It took me almost an hour to get to the outskirts of the city from the countryside railways, and my side had not stopped bleeding since I began walking. If I didn't reach Virginia's house soon, I would die.
     The city of Stuttgart had been decimated by British and American air raids. Blackened apartment buildings and crumbling bricks littered across the streets could be found on every road I passed, people with vacant eyes milling about as though nothing had happened.
     If only they knew how lucky they were, compared to the Jews passing through the outskirts of their city.
     Arriving at Virginia Hall's dingy apartment, I leaned against the doorframe and knocked desperately.
     Nobody came to the door for a long time, and my heart began to race.
     I knocked again and someone said from inside in a voice barely above a whisper, "Who's there?"
     I racked my brain for one of my codenames that she would recognize that hadn't been compromised.  "Agathe Schneider."
     There was a small noise inside and I could hear her limp to the door cautiously. Her prosthetic leg could be heard dragging across the dirty hardwood floor.
     "Ginger?" I said softly, using her nickname, "It's Duchess."
     At that, she threw open the door and pulled me inside, checking behind me to make sure nobody saw us.
    "Hey, Dutch!" she exclaimed in a whisper, bringing me into her apartment, "I thought you were dead!"
     "I feel like it. I'm sorry to come here," I panted, "but I had nowhere else to go. Is it safe to speak English here?"
She helped me lay down and nodded, saying in English, "Don't apologize. You're hurt badly."
Pulling back my coat and dress, she gasped at the sight of my unattended wound.
"Are the spy hunters after you?" she said softly, reaching for the blanket to cover me as I shivered.
I nodded. "My boss at the newspaper didn't like having a girl on staff, so he started—" I sucked in a deep breath as she began wiping the cut with a wet rag, "—looking for a reason to fire me. He didn't find anything solid but once the Gestapo was on the case, they were able to piece it together pretty quickly. I'm quite certain they don't know I'm in Stuttgart."
She sensed my guilt in putting her in danger, and wiped a few strands hair from my forehead with a smile.
"Stop worrying. You did the right thing, Louisa. I'm thirty-seven years old with one leg...let them try to come after you without getting through me. Have you seen the papers?"
I furrowed my eyebrows and she went to the kitchen and returned with the very same newspaper I used to write for. An old photograph of me was on the bottom of the front page.

Enemy spy and fighter pilot Louisa Tallmadge, also known as Liesel Bonhoffe, the Duchess of the Allies, or Marie Gilbert, has been discovered by Gestapo forces in Munich. After a violent battle with German soldiers, she managed to escape after employing brutal tactics, killing two officers. Nazi officials state that she has a stab wound on her right side. She is considered armed and dangerous, and it is advised to shoot her on sight. Any information on the whereabouts of Tallmadge should be brought to the nearest Nazi Party office.

I looked up at Virginia with raised eyebrows.
"Brutal tactics?" she asked with a laugh.
     I shrugged and replied, "I gouged one man's eyes out. Self-defense, of course, but I admit that it was a little exhilarating."
     "Louisa!" she exclaimed, playfully hitting my arm and standing up, "Well, I suppose that if that's the case, you'll need a bit of a disguise, hmm? Didn't Major General Tallmadge always say he liked you with brown hair?"
     I gasped when she threw a bottle of hair dye to me and cried with a smile, "Brown again? Why couldn't the OSS pay for some gorgeous red locks for me sometime? I'm tired of brown hair! But I suppose it'll do. Thank you, Ginger."
     "Now," she said, pulling up a chair next to me, "before we talk beauty, let us work on this wound you've got here, shall we?"
    I unbuttoned my dress as far as it would go and pulled it back with shaking hands, groaning in pain as the bloody fabric unstuck from my skin.
     "This is bad, Dutch."
     "I know. Can you stitch it up?"
     Virginia looked at me with wide eyes and exclaimed, "No, Louisa! I can't-"
     "I'll talk you through it. It's easy- just like mending a dress. Please; I can't do it myself."
After a bit of convincing, she finally agreed to do as much of it as she could, but was obviously not excited about it.
"You're just going to need a needle and thread," I said breathlessly, "bandages of some sort, a match, and vinegar or wine or something."
She jumped up and raced around her apartment, grabbing each of the supplies and a few extras that she deemed necessary. I sat back and shut my eyes, trying to breathe to distract myself from the pain.
Coming back with a threaded needle and an unopened bottle of wine in her hand, she placed a dirty quilt beneath me so I didn't get blood all over the couch. "What do I do? Do you want to drink this?"
I smiled a little and took the bottle from her. "Of course not! Get ready to stitch me up," I said tightly as I opened the alcohol and poured it all over my stomach, crying out in agony as the chemicals cleaned the wound. Virginia took my hand and tried to comfort me.
"Okay," I gasped, "Stitch it up. You can do it, Virginia. Just ignore the blood and make the stitches tight, like we learned in Washington."
She scoffed, holding the needle as though it were poison. "Those medical training classes were a joke, and you know it, Lou."
Virginia was right. It was near the beginning for the war when the began to allow women into the OSS as anything more than secretaries, and they didn't care much about training us properly, assuming that we'd never actually go overseas. But here we were.
"It doesn't have to be great, Ginger; just good enough that I can survive until tomorrow."
She reluctantly began stitching, and I clutched one of the blankets desperately. I was in and out of consciousness the whole time, waking up for a few seconds in torturing pain and almost instantly passing out again. The amount of blood I'd lost was beginning to take its toll on me.
Weakness began to take over my body, and I drifted into a deep sleep, shaking uncontrollably.

