You’re Mine Now,” Said the U.S. Soldier After Seeing German POW Women Starved for Days

The windmill creaked slow and rusted over the Hollis place that October morning in 1972, turning against a sky the color of old dishwater. Margaret Hollis stood at the kitchen window with both hands flat on the counter, staring out at 400 acres of Missouri bottomland that had just become hers alone.

Her husband Thomas had been three days in the ground up at Pleasant View Cemetery, buried Monday beneath a hackberry tree with half the county standing quiet in their Sunday clothes. Now it was Thursday morning and the house still smelled like casserole dishes from neighbors and a faint diesel odor that had lived in Thomas’s work shirts for 31 years.

She was 52 years old. She had never driven the combine. She had never signed a grain contract or bid at the co-op or walked into Farmers Trust Bank to talk money with Walt Krebs, who wore a bow tie and looked at women like they were pleasant interruptions to serious conversation.

But Thomas was gone.

He’d died of a heart attack in the north 40 while bush-hogging fence line. Found by their hired man, Cleat Riggsby, slumped over the wheel of the old Ford tractor with the engine still running and the sun going down red into the dust. And now Margaret owned it all: four hundred acres of prime river bottom ground, the machinery shed with two combines and three tractors, the livestock barn, the grain bins, the house her husband’s grandfather had built in 1903, and a harvest that was two weeks from critical and starting to lean heavy in the field.

She poured herself more coffee—black and bitter from sitting too long on the burner—and watched a red-tailed hawk circle lazy over the soybean field to the east. The phone had rung four times already that morning: twice from the funeral home about final paperwork, once from her sister in Springfield asking if she needed anything, and once from a man named Duval she didn’t know, calling to express condolences and mention he’d be happy to “discuss options” if she ever considered selling.

She’d hung up on that one.

Thomas used to say land didn’t care who owned it, but it damn sure cared who worked it. Margaret figured she’d better start learning the difference.

She dumped the rest of the coffee in the sink, pulled on Thomas’s old Carhartt jacket that still held the shape of his shoulders, and walked out to the machinery shed where Cleat was greasing the header on the big International combine.

Cleat was 63, bow-legged, hard of hearing in one ear from a tractor rollover in 1951. He’d worked the Hollis place for 19 years. He looked up when she came in, wiped his hands on a rag dark with grease and dirt, and nodded once.

“Ma’am,” he said.

“Cleat, I need you to teach me how to run this harvest,” Margaret said. “Not help me. Teach me. I need to know what Thomas knew.”

Cleat studied her for a moment, his face creased deep as a plowed field. Then he glanced out toward the road, where a truck was slowing down near the mailbox—a white Chevy with county plates.

“You might want to know,” he said quietly, “that Harlan Spence was by yesterday, asking if you’d thought about leasing out the ground. I told him you weren’t receiving visitors yet. He said he’d be back.”

“Harlan can wait,” Margaret said. “Show me how to check the oil on this combine.”

Cleat nodded slow. “Yes, ma’am.”

They spent three hours in the shed that morning, Cleat walking her through machinery with the patience of a man teaching a child to tie shoes. He explained hydraulics and belt tension, how to read the hour meter and why you never let the grain bin get above a certain moisture level unless you wanted it to cook itself into compost by Thanksgiving.

Margaret’s hands got dirty. Her back got sore. She wrote notes on a pad she’d brought from the kitchen. When Cleat talked, she listened with the kind of focus she used to give her mother’s instructions on canning tomatoes or setting a ham—except now the stakes were 400 acres and a bank note that came due in March.

They broke for lunch around noon. When Margaret walked back to the house, there were two vehicles in the driveway she didn’t recognize: a silver Oldsmobile and a Ford pickup with a magnetic sign on the door that read “Tate Land and Cattle – Honest Deal Since 1948.”

A man in a tan suit and string tie was leaning against the Oldsmobile, smoking a cigarette and looking out at the fields like he was pricing them by the row. The pickup was empty, its driver’s door hanging open.

Margaret climbed the porch steps and found another man standing there. Mid-50s, thick in the shoulders, wearing a canvas jacket and a Pioneer seed cap. He smiled when he saw her, a rehearsed smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“Mrs. Hollis,” he said, pulling off his cap. “Name’s Raymond Tate. I own a cattle operation three miles south of here. I’m real sorry about Thomas. He was a good man.”

