“Why Are You Crying?” – German Woman POW Cries After Tasting Clean Water for the First Time in Years

The Gift of Water

It was June 18th, 1944, in Camp Hearn, Texas, where the war had already left its mark on the world. There was no glamour in the captivity of war, only survival and the cold realities of what it meant to be a prisoner. The American camp, though, had a strange way of unsettling expectations. I had heard of the American cruelty, of the soldiers’ heartlessness, but that was before I understood what it meant to be truly vulnerable.

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The sound came before anything else. It was the kind of sound you don’t forget—the steady rush of water. It echoed faintly along the wooden walls of the barracks, and for a moment, I thought I might have imagined it. It was too certain, too confident, and it felt wrong. Water was something we had lost long ago in Europe, something that was rationed, hidden, and constantly in short supply. To hear it running freely was something I didn’t know how to process.

I stood near the end of the line, watching an American soldier at the head of it, turning a handle on a pipe fixed to the wall. The pipe was dull silver, thick, and bolted in place like it belonged there. It wasn’t glamorous; it wasn’t a tool of power. It was just a pipe. And yet, water poured from it freely, filling a metal basin, then being poured into a glass—a real glass. That alone felt wrong.

In Europe, glass had disappeared long before the war had ended. Everything had become makeshift—bottles reused until they cracked, tin cups, and sometimes wooden ones. The idea of a glass, clear and perfect, without a chip or cloudiness, seemed too far removed from the life we had known.

The soldier didn’t look at me. His face was set, and he worked without any urgency or ceremony. He simply filled the glass and slid it across the table toward me. The weight of it felt strange in my hand before I even touched it. The air around us smelled faintly of soap—a soft, floral scent that didn’t belong in a place like this. It smelled like a world that wasn’t supposed to be here. A world that didn’t belong to prisoners. I stared at the glass in front of me, feeling its weight, the tension that seemed to seep into my bones as I wondered whether this was a test.

In the war, we had been taught that kindness from the enemy was always a trick. Mercy was a weapon, they had told us. To show mercy was to soften the enemy’s defenses, to lure them into a sense of comfort before the inevitable strike. I had learned that cruelty was better understood than kindness. At least cruelty made sense—it was straightforward.

I watched the others, waiting for something to happen. The woman ahead of me picked up her glass and drank. Her shoulders relaxed immediately, as if the water, that simple glass of water, had been the answer to a question she’d been carrying for far too long. No one shouted. No one grabbed her. No one took the glass back. Nothing happened. She stepped aside, and the next woman took her turn.

But I remained still. I could hear the water, the rush of it, as if it would never end. And yet, here I was, unable to drink, unable to move. My mind was flooded with doubts—had they poisoned the water? Would drinking it make me weak, expose my desperation? I had learned not to trust what was given freely. I had learned that the enemy’s kindness was always a prelude to something darker.

The soldier, still not looking at me, continued his work, pouring more water into another glass for the next prisoner. His movements were smooth, practiced. There was no hurry, no drama in it. This wasn’t about making a show. He wasn’t forcing anything. The water continued to flow, uninterrupted. I could hear it in the quiet, steady rhythm. It was not something I had ever known in my life.

I thought of the war—how we had been taught to measure everything. Food. Water. Time. It was all rationed, controlled, kept tight under lock and key. Every sip, every bite, every moment was part of the struggle. It was how we lived—fighting for what we needed, never knowing if there would be enough.

In this camp, however, I was given the chance to drink freely. And that felt like a betrayal of everything I had been taught.

I lifted the glass, feeling its weight in my hand. The condensation on the outside slid down, chilling my fingers, but I hesitated. What was I supposed to do with this gift? A gift that came with no strings attached, no demands, no expectation of anything in return?

The soldier did not watch me as I hesitated. He simply turned away, wiping his hands on a towel as if nothing extraordinary had occurred. His indifference to the moment unsettled me more than anything. If this was a trap, he would have watched me, measured my reaction. He would have waited to see if I drank too eagerly or if I hesitated too long.

But no, he turned away, unconcerned. The water kept flowing, the pipes continued to run. There were no consequences for what I did next. No punishment for hesitation. The fear that gripped me was not one of physical harm—it was the fear of change. If I drank, I would have to confront the reality that everything I had been taught about power, about weakness, about mercy, was incomplete, even wrong.

I had learned to live in fear, to keep my expectations low, to trust nothing, to accept that suffering was part of life. Now, I stood with this glass of water in my hand, and I could feel the weight of that old belief beginning to unravel.

I had always been taught that power was something loud. It was something that announced itself, demanded attention, showed strength through force. Here, the power was quiet. It didn’t need to demand anything. It simply flowed from a pipe, as if it was something expected, something that belonged to everyone.

The soldier stepped back, allowing the next woman to take her turn. She reached for her glass, lifting it to her lips without hesitation. I watched her, studying her movements. She wasn’t afraid. She drank with a kind of quiet certainty. That simple act—the act of drinking water without fear—was something I had not known could exist in this world.

When it was my turn again, I reached for the glass. This time, my hand wasn’t shaking quite so badly. I lifted it to my lips. The cold, clear water slipped into my mouth, and I swallowed without hesitation. It didn’t burn. It didn’t taste of chemicals or iron. It didn’t taste of fear. It simply tasted like water. Clean. Simple. Real.

The glass was empty in seconds. And for the first time since I had arrived in this place, I felt something inside me settle. It wasn’t relief. It wasn’t gratitude. It was recognition. I had been taught to see suffering as a given, as part of life. But here, I was shown something different. Here, I saw that there was another way to live. A way where dignity was not earned through pain but given as a matter of course.

I set the empty glass down, and I saw that no one was paying attention. The soldier didn’t look at me. He didn’t offer any congratulations. He simply turned his back, returning to his task. The water kept flowing. The line moved forward.

I had expected cruelty. I had expected a lesson in obedience. Instead, I had been given something far more profound. I had been given the space to be human.

As I stood there, I realized that the war I had been fighting in was not just a battle of armies. It was a battle of values. A battle over who could sustain life without devouring it. And in that battle, the Americans had something I had not expected: the strength to be kind, even to an enemy.

In the years that followed, I often thought about that moment. The glass of water. The soldier who turned away. The generosity that didn’t need to announce itself. I thought about it when the war ended and I returned home to a country in ruins. I thought about it when I heard of the new wars, the new conflicts. I thought about it when I spoke to my children and grandchildren, teaching them the stories of survival, of hardship, of what it meant to live in a world where everything could be taken from you—except dignity.

That glass of water, that simple act of kindness, had changed me in ways I couldn’t fully explain. And when I spoke of it, I didn’t speak of victory. I spoke of a country that, at its strongest moment, had chosen to treat its enemies as people, not pawns. A country that had built its power not on force, but on the quiet, steady strength of systems that assumed survival wasn’t a privilege—it was a baseline.

As the years passed, and America struggled with its own challenges, I held on to that lesson. I had seen what it could be when it was sure of itself, when it trusted its own foundations. And though the world had changed, that America—the one that gave water freely—was still there, waiting to be remembered.