I woke up to silence and calm, feeling the bandages wrapped tightly around my stomach.
"Virginia?"
She bounded in from the kitchen on her good leg with a giant gun in her hands, a big smile on her hands.
"You're awake, thank goodness! I thought I'd killed you!"
I laughed weakly and croaked, "Why do you have that gun? Do you have an assignment from D.C.?"
She shook her head. "Just cleaning it before my trip back into France. I dyed your hair for you; I hope that's alright, darling."
"Of course," I said, "If you think it looks good, I trust you. You're like my big sister."
She cried out in a genuine laugh and exclaimed, "I'm practically old enough to be your mother, Dutch, so I'll take that as a compliment."
Sitting in the chair next to the couch I was laying on, she said, "I'm worried for you, Louisa. The Luftwaffe seems to be shooting down more Allied planes than ever, and I fear that the plane coming to pick you up won't make it. Or you'll be shot down on your way to America."
I pursed my lips and sighed. "It's quite possible. I don't even know if they received my message."
     After a slight pause, I mumbled, "I miss Ben, Virginia. I wish this wasn't the way things had to be. Of course I love espionage, and being with people like you makes it worth it, but it's just so hard, you know? I haven't seen my husband in eight months, and being a spy is so lonely."
She pulled me into a hug and chuckled a little, pulling her wooden leg up onto the chair with her.
     "I know. I know, Lou. You've done amazing, though, you know that, right? Twenty-five years old and considered so dangerous to the enemy that you have Hitler's best men after you? The Duchess hides her struggles well."
     I smiled and ran my hand through my newly-dyed brown hair. "Thank you, I suppose. I'm just ready to get back into America and figure things out from there. Don't you ever long to go home?"
     "All the time," she answered earnestly, going into the kitchen to make something for us to eat, "but I have nothing to lose here, unlike you. I've got no husband to come back to, no other military job to fall on like you. I'm a civilian, Louisa. A lonely civilian with nothing in my life but intelligence work. I've found, dear girl, that spying will be the thing that keeps me alive and simultaneously kills me."

