surprising him.

“You’re welcome,” he replied, equally surprised.

One day, she spoke more.

“In Germany,” she said slowly, choosing each word, “they say Americans are cruel. That if captured, we will be punished.”

Danny listened.

“I thought you would let my hands die,” she continued. “Because I am German.”

He shook his head.

“You needed help,” he said. “That’s enough reason.”

She considered this.

“I think,” she said carefully, “this is why America will win. Not only bombs. Because you still see people as people.”

Danny had no answer for that.

Chapter V – After Victory

Germany surrendered in May.

The base celebrated. Radios played. Trucks honked. Soldiers shouted with relief.

The German women folded laundry in silence.

Lisa thought of Hamburg. Of streets that no longer existed. Of her mother and sister, whose fate she did not know.

She was assigned to work in the base laundry. The work was hard but honest. American civilian women supervised. Some kept their distance. Others offered small kindnesses—water on hot days, gloves for her healing hands.

Her scars faded from angry pink to pale white.

Danny received new orders in June. California. A veterans hospital overwhelmed with returning soldiers.

They met one last time by chance.

Lisa extended her hand.

“Thank you,” she said. “For my hands. For showing me not all Americans are what we were told.”

Danny shook her hand carefully.

“I’m glad you’ll be okay,” he said.

That was all.

Chapter VI – Going Home

Lisa returned to Germany in late 1945.

Hamburg was rubble.

But her mother was alive. Her sister too.

Lisa finished nursing school and spent forty years caring for patients across Germany. She taught her children that healing was a choice.

Sometimes, she looked at her hands and remembered Texas.

Danny worked in veterans hospitals for three decades. He treated thousands of wounded soldiers. He never forgot the girl with frostbitten hands.

He never found her again.

But sometimes, when he worked slowly and carefully on a patient everyone else had given up on, he thought of her.

Chapter VII – What Remains

Historians would later note that hundreds of thousands of German prisoners passed through American custody.

Most were treated correctly.

Some were treated kindly.

Those moments never made headlines. They did not change the outcome of the war.

But they changed lives.

In Texas, in 1945, under a wide and indifferent sky, a young American medic chose to treat an enemy like a patient.

A young German girl chose to trust someone she had been taught to fear.

The war left scars.

But not all wounds remained open.

And sometimes, that was enough.

Note: Some content was generated using AI tools (ChatGPT) and edited by the author for creativity and suitability for historical illustration purposes.