Author's note: This takes place directly after the Great Laundry Basket Flambé scene in 'Hogan, Go Home.'
Crittendon, a smug smile on his face, swept out of the barracks, leaving a stunned silence behind him. It meshed nicely with the stench of burning clothing and charred wicker. And of dashed hopes.
Newkirk, after a moment, said quietly, "Now ask me why I don't have much use for bloody officers, why don't you?" He rolled his eyes. "Blimey, I'm not sure if I should apologize on behalf on the RAF, the British Empire, or just 'umanity as a whole."
"It's not your fault," Hogan said after a moment. "It's mine; I should have been more careful about making sure that London was sending us someone with half a brain."
"Done is done," Kinch said. "It'll be all right, Colonel."
Hogan wanted to punch something. Or someone; he had a number of possibilities on his list. All right? What had London been thinking? Crittendon couldn't command his way out of a wet paper bag, and that should have been blindingly obvious to anyone who'd ever spent more than ten seconds in his presence. Did the brass simply not realize? Not care?
This was the end of the operation. And worse. Crittendon was no kind of commanding officer; at his best he was— barely— qualified to warm a desk and keep a uniform from getting wrinkled. In a setup like the one here, he going to get the men all killed; there was simply no other way this could end. It was bad enough that Hogan was going home to play the conquering hero while his men sat in rickety plywood sheds eating lukewarm potato soup. Now he was abandoning them to the tender mercies of a man who would lose a battle of wits with a used handkerchief.
What the hell kind of commanding officer did that make him?
He had to do something. Anything. This could not be allowed to happen.
Newkirk had turned his attention back to the laundry hamper, pulling out a smoking rag that, once upon a time, might possibly have been his spare pair of uniform trousers. "Cor. Well, so much for appearing as an RAF corporal anytime soon. Gents, what do you think our beloved Kommandant would rather see me wearing at roll call tomorrow—a stolen Luftwaffe uniform or a set of civvies?"
"Why not go to roll call as Frau Newkirkberger?" Carter's grin was too innocent to be called a smirk and too mischievous to be called anything friendlier. "That would be a real change of pace."
"Dress up like a bird in the middle of a camp full of sex-starved prisoners. Brilliant idea, Carter. Just brilliant. Cheers. Why not wrap meself up in a bedsheet and go as Julius ruddy Caesar? At least 'e only 'ad to worry about getting 'imself stabbed to death by 'is mates!"
Carter hunched his shoulders a bit, retreating into the comforting depths of his bomber jacket. "Well, heck, Newkirk, I guess you could do that if you wanted to, but don't you think it's a bit cold out there for just a sheet? I mean, especially in the morning; they make us get up so early that it's still dark, you know, so there's no sunshine to take the edge off—"
"Oh, why don't you shut your mouth before I do it for you, Andrew—"
Hogan thought he was going to be sick. He recognized a distraction when he saw one; Newkirk was good at what he did, but Hogan knew him too well to mistake the banter for anything but what it was. He had seen the distress in Hogan's face, and the vaudeville routine was his way of covering for his CO before anyone else saw it, too.
And it was working; taking the mickey was more or less an intramural sport in the camp, and if Newkirk was going to go to the trouble of pinning a bulls-eye on his own chest and passing out the metaphorical hand grenades, no one was likely to turn down the offer. The grim pall that Crittendon's idiocy had left in his wake began to dissipate as a lively discussion spread across the barracks. It seemed that several of the other residents had some creative ideas on how Newkirk might solve his little wardrobe difficulties, and were quite eager to share them. The simplest solution, of course, involved a sudden, unofficial, and, frankly, unwelcome transfer to another army, which might, by necessity, have included a battlefield promotion, as the US Air Corpsman who was closest to his size was a sergeant, and did not want the stripes cut from his sleeve. This was rejected almost immediately, both on the grounds that promoting Newkirk could be classified as a war crime, and furthermore that they could not risk the seismic disturbances that would no doubt ensue when George Washington, upon learning precisely who and what they had allowed into an American uniform, began doing barrel rolls in his grave. Several loyal subjects of His Majesty thought that while the former objection was inarguably valid, as regarded the latter, a spot of exercise might be just the thing for rebellious traitors.