     That night, I left Virginia's apartment with a tearful goodbye, thanking her profusely for risking herself to help me.
     "Nonsense, Dutch," she said, waving a hand dismissively, "I'm glad you came. Take care of yourself and those bandages, won't you? Come back here if things don't work out in Herrsching and we'll figure out a plan. Please don't get caught."
     Virginia put a small box of bullets for my revolver in my bag and winked. "In case gouging their eyes out doesn't work."
     I smiled and hugged her one last time, putting on my hat and hurrying down the hallway and out of her apartment building.
Wearing one of Virginia's dark grey dresses with a white collar and even darker grey suit coat on top of it, I took a deep breath to calm myself. I was terrified of the spy-hunters.
     I walked until sundown, trying to get to the train station across town without drawing suspicion.
     Now that people knew about the cut in my side, I'd have to be extra careful not to limp or give myself away, although I was in excruciating pain.
     The Hauptbahnhof train station was an enormous building, each window draped with giant Nazi flags and posters covering the outside of the entrance. I shuddered at how many soldiers could be inside, just waiting for the famed Louisa Tallmadge to step through the doors.
     "Ein ticket?" the older woman at the counter asked dryly.
I nodded. "Ja. Zu Herrsching, bitte. To Herrsching."
She stamped a small piece of paper and handed it to me without another word. In return, I pressed the money into her open palm and thanked her.
While I stood on the platform waiting for the train to arrive, the man beside me seemed apt to make conversation the whole time.
"Dannstemming, huh?" he said to me out of the blue. I jumped a little and furrowed my eyebrows.
"Was haben Sie gesagt? What did you say?"
"The song, Fräulein. The Ballroom Jive. That's what they're playing on the radio over there. Do you know it?"
Caught off guard, I shook my head. "I don't listen to much music. It sounds nice, I suppose."
He didn't stop. "Where are you from? Why are you going to Herrsching?"
I squinted up and him and pulled my hat lower, answering curtly, "I'm from Augsburg. Just visiting family today."
"I am attending the Reichsfinanzschule Hersching. The finance school there. I'm going to work for the Führer soon."
I forced a smile as the train rumbled into the station and I hurried to get on before he did. Keeping my head down, I handed my ticket to the conductor and made my way into the car.
Soldiers were everywhere, sprawled across the seats and turned around to talk to friends loudly. My heart sank.
I sat as far away from any of them as I could and thought about the codebooks in my bag. In a normal situation, I would have never even thought to keep them in such a plain spot, but I simply had nowhere else to hide them. If one of these soldiers found them or recognized me, so much of the OSS's intelligence efforts would be lost. How could I have been so careless?
A young woman sat beside me with a child in her arms, apologizing ceaselessly for his crying.
I waved a hand. "Please, Ma'am," I assured her, "I don't mind. He's adorable." I was glad that it was her and not a soldier or prying man.
She smiled, exhaustion under her eyes. This woman looked like she'd been through quite a few long nights of sleepless air raids.
The four hour midnight train ride was miserable for me, each movement or rumbling of the locomotive tearing through my wound. I kept a straight face.
The woman beside me, Bettina, didn't force conversation but was extremely kind to me. I offered to hold her son Kurt while she slept, and she gratefully accepted.
Holding the seven month-old baby to my chest, I watched the German countryside go by at lightning speeds. I'm almost home, Benjamin, I thought. Just wait for me. Please.
We finally reached Herrsching before morning, he fourth stop of the train ultimately headed for Munich, and I said goodbye to Bettina and Kurt, gathering up my small bag with a forced smile.
On my way out of the train station, the man intent on making conversation called, "Auf Wiedersehen, Fräulein! I hope to see you again sometime! Heil Hitler!"
I saluted and turned back around quickly, rolling my eyes.
One of the wealthy members of the German resistance in the city, Herr Ziegler, owned an estate on the edge of town with a private, hidden airstrip. Without him, it would be practically impossible to get Allied spies into Germany.
I knocked urgently on his door as the sun began to come up. The runway behind his house was completely covered in brush and camouflaged.
"Who's there?" a voice said groggily on the other side of the threshold.
"The Duchess. Do you have any shoes for sale today, sir?"
I heard a small chuckle on the other end and Herr Ziegler opened the door, enveloping me in a huge hug.
"Louisa, my friend," he said, pulling me inside, "I didn't expect a visit from you today. They're looking all over for you."
Grinning at the big man's long nightshirt, I sat down on one of the plush chairs and leaned back in exhaustion, holding my side.
"The OSS should be coming sometime today to pick me up. Have you not heard from them?"
He shook his head and began making two cups of coffee from his rations. "Nein, I have not heard anything from America in a long time."
"Hmm," I said softly, "I do hope they come."
Herr Ziegler handed me the small teacup and said, "Would you like to listen to my S-phone system, Frau Tallmadge? The British government gave it to me; perhaps you'll hear from them. Once I get you set up with the machine, I'll go uncover the runway just in case they come unexpectedly."
I thanked him and followed him to the third floor, watching as he unlocked the wardrobe in one of the rooms and removed a false oak back.
Pulling the illegal S-phone from the hidden shelf, he set it on the floor in front of me and tuned it to the right settings.
"If any aviation transmissions from your American friends come through, you'll be the first and only person to hear them. This is the 'Ground' set, Fräulein, and it will only work with planes that have the corresponding 'Air' set. Sind sie in Ordnung? Are you okay?"
"Ja, danke Herr Ziegler."
All morning, I waited by the S-phone for a coded transmission, but it was silent. Soon, exhaustion began to overtake me, and I fell asleep on the musty hardwood floor, hugging the fifteen pound transceiver to my chest.

German Words:
Ein ticket?- One ticket?

Ja, zu Herrsching- Yes, to Herrsching

Bitte- Please or Thank you

Was haben sie gesagt?- What did you say?

Dannstemming - the Ballroom Jive (this is a famous song written in Hitler's Germany and you should totally listen to it. It's crazy how it sounds like American swing music but with a few twists !!)

Fraulein- Miss (an unmarried or young woman) [Frau is Mrs. and Herr is Mr.]

Reichsfinanzschule Herrsching- this is just a finance school in the city of Herrsching...its real, and Hitler took great pride in it

Auf Wiedersehen- Goodbye

Nein- No

Sind Sie in Ordnung?- Are you okay?

HOPE YALL ENJOYED THANKS FOR BEING AWESOME READERS