“Thank you,” Margaret said, not moving toward the door.

“I won’t take much of your time,” Raymond said. “I know this is a hard week, but I wanted to come by personal and let you know if you decide this place is too much to handle on your own, I’d be interested in making you a fair offer. Cash deal. You could stay in the house long as you need, or I could help you find something in town. No pressure. Just want you to know the option’s there.”

The man by the Oldsmobile flicked his cigarette into the gravel and started walking up.

“Mrs. Hollis, I’m Derek Lancing. I represent a farm management group out of Kansas City. We specialize in helping families transition out of active farming while maintaining income through lease arrangements. I’d love to sit down with you this week and go over some numbers that might surprise you. No obligation.”

Margaret looked from one man to the other, then back at the fields stretching out behind them—the soybeans heavy and golden, the corn standing tall in the bottom ground near the creek.

“Gentlemen,” she said, “I buried my husband three days ago. I’m not selling anything and I’m not leasing anything. If that changes, I’ll let you know.”

Raymond Tate’s smile tightened. “Ma’am, I respect that, but you should know this ground’s valuable, and come spring you’re gonna have decisions to make about seed and chemical and equipment that cost real money. A lot of widows in your position find it’s easier to—”

“I said I’m not interested,” Margaret cut him off, her voice flat and cold as a February morning. “You can leave now.”

Derek Lancing held up his hands like he was calming a spooked horse. “We’re just trying to help, Mrs. Hollis, but we’ll respect your wishes. You have my card if you change your mind.”

They left slow, both of them taking their time getting into their vehicles. Margaret watched them roll down the gravel drive and turn out onto the county road. She stood on the porch until the dust settled, then went inside and locked the door.

The kitchen was too quiet. She made herself a sandwich she didn’t eat and sat at the table staring at the phone. It rang 20 minutes later: a man named Givens from the co-op saying he’d heard about Thomas and wanted to check in, see if Margaret needed help marketing her beans this fall. She thanked him and hung up.

It rang again an hour later, another condolence call that turned into a question about whether she’d thought about her “options.”

By Thursday evening, Margaret had received seven calls and three more visitors. All men, all with the same message dressed up in different words.

A woman alone couldn’t run a farm this size. And wouldn’t you be better off letting someone else handle it?

Friday morning came up cool and clear, the kind of October day that reminded you why people stayed in the Midwest despite the winters and the wind and the loneliness. Margaret was up at five, coffee on, standing in the kitchen in her jeans and Thomas’s jacket, watching the sun come up over the soybean field.

She’d made a decision sometime in the night, lying awake in a bed that felt too big and too cold, listening to the house settle and the windmill creak.

She was going to run this harvest herself.

Not hire it out. Not lease the ground. Not sell to the first man who showed up with a checkbook and a sympathetic smile. She was going to prove to this county—and to herself—that Thomas hadn’t spent 31 years teaching her nothing.

By eight, Cleat had the combine fired up and Margaret was in the cab beside him, learning the controls, feeling the vibration of the engine through the seat, listening to him explain how to watch the grain flow and adjust the speed and keep the header level in rough ground. They made two passes through the north field, Cleat at the wheel, Margaret taking notes and asking questions.

Then he shut it down, climbed out, and told her it was her turn.

She hesitated for maybe five seconds, then climbed into the seat, pulled the door shut, and put her hands on the wheel. The combine lurched forward. The header dropped. The cylinder roared to life. Soybeans started feeding into the machine. And Margaret Hollis began her first harvest alone.

She ran that combine for four hours straight, cutting a wide swath of the north forty, dumping grain into the truck Cleat had parked at the field edge, learning by feel, by mistake, by the rhythm of the machine. Her shoulders ached, her hands cramped on the wheel, but she didn’t stop.

By noon she’d cut 20 acres. When she finally shut down and climbed out, her legs shaking and her back screaming, Cleat was standing by the truck with a thermos of coffee and something that might have been a smile creasing his weathered face.

“You’re a natural,” he said.

It was the first compliment he’d given her in 19 years.

