The Woman in the Square

IT WAS MARCH 2013. I’D COME here to heal the wounds of a long-ago war, revisiting the city of my nightmares to meet Gustav Schaefer, hoping he might answer a question that haunted me still. I stood with my back to Cologne Cathedral, scanning the crowd for anyone old enough. I couldn’t find Gustav. Had he changed his mind?

Sixty-eight years before, in 1945, I was a tank gunner in the Third Armored Division when we rumbled into Cologne, a city spanning the Rhine. We were nicknamed Spearhead—a title we’d earned. My crew was among the first to battle its way into Germany. We froze our tails off during the Battle of the Bulge. I suppose we handled ourselves well, which is why we got a Pershing tank, the U.S. Army’s answer to the more heavily armed and armored German Panther and Tiger. We had one of only 20 in the entire European Theater. It was presented to us like an award, but it was a curse. As the heaviest tank, we were always first in line, first around the corner, first over the hill. It