They Thought Their Hands Were Broken: German POW Girls Cried in Shock as U.S. Soldiers Cut Off Their Chains

They were sure the bones would snap.

For five days and nights, 247 German women rattled across a foreign continent in stinking boxcars, wrists locked together in iron, fear locked even tighter in their throats. They had been told exactly what would happen when they reached American soil:

The Americans will torture you.
They will strip you.
They will break your bodies and laugh while you scream.

So when three U.S. soldiers walked toward them at Camp Ruston, Louisiana, carrying huge steel bolt cutters, the women began to shriek.

They weren’t sobbing from relief.

They were certain their hands were about to be crushed.

What happened next destroyed everything they thought they knew about the enemy.

Shackled, Starving, and Terrified

They had come from a dying Reich.

Radio operators, clerks, typists, nurses, munitions workers—the backbone of the German war machine’s “women’s auxiliaries.” They’d worn uniforms once. They’d saluted flags. They’d believed the slogans.

Now their uniforms were filthy rags. Their boots were worn through. Their spirits were a mix of numbness and terror.

They were chained in pairs:
Right wrist to left wrist.
Strangers forced into intimate captivity.

The shackles were brutal—thick iron cuffs biting into tender skin, connected by short, heavy links. Three pounds of metal hung from each wrist, dragging down their arms, cutting deeper with every jolt of the train.

Simple things became impossible:

• Scratching an itch on your nose
• Wiping away sweat
• Shifting your weight in sleep

Every movement had to be negotiated with the woman chained to you. If she rolled over, you rolled with her—or woke in agony.

Greta, 22, from Hamburg, found herself chained to a girl barely out of her teens.

“Elsa,” the girl whispered that first night, voice trembling. “Berlin.”

In three days, they learned each other’s rhythms better than most couples. The way Elsa whispered prayers when she thought no one could hear. The way Greta’s jaw clenched and ground her teeth whenever the train hit a rough section of track.

By the second night, the skin around their wrists was rubbed raw.

By the third, it was bleeding.

By the fifth, it was a constant, throbbing agony that merged with the hunger and fear into one endless, grinding pain.

Inside the car, the air was a thick soup of:

• Sweat
• Urine
• Fear
• Human breath baked by daytime heat and chilled by night air

There was no toilet. Just a bucket in the corner that sloshed and overflowed and humiliated everyone.

Outside, through the cracks between wooden slats, was another world.

One they had been told was on its knees.

The Terrifying Country Outside the Slats

They had seen the newsreels.

American cities on fire.
American industry crumbling.
American people starving under righteous German bombing.

That was the story.

The view from the boxcar told a different story.

Fields.
Endless, rich, green fields.

Towns at night with lights blazing in every window—electricity used casually, wastefully, like water. No blackouts. No sirens. No anti-aircraft guns against a dark sky.

Children stood in front yards and waved as the train passed.

Cars drove along paved roads without swerving around bomb craters. Factories stood untouched, chimneys puffing white smoke into serene blue skies.

It was like looking through a keyhole into another universe.

The deeper into America they traveled, the more obvious the lie became. This country wasn’t starving or broken.

It was thriving.

And that terrorized the women more than any threat.

Because if the enemy had this much food, this much power, this much untouched wealth…

What else had Germany lied about?

They didn’t have time to answer that question.

Because the train finally began to slow.

Arrival at Camp Ruston: The Moment of Dread

The train hissed and shuddered to a stop.

Silence settled into the boxcar—thick, suffocating. For a heartbeat, no one moved.

This was the edge of the unknown.

Outside, boots crunched on gravel. Voices in English barked orders.

The metal door shrieked open.

Daylight stabbed into the darkness. The women squinted, flinched, shrank back.

“Raus! Out!” shouted a German-speaking guard.

They moved in a stumbling, clinking, shuffling mass.

The first woman misjudged the drop from the boxcar and fell, pulling her chained partner down, who yanked another behind her. A small tangle of bodies hit the ground, crying out.

The American guards did something unexpected.

They didn’t laugh.

Greta had braced herself for jeers, kicks, rifle butts.

Instead, a soldier reached down and helped one of the fallen women to her feet, steadying her without a word.

Louisiana in February felt like another planet after a German winter.

Warm, heavy air pressed against their skin. The sky above Camp Ruston was gigantic and painfully blue. Pine trees whispered in the distance. Birds sang.

It was beautiful.

And absolutely horrifying.

Greta and Elsa shuffled forward, shackles clinking, trying to take everything in at once:

• Guard towers with armed U.S. soldiers
• A double fence of barbed wire
• Rows of wooden buildings painted white
• A big sign: “Camp Ruston”

Then another smell hit them.

Food.

Real food.

Not watery cabbage. Not stale crusts. Not bitter ersatz coffee.

The air carried the rich, almost obscene scents of:

• Roasting meat
• Fresh bread
• Coffee so strong it made their mouths flood with saliva

Someone behind Greta began to cry just from the smell.

“This is a trick,” one woman muttered. “It has to be.”

The line halted.

An officer walked slowly along the row of shackled women, clipboard in hand. He was maybe thirty, with tired eyes and a face that looked more worn than cruel.

His gaze fell on their wrists.

Bloody. Swollen. Scabbed and shining with rawness.

His jaw clenched.

He said something sharp in English to a nearby soldier, who nodded and hurried away.

Greta’s stomach turned to ice.

“This is it,” she thought. “Now the torture begins.”

The Bolt Cutters: Metal Jaws of Fear

Three American soldiers approached.

Each carried a pair of heavy, industrial bolt cutters. Steel jaws. Long handles. Tools meant for cutting chain or thick cable.

The effect on the women was instant.

The nearest prisoners saw the bolt cutters and began screaming.

The sound spread down the line like wildfire.

“Sie werden unsere Hände zerbrechen!” They’re going to break our hands!

“We knew it! We knew it!”
“Bitte, nein! Please, no!”

Women tried to pull back. But the chains held them locked together.

One fainted and collapsed, dragging her partner down with her.

Another vomited from sheer terror.

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