Marie-Thérèse Pezet joined the Rochambelles in Paris, where she had worked as a government lawyer before the Nazi occupation. She had been shelled in Lorraine and shot in the foot near Strasbourg, but a small Alsatian village called Grussenheim claimed her worst experience in the war.

No longer attached to the U.S. Army, the 2nd Division was taking orders from French General de Lattre de Tassigny. And orders called for a frontal infantry attack across a bare, snow-covered meadow to take the village. The Germans were dug in behind ancient stone walls with heavy 88mm artillery, while the French bivouacked in a nearby stand of thin, leafless trees. Snow was thick on the ground, the temperature was hitting –23°C at night, and the soldiers were taking turns sitting in the back of Marie-Thérèse’s ambulance, where it was only 0°C, to warm up.

All of them, that is, except the tactical group commander, Colonel Joseph Putz. He had a superstitution about getting in an ambulance, he told her. He’d be fine. He drank coffee and wrapped himself in a tarpaulin to keep warm. The attack was set for the next day, January 28, and nobody liked the odds of the battle plan. That morning, exhausted and worried, Putz asked Marie-Thérèse if he could use the ambulance’s front seat desk to work on some details, and she was pleased to see him do so. “The Grussenheim attack depended on him. He had a great responsibility. We said we’d better keep him in good shape,” Marie-Thérèse said.

Putz worked all morning, and teased Marie-Thérèse that thereafter, the ambulance would serve as the group’s command center. At noon, he called a meeting to discuss the plan of attack. Marie-Thérèse had just said to her partner, “Are they nuts? The Germans can see that there’s an officers’ meeting!” when a hail of mortars came crashing down on them. The men scattered, rolling on the ground, looking for cover. Marie-Thérèse and her partner started loading up the wounded. They found Putz lying dead, his foot blown off. They weren’t allowed to transport the dead, so they left him there. But when they returned from the hospital, the need to do something for him coalesced into looking for his foot. If they could not move him, at least they could put his body back together. After searching for a half-hour, they found it in a bush. They laid it next to his body, said a quiet goodbye, and left. There were soldiers still alive who would need them now. The attack was just beginning.