That afternoon, three more men showed up. One was Harlan Spence, who owned the section to the west and had been trying to buy the Hollis place for a decade. One was a lawyer from the county seat with a briefcase and a contract already drawn up for a leaseback arrangement. One was a man in his 30s wearing aviator sunglasses and driving a new Dodge Ram who said he represented a corporate farm operation out of Omaha and they were “expanding into Missouri.”

Margaret met them in the driveway, still wearing her dirty jeans and Thomas’s jacket, smelling like diesel and dust, and told them all the same thing.

No.

They pushed. They argued. They smiled and cajoled and warned. The lawyer said she was making a mistake that would cost her financially. Harlan Spence said she was being stubborn and Thomas wouldn’t have wanted her to struggle. The man from Omaha said time wasn’t on her side and offers like this didn’t come twice.

Margaret listened to all of it with her arms crossed and her jaw set. When they were finished, she said, “I just cut 20 acres this morning. I’ll cut 20 more tomorrow. This farm is not for sale, and I’m not interested in your help. Now get off my property.”

They left angry. Harlan spun gravel pulling out. The lawyer slammed his briefcase into his trunk. The man from Omaha gunned his engine and fishtailed onto the county road.

Margaret stood in the driveway until they were gone, then walked back to the house and sat on the porch steps, suddenly exhausted, her hands shaking. Cleat came around from the barn, moving slow, and sat beside her without asking.

“You all right?” he said.

“I don’t know,” Margaret said. “They’re going to keep coming, aren’t they?”

“Probably,” Cleat said. “Vultures always circle when there’s something dying. But you’re not dying, ma’am. You’re just getting started.”

That night, Margaret sat at the kitchen table with the farm books spread out in front of her. Thomas’s ledger in his neat handwriting, tracking every expense and every bushel sold and every loan payment made. She traced her finger down the columns, trying to understand the math of survival. Thin margins that separated a good year from a bad one. Decisions that could ruin you if you guessed wrong.

The phone rang. She let it go to voicemail. It rang again. She unplugged it.

Then she went to bed and slept hard for the first time since Monday, dreaming of combines and windmills and a sky full of hawks.

Saturday morning, she was back in the field by seven, cutting soybeans, the combine engine roaring steady, grain flowing into the hopper, autumn sun warm through the cab window. She worked until noon, broke for lunch, then went back out and worked until the lights started to fail.

Cleat stayed close, running the grain truck, hauling loads to the elevator, checking the machinery, fixing small problems before they became big ones. They didn’t talk much. There wasn’t much to say. The work spoke for itself.

By Sunday evening, they’d cut 80 acres. By Monday, a week after Thomas’s funeral, they’d finished the north field and started on the east section.

The phone kept ringing. The visitors kept coming. Margaret turned them all away.

Word started to spread through the county: the Hollis widow was running her own harvest and she wasn’t selling. Some people thought it was admirable. Some thought it was foolish. Some thought it was a shame and figured she’d come around once “reality” set in.

Margaret didn’t care what they thought. She had 200 acres left to cut, a grain contract to fulfill, and a farm to save.

The trouble started the following Wednesday, eleven days after Thomas died. Margaret was in the south field, halfway through a cutting pass, when the combine engine coughed, stuttered, and died. She tried to restart it. Nothing. She checked the fuel gauge. Full.

She climbed out, opened the engine compartment, and stared at a machine she barely understood.

Cleat came running from the grain truck, his face tight. He looked at the engine for five minutes, tracing lines, checking connections. Then he shook his head.

“Fuel pump’s gone,” he said. “We need a new one.”

“How long?” Margaret asked.

“If we can find one in town, maybe get it swapped out by tomorrow morning. If we have to order, could be three days.”

Margaret looked out at the field, half cut. Beans standing heavy and ripe. Then up at the sky, where clouds were building in the west, dark and bruised—the kind that bring rain.

“We can’t wait three days,” she said.

“I know,” Cleat said.

They drove to town in Cleat’s truck—fifteen miles to Fairmont, population 1,200. A county seat with a courthouse square, a co-op, and a farm supply store called Riggins Implement that had been there since 1935.