Once they'd sufficiently rehashed the Revolutionary War, they examined other options. Unfortunately for Newkirk's pay grade, borrowing the only available Free French uniform even close to his size in Barracks Two would have broken him back down to private. Helpfully, LeBeau, secure in the possession of not one but two shirts, both emblazoned with his accustomed and hard-won corporal's stripes, took the opportunity to promise sweetly that he would not pull rank on him except in cases of the direst necessity, when there was absolutely no other alternative... unless, of course, he happened to feel like it. Kinch asked LeBeau if he really thought that Newkirk would be less insubordinate as a French flyer than he already was as a British one, and if so, why?
After that conversational detour had been thoroughly dealt with, the brainstorming session moved on to considering a strategic, if unconventional, use of his cap while he simply laundered the uniform still in his possession, the one he was currently wearing, whenever such maintenance was deemed necessary. That particular suggestion was, reluctantly, tabled when somebody mock-solicitously pointed out that the weather was, as Carter had reminded them, quite cold. Undaunted, the idea sprang back to life, like a phoenix from the ashes, when somebody else theorized that, given the human body's tendency to turn blue when sufficiently chilled, there was a very good chance that Newkirk's skin would simply take on the appropriate RAF coloration before they were halfway through roll call, thus negating the entire problem. Given that Klink's eyesight wasn't exactly 20/20 to begin with, and especially given that their accustomed roll call shenanigans tended to fluster the colonel beyond all reason, Newkirk's being technically out of uniform might therefore go unnoticed.
Newkirk, who never let a little thing like being outmaneuvered, outnumbered, and outgunned worry him for too long, was giving as good as he got, of course, loudly and dramatically, but his eyes did meet Hogan's. Only for a moment, and only once, but that was long enough. Don't you worry about us, Colonel, he was saying. We'll all muddle through somehow. It was the final straw.
Hogan couldn't stand it. As the conversation turned saltier, he left his men to their sport and their not-so-helpless prey, and walked back into his office. Depressed beyond words, he more-or-less collapsed onto the bottom bunk. What had he been thinking? Well, never mind that. He knew perfectly well what he'd been thinking. He'd been thinking of home, of his family, of hot showers, soft beds, and good food. Of doors that only locked when he chose to fasten them, of not being (and not needing to be) periodically deloused like a stray dog, of owning more than one pair of boots. He'd been thinking of women. He'd been thinking of a view that didn't involve barbed wire, of not having to stand, cap humbly in hand, kowtowing to German idiots. He'd been thinking of freedom.
He'd been thinking of the sheer relief of not spending every waking (and sleeping!) moment waiting for the axe to fall. He'd been thinking of not carrying the weight of three hundred lives around his neck, of not needing to outsmart the entirety of the Axis war machine five times a day, of not being expected as a matter of course to accomplish the impossible. He'd been bluffing with no cards in his hand for the better part of two years; sooner or later the odds were going to catch up with him, and he knew it. And yes, damn it, he was afraid of what would happen to him when they did.
He was tired. God, he was just so damned tired. There was a limit to what the human frame could withstand, and he'd more than exhausted a lifetime's worth of miracles in the course of a mere twenty-one months. He was a pilot, not a spy, damn it all; he wanted out of this pigpen and back into the sky. Back to things he understood, to altitude and wind resistance and vectors, to objectives that were clear and straightforward. Fly this plane to that destination and bomb that target. Not hiding in shadows and crawling through tunnels, not pulling an endless string of rabbits from an increasingly threadbare hat. Not arranging missions around roll call and bed checks and assigned exercise periods. Not cobbling together vital equipment from scraps and garbage and prayer.
