A/N: I don't own Hogan's Heroes and I don't get paid for this; it is truly a labor of love.
Davis has an answer for everything. Brother, does he ever! But in this case, we were all sort of aware of the situation even before he said anything. That didn't stop him from speaking his mind, though.
"Fellas," he said yesterday, right after our evening trip to that sorry excuse for a mess hall, "I know why we always get the short end of the stick."
"Do tell," I said. "Why do we always get the short end of the stick?"
"Well, I'll tell ya, Barnes," he said, giving me the eye. "Here we are, in good ol' Stalag 13."
This was an undeniable fact, so the rest of the guys and I nodded.
Davis crossed his arms and started to tap his foot. "And what's the number of our barracks?"
"Thirteen," we all chimed in dolefully.
"And how many of us guys are bunking here?"
That stymied us for a bit, and finally Wojciehowicz stood up and started counting noses. "Thirteen," he