When Sister Caritas left her convent in North Korea for two hours in May 1949 for police questioning, she decided she could do without her jacket.
But two hours turned into five years of hunger and hardship in jail and a labor camp as the peninsula endured a war pitting Chinese-backed communist North Korea against U.S.-led United Nations forces.
"In those days there were lots of lice and fleas in Korea," Sister Caritas, who will be 90 in November, told Reuters at her priory on the fringes of the city of Taegu in South Korea.
"I thought, it would be good to put the jacket on but then it'll become full of fleas. Better leave it behind," she said, with an infectious laugh. "We never returned."
Now, with the 50th anniversary of the truce that ended the 1950-53 Korean War this weekend, Sister Caritas and Sister Bertwina wish they could return, just one more time, to see where they started their life-long Roman Catholic service.
"It is natural one would like to see the old convent home once again, but in the present circumstances that would of course be very unlikely," said Sister Bertwina, 89 next month.
The pair, who still help in the garden and follow the ritual of prayer and meditation, are the only surviving members of a large group of German missionary nuns, monks and priests who were based in the city of Wonsan and nearby Tokwon on the east coast of what is now North Korea.
Their story spans Hitler's Germany, Japan's colonial rule, the communist take-over and Russian presence, the Korean War, exile and a return to the ruins of the U.S.-backed South.
Sister Bertwina said she had wanted to devote her life to God from her first Holy Communion. Unlike Sister Bertwina, Sister Caritas was the first in her family to enter a convent, but they both had a tomboy upbringing in southern Germany.
"I was more of a boy than a girl," recalled Sister Bertwina.
"And I was the fourth boy," shot back Sister Caritas. "My mother was always saying, 'Remember you're a girl not a boy."'
The two nuns arrived within a year of each other in Wonsan in the late 1930s as Adolf Hitler's rule tightened.
"WE WERE TOGETHER, YOU SEE"
"Our superiors wanted to send as many of us out of the country as possible and we were of course young and enthusiastic and wanted to get to somewhere as soon as possible where one could still practice one's religion," said Sister Bertwina.
"I was thrilled when I was told we could go to Korea."
Both nuns learned Japanese as well as Korean because Japan restricted the use of the local language. Later, they picked up some Russian after Soviet troops arrived after World War II.
To this day they have not had a formal Korean lesson, although they converse freely. Sister Caritas taught deaf-mutes while Sister Bertwina taught novices, in the South and North.
But their Benedictine missionary work came to a halt in May 1949 when the North Koreans imprisoned them, keeping them in tiny cells where they had to squat for hours. Later they were moved.
"The news came that we would be going to a nice place where we could build houses like in Germany," said Sister Bertwina. "What we got was the so-called labor camp in the mountains."
Both sisters say life was tough as they worked rocky fields. Hunger was the worst hardship as they subsisted on soybeans and millet their stomachs could scarcely digest. Many died.
The camp commandant, nicknamed "Der Schleich" (The Sneak) for his omnipresent snooping, sticks in their minds.
"With ever growing hatred, one might also call it satanic hatred. He oppressed us," wrote their superior, Gertrud Link, in her vivid memoirs "My Way with God."
Yet like her, the surviving nuns are remarkably stoic.
"We were together, you see," explained Sister Caritas. "It was not so bad. We put up with it."
They were not told about the outbreak of the Korean War but deduced it from sorties of fighter aircraft overhead.
"They wanted us to believe they were Russian fighters on exercises in the area," said Sister Bertwina.
As U.N. troops pushed North Korean forces back up through the South and toward China, the missionaries had to flee on what became an 86-day death march before they returned to the camp.
In 1954, they were finally expelled on the Trans-Siberian train to post-war divided Germany. They left belongings behind but memorized camp poems that were later published.
Some, like Sisters Bertwina and Caritas, returned to South Korea. The pair hope the peninsula can be unified as their own country was in 1990.
"We really hope for that," said Sister Bertwina. "If things open up we are ready to go back."