The little Frenchman, hands and body aching from his interrogation and detention by the Gestapo before being finally recognized as a prisoner of war with all the attendant rights, sat in the back of the transport van and wondered whether or not they would shoot him this time.
He wore the Cross of Lorraine, but it was only after it was obvious he could or would tell them nothing that they had decided to notice it and send him on with the rest of the captured Free French forces. He supposed it was because he was a pilot that they were, supposedly, sending him to a Stalag Luft, but he wasn't entirely convinced that they would not just dump his dead body in a ditch. He'd heard of Hitler's orders concerning Jewish prisoners of war, but for the most part French and British POWs were spared that fate. He could only hope he men charged with his transport had not other orders to follow.
It was perhaps the worst few hours of his life, riding as one lone prisoner surrounded by six armed guards to an uncertain fate. From the Dulag Luft in Frankfurt am Main to Stalag Luft XIII near Hammelburg, it was a quiet enough ride. The longer it lasted the more LeBeau was convinced he would perhaps live. Even as they pulled up to the gates, and the guards stirred to actually point their guns at him again, Louis LeBeau entertained a tiny seed of hope.
He was a kind soul by nature, but as the Gestapo had discovered, possessed of a core of steel that would not bend. He would not compromise even so much as an inch. Not to make the pain stop, not for his own life or the lives of those around him. There were more important things in the world, he'd discovered, and things worth fighting for. If it came to it, there were things worth dying for as well.
So he marked well the distances, the spacing of the guard stations and the random patrols the transport passed between the camps. He would need to know these things, get a feel for the layout, if he were to escape. He very much intended to escape, make it to England, and fly a plane again. He had not doubts he would eventually do so.
Then he heard the baying of the dogs.
He got along well, usually, with animals. But the snarling and obviously bloodthirsty German shepherds they kept within their fencing seemed to promise a bloody death to even the guards which patrolled around them. LeBeau feared what they would do to a prisoner if they caught one in the open.
They hauled him unkindly out of the truck, his hands mercifully unbound though wrapped well to keep the swelling down, and escorted him past the watchful eyes of his fellow prisoners to the Kommandant's office. More interrogation, he supposed, though the man who awaited him was far more a Guignol than an officer. LeBeau's look of stunned disbelief at the buffoonery on display in the person of Kommandant Klink was taken for resignation and shock. He let them think that of him, and gave them nothing. He was, in fact, so stunned by the lack of efficiency that he couldn't even remember his own serial number. Some realizations hit a man that hard.
Escape would be possible after all.
Into Barracks 2 they placed him, and while he spent the long hours exempt from labor while waiting for his hands to heal, he plotted escape. He made maps, and ingenious hiding places, and at some point attracted the attention of Corporal Peter Newkirk. Newkirk was a man adept at clever manipulations of his own, and the two of them became confrères de guerre. Together they hatched plans of escape.
The only insurmountable obstacle was the dogs; Newkirk was no big fan, and LeBeau too had read Le Chien des Baskervilles and he had no doubt the dogs here were each capable of such a feat. His scarf would only help so much, and he did not want to die in such a manner. Being shot was perhaps a kinder way to go.
Their plan, aided by the men of their barracks, was simple enough. They made civilian clothes, Newkirk and LeBeau both being talented tailors, they made dolls of themselves they could fool at least one bedcheck with, since Schultzi was almost as big a gaffuer as Klink, and they planned to simply make a run for it. They'd tunneled under the fence behind the Kommandant's offices, the farthest point away from both the trees and the dogs, and thought perhaps they could get a few miles before being shot.
They were nothing if not optimistically cynical.
The day of the escape, the other men made a diversion at the bathouse, drawing attention away from the two friends. They slipped beneath the fence and crept the long way into the woods, where they planned to change into the civilian clothes and try to get to Switzerland. They had, for about fifteen minutes, all manner of hope.
Then again came the baying of the dogs.
Snarling, fierce, thoroughly maddened, and probably kept hungry by cruel German masters, the killer beasts bounded ahead of slower handlers and charged into the forest, where they silenced their tongues and crept silently in search of the escaped men.