The owner, Earl Riggins, was a big man with oil-stained hands and a skeptical squint. He listened while Cleat described the problem, then walked back into the parts room. He came back shaking his head.

“Don’t have that pump in stock,” Earl said. “Can order it. Have it here Friday.”

“We need it today,” Margaret said.

Earl looked at her like she’d asked him to fly. “Ma’am, I can’t pull parts out of thin air. Friday’s the best I can do.”

“What about a used one?” Cleat asked.

Earl thought for a moment, rubbing his jaw. “Might have something in the salvage yard out back. Old combine we parted out last year. Same model, I think. Pump might still be good.”

“I’ll pay double,” Margaret said.

Earl raised an eyebrow. “You sure about that?”

“I’m sure.”

It took three hours to pull the pump from the salvage combine, test it, clean it, and get it ready. Margaret waited in the truck, watching the sky, watching the clock, watching a group of men standing outside the co-op across the street, talking low and glancing her way.

One of them was Harlan Spence. Another was Raymond Tate. A third was County Commissioner Bledsoe, a man who’d never liked Thomas—said he was “too independent for his own good.”

They were talking about her. She knew it. She could feel it.

By now, everyone in Fairmont knew the Hollis widow was running her own harvest, turning down offers, acting like she knew what she was doing. Some respected it. Some thought it was a joke. Some were just waiting for her to fail so they could say they’d “seen it coming.”

Cleat installed the fuel pump in the field that afternoon, working fast, hands sure despite his age. By four, the combine was running again, and Margaret was back in the cab, finishing the south field, pushing hard to make up for lost time.

The clouds in the west kept building. The wind picked up. By six, the air smelled like rain. By seven, the first drops were starting to fall.

Margaret shut down the combine with 30 acres left uncut, climbed down, and stood in the field watching the rain come in—slow at first, then harder, turning the dust to mud, the windmill to a gray shadow against the darkening sky.

“We’ll finish tomorrow if it clears,” Cleat said, but his voice didn’t carry much hope.

The rain kept up all night, steady and cold, drumming on the farmhouse roof, filling the ditches, turning the fields to soup. Margaret lay awake listening to it, doing the math in her head: 30 acres of soybeans left to cut, a grain contract due at the end of the month, a bank note in March, a county full of men waiting for her to fail.

She got up around three, made coffee, and sat at the kitchen table with Thomas’s ledger, running her finger down the numbers, trying to find a way forward that didn’t end in disaster.

The rain stopped Thursday morning, but the ground was too wet to cut. Friday stayed overcast, the field still soft, the combine too heavy to risk getting stuck. Saturday dawned clear and cold, the sun coming up sharp and bright, the ground starting to firm.

Margaret was in the cab by eight, cutting the last 30 acres, the combine biting into the wet beans, the mud clinging to the tires, the engine straining. She pushed it hard—maybe too hard.

Halfway through the last field, the header hit a patch of soft ground and the whole machine lurched sideways, tilting, engine screaming, alarms blaring in the cab. Margaret jerked the wheel, fighting it, and the combine righted itself, shuddering, throwing mud.

She kept going. She didn’t have a choice.

By noon, the last field was cut. The harvest was done. Margaret shut down the combine, climbed out, and stood in the mud, looking out over 400 acres of stubble. Exhausted. Filthy. Her hands blistered. Her back screaming.

Cleat came walking up in the grain truck, slow and careful, and stood beside her without saying anything.

They stayed like that for a long time, two people who had just survived something neither had been sure they could.

“Thomas would’ve been proud,” Cleat said finally.

Margaret nodded, not trusting her voice.

That afternoon she drove the grain to the elevator, backed the truck onto the scales, and waited while they tested moisture and weighed the load. The elevator manager, a thin man named Purdy with wire-rim glasses, came out with a clipboard and a look of surprise.

“This the Hollis beans?” he asked.

“It is,” Margaret said.

“Heard you were running the harvest yourself,” he said. “Didn’t believe it.”

He checked his clipboard, did some calculating, then looked up at her with something that might have been respect. “Good quality. Better than most I’ve seen this year. You want payment now or on delivery?”

“Now,” Margaret said.

He wrote her a check. She folded it into her pocket, drove back to the farm, and parked the truck in the machinery shed.

