The Winds of War

by Herman Wouk

She swept her arm around at the women in the jammed-together beds, moaning and shrieking in Polish, at others sitting up dolefully on beds or low stools, with fat white breasts and brown nipples bared to infants, at the three pallid sweating doctors moving from bed to bed, at the hastening nurses, some in soiled bloodstained white dresses like herself, with hair bound in white cloths, some in dark gray nun’s habits. “There are five of us down here and we counted eighty-two women this morning! It’s the only maternity ward left in Warsaw now. The Germans bombed out Saint Catherine’s last night. They say it was unspeakably horrible, pregnant women running around on fire, newborn babies burning up—” “The point is, Natalie, with the Russians coming—”