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also died in her mother’s arms.
     
    Within sixteen hours of the shooting, five of the girls were “safe in the arms of Jesus,” as Amish parents repeated many times. Five others, critically injured, struggled for their lives. An Amish woman in Iowa spoke for hundreds of Amish people: “My mind went to the following song many times: ‘Safe in the arms of Jesus / Safe on his gentle breast / There by His love o’er shaded / Sweetly my soul shall rest.’”
     
    The five girls had joined the sixteenth-century martyrs of the Amish faith. The old martyr stories are recorded in a thousand-page book, The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror of the Defenseless Christians, known simply as Martyrs Mirror. Amish ministers often cite this massive tome in their sermons. Beheaded, burned at the stake, and tortured for their faith, the martyrs died because they were considered heretics during the Protestant Reformation. Nearly five hundred years later, the five girls at the Nickel Mines School died quicker deaths, although not directly for their faith. Still, in the minds of many Amish people, they were martyrs. “They were willing to die, and that makes them martyrs,” said one Amish mother. “The oldest one said, ‘Shoot me first.’”
     
    Perhaps it was the stories of the martyrs in her people’s history that imbued the oldest girl with such courage on that terrifying day. The stories and songs of the faith that she had learned will certainly be passed down to generations after hers. And for the Amish survivors of Nickel Mines, the song she and her classmates had sung that morning will carry a sad and profound resonance for years to come:
    Consider, man! the end,
Consider your death,
Death often comes quickly;
He who today is vigorous and ruddy,
May tomorrow or sooner,
Have passed away.
     
     
     

CHAPTER THREE
     
    The Aftermath
     
    We were all Amish this week.
    —NICKEL MINES AMISH MAN
     
     
     
     
     
    T he news of the Nickel Mines massacre spread quickly across the nation and around the world. Not only was the cold-blooded violence awful in its scope, but it had struck a people and a place that many imagined was immune from such terror.
     
    As satellite dishes beamed the story around the world, even people who knew little or nothing of the Amish found themselves overcome with sadness. At several Amish farmers markets in the Baltimore-Washington area, outsiders brought flowers and knelt to pray in front of Amish deli stands. At several stands, non-Amish people set up collection boxes for cash donations. “People didn’t know what to say to us,” recalled an Amish man who runs a farmers market in Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square. “There were cloudy eyes and tears. ‘What can we do?’ they asked.”
     
    In fact, people did many things. Grief counselors from the Lancaster County Emergency Management Agency arrived at the Bart Township firehouse early Monday afternoon, only hours after the shooting. They remained busy throughout the week, helping Amish and English alike to process the terror and pain. Other mental health professionals provided counseling for several weeks thereafter, serving anyone in need, including panic-stricken Amish children. “They did a great job,” said an Amish fire official. “They told us that things will never be the same again, that we must find ‘a new normal.’” He kept repeating the phrase as we talked: “a new normal, a new normal.” The expression was clearly helping him get his bearings in the aftermath of the tragedy.
     
    The Bart firehouse soon became the command center for police, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, and hundreds of volunteers who converged on the village of Georgetown. Sixty-nine fire companies from other areas provided support throughout the week. Fire company personnel, in cooperation with the police, managed the deluge of media vehicles and coordinated the four Amish funeral processions, which plodded through Georgetown a few days