Newkirk they found first, though he had gained the river, and they dragged him out by his collar in a surprisingly gentle manner. LeBeau took a few minutes longer, having pushed Newkirk in ahead of himself but being a far more competent swimmer. Still, every competent swimmer can be weighed down by clothing, and it took two dogs to haul the sodden Frenchman out by his scarf.
There was no sound of pursuit, and instead of snarling and barking as they should have done, the dogs sat and tails wagged. All except for the largest, who regarded the escaped men with a cocked head and a distinctly paternal 'what shall we do with you' look.
"If you let us go, you can have the food in my bag." Newkirk spoke up, drawing the attention of all the dogs, but still, nothing. They neither moved nor gave tongue to alert the guards.
"Be still, mon ami. I think there is more going on here than we see."
"It's a lot of ruddy great dogs, LeBeau. I think what we see is what we got, y'know?"
"Then why have they not attacked? We have been told they are killers. Why is it we are not dead?"
"How the hell should I know? Look, I vote we just make a run for it. If they're really our friends, they'll let us go, and if they're vicious killers they'll eat the one with the shorter legs first."
LeBeau gave his friend an exasperated look and moved in confidently on the lead dog. "Ah no, you won't hurt us, will you?" He shrugged off Newkirk's detaining hand on his shoulder and looked the dog in the eyes. "Vive la Résistance?"
The dog made a sound halfway between a whine and a soundless bark, and laid down at LeBeau's feet. In rolled over and wriggled happily as if awaiting a belly rub. "You see, Newkirk? What did I tell you, huh?"
"I'll be damned." Newkirk held a hesitant hand out, and LeBeau noted with amusement it was Newkirk's off-hand, just in case. The nearest dog nosed the Englishman's hand, and maneuvered it's head for a scratch. "They're not half friendly, after all."
There came finally the distant sounds of searching Germans, and the dogs stirred, a faint collective growl beginning. The dog who had let LeBeau pet him rolled back to his feet and barked into the woods as the little Frenchman sprang backwards to an alert position next to his friend. "Careful, Newkirk. I think maybe this is a moment to see on whose side the dogs truly are."
"You ain't planning anything stupid, are you LeBeau?" Newkirk gave the dog who had stayed next to him one final scratch before it joined its pack in front of them.
"I am offended that you would say such a thing, mon ami." As the other dogs gave tongue to the growing cry as the sounds of the German guards came closer, he sighed. "They're friendly, but I think they will not truly let us leave. They take orders from the guards in German, but they reacted much better to French, did you not see?"
Newkirk backed up a pace, torn between the futility of swimming the river and the disinclination to return to the camp. "So the dogs understand bloody French, who cares? I can order a pint in it, too. We're going to get caught we stay here."
"Oui. But we will live, and with the dogs on our side, escape at a more advantageous time. I'll buy you all the pints you want then." The guards were so very close now, and the idea of going back was no more attractive to LeBeau than Newkirk. "The river was a mistake, mon ami. So go back. We plan, and we choose a different route next time."
"LeBeau, there's ain't gonna be a next time. They're gonna throw us in the cooler and throw away the key!"
"Thirty days maximum in solitary confinement according to the Geneva Convention."
"That's thirty days too many, I don't do well in the cooler." Too quiet by half, and nothing to do with his hands except practice sleight of hand with silverware from meals.
"Better than being dead to no good purpose." The guards broke through the woods, guns raised and aimed, and the dogs were snarling even more than before, but mostly at the guards. "Kamerad, then?"
"I can't believe I've let you talk me into this. Kamerad, mates." They both raised their hands, in Newkirk's case slightly reluctantly, and surrendered.
"It's my charm and personality."
"It's something, alright."
The dogs, snarling at the guards the whole way, walked with them back to Stalag XIII. As they hauled the men past the dog's enclosure, LeBeau managed a string of murmured French. "Je m'appelle Louis, mes amis. C'est le début d'une belle amitié."
The dogs, for their part, seemed almost to understand. A month in the cooler was worth knowing someone in the heart of Germany had taught them French. There was perhaps a contact to be made there, and God knew they would have time to find out for certain.