The house was quiet. The fields were empty. The windmill turned slow in a cooling afternoon. Margaret walked up to the porch, sat down on the steps, and for the first time since Thomas died, she cried.

Not from sadness. Not from fear.

From relief.

From exhaustion.

From the weight of proving something she hadn’t been sure she could prove.

The following Monday—two weeks and a day after Thomas’s funeral—Margaret walked into Farmers Trust Bank in Fairmont wearing clean jeans and a pressed shirt, carrying the farm ledger and the check from the elevator.

Walt Krebs, the loan officer with the bow tie, looked up from his desk with an expression somewhere between surprise and discomfort.

“Mrs. Hollis,” he said, standing. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I’m here to make a payment on the farm note,” Margaret said, setting the ledger on his desk, “and to discuss the spring planting loan.”

Walt’s eyebrows went up. “You’re planning to plant next spring?”

“I am.”

He sat down slowly, opened the ledger, looked at the numbers, then looked at her.

“You ran the harvest yourself.”

“I did.”

“That’s unusual,” he said.

“So I’ve been told,” she said.

Walt leaned back in his chair, tapping his pen against the desk, studying her like she was a column of figures that didn’t quite add up.

“Mrs. Hollis, I’m going to be straight with you. Most women in your position sell out or lease the ground. It’s easier. Less risk. You got a good crop this year, but next year’s a gamble. Drought, prices, equipment failures—any one of those could put you under. You sure you want to take that on?”

Margaret met his eyes. Her voice was steady.

“My husband spent 31 years working this land. I spent 31 years beside him. I learned more than you think. And I’m not selling.”

Walt studied her for a long moment, then nodded once. He pulled a loan application from his drawer and slid it across the desk.

“All right, then,” he said. “Let’s talk about spring.”

Margaret left the bank an hour later with a planting loan approved and a grudging respect from Walt Krebs, who told her as she left that she had guts, “even if you’re probably crazy.”

She drove back to the farm, parked in the driveway, and walked out to the north field where the stubble stood gold and brittle in the afternoon sun. The windmill creaked. A crow called from the fence line. The land stretched out quiet and patient, waiting for spring. Waiting for her next move.

Over the next few weeks, the visitors stopped coming. The phone calls dropped off. Word spread that the Hollis widow had run her harvest, paid her bills, and wasn’t going anywhere.

Some people admired her. Some thought she’d gotten lucky. Some were already waiting for next year, convinced she’d fail eventually.

Margaret didn’t care. She had work to do.

She spent the winter learning everything Thomas had known: how to fix machinery, how to read soil reports, how to negotiate with seed dealers and chemical reps, how to plan crop rotations and manage cash flow and survive lean months when nothing grew and the bills kept coming.

Cleat stayed on, teaching her, guiding her, backing her up when she needed it. Slowly, painfully, she became the thing she’d never thought she’d be.

A farmer.

Spring came hard and late in 1973, the ground cold and wet, planting delayed by rain and frost. But when the weather finally broke, Margaret was ready. She spent twelve-hour days on the tractor planting corn and soybeans, running the equipment with the confidence of someone who had earned it the hard way.

The county watched. Some helped. Some hoped she’d fail.

But Margaret kept working. Kept pushing. Kept proving that the land didn’t care who owned it as long as they were willing to do the work.

By summer, the crops were up, green and strong, reaching for the sun. By fall, Margaret ran her second harvest—this time without breakdowns or panic, without anyone telling her she couldn’t do it.

The grain came in good. Prices held. She paid down the note, banked some savings, and started planning for the next year.

The farm survived. She survived.

Slowly, quietly, the men who’d come knocking with offers stopped thinking of her as a widow in over her head and started thinking of her as what she’d become: a farmer.

Years later, people in Fairmont would still talk about that harvest in the fall of 1972, the one where Margaret Hollis buried her husband on a Monday and ran 400 acres by herself by the end of the month, turning away fifteen men who thought they knew better.

Some said it was stubbornness. Some said it was love. Some said it was just plain Midwestern grit.

Anyone who knew Margaret understood it was something simpler and harder.

It was survival.

And a refusal to let anyone tell her what she couldn’t do.

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