"Oh, boy—I've got it," came Carter's voice through the door. "We'll steal the flag from the roof of the guard tower; it's more than big enough for you to sew into a shirt and maybe a pair of pants, too. You'd look great in red!"
"And I think you'd look great black and blue," Newkirk growled, and they were off again.
Yes, he was tired of this camp, tired of this struggle, tired of this war. But this command, this motley crew of his… how could he abandon them? He had a sudden vision of the rest of his career, assuming they didn't simply kick him upstairs, chain him to a desk, and never let him see the inside of a cockpit ever again, which, it suddenly struck him, was actually a very real possibility. He'd spend the rest of his career trying to recreate the rapport he'd built here… and failing. War made for strange bedfellows; in the normal course of events, as he was bitterly aware, Kinch, his rock-steady 2IC, would have been hidden away in a segregated unit. Carter would never have been allowed near explosives; who would have thought to look past that slightly daffy surface to find the mad genius beneath? As for mouthy French chefs and even mouthier English cracksmen… well, the less said the better. On paper, they sounded like a disaster waiting to happen. But in the breach, where it mattered, they worked together like a symphony or a psalm. Despite the incongruities, this was the sort of team every commander prayed for, and few of them ever got.
And Crittendon didn't deserve it. He wasn't good enough, he for damn sure wasn't smart enough, and he could not be allowed to sully it.
Kinch slipped in. "Sorry to disturb you, Colonel…?"
"No, no; it's fine. What's going on out there?"
"Well, let's see, sir. LeBeau and Newkirk are refighting the Battle of Hastings, Olson's still trying to drum up support for the idea that everyone should appear in the wrong country's uniforms tomorrow and see how long it takes Klink to notice, and there's a lot more enthusiasm for sending Newkirk out in the altogether than I'm entirely comfortable with. He's probably going to have to sleep in his clothes tonight, because there's too good a chance that they won't be here in the morning if he doesn't."
Hogan found a chuckle. "I could almost find it in my heart to feel sorry for Klink. Roll call tomorrow is going to be a humdinger."
"For Klink? What's he got to complain about? His uniform's pristine, and he's got that nice warm coat with the fur collar." Kinch pretended to think about it. "Maybe we should steal that for Pete."
Why not? They can bury him in it, Hogan thought bitterly.
"Of course, he's not the only one who's going to need a bit of help until we can get some fresh uniforms from the Red Cross. Just the noisiest," Kinch continued.
"And in other news, the sky is blue," Hogan agreed. "Okay, once everyone settles down a bit, get them all to inventory the damage and we'll see what we can scrape up from the other barracks."
Kinch smiled. "Will do, Colonel."
Hogan didn't smile back. After slightly too long a pause, he began, "Look, Kinch…"
"It's all right, Colonel. Really. It's all right. You deserve the chance to get out of here."
"I can't just… Crittendon! This is insane!"
"Colonel, you've more than done your share. You've been here almost two years."
"So what? You've been here longer than that. Hell, Newkirk's been here for more than four."
"None of us were in command. It's different, and you know it. Colonel, don't get me wrong. It's not that any of us want you to go… but we're all glad for your sake that you're going. You've earned it."
"All of us have."
"I won't argue with that. But you're the one who carried this whole crazy scheme on your shoulders all this time. London's gotten their money's worth."
"And they figure maybe it's better for me to get out of the business while I'm still batting a thousand, is that it?"
"Maybe, Colonel. I don't know. Look, you've taught us a lot. We can manage. Even with Crittendon. And after the war, we'll come meet you in London. Go to one of those pubs Newkirk's always reminiscing about. We'll be fine."
Hogan knew that Kinch was blowing smoke to make him feel better; Kinch knew that Hogan knew. They looked at each other and traded identical, pained, smiles.
"Right. After the war," Hogan said after a moment. "First round's on me."
"We'll be there," Kinch promised.
There didn't seem to be much left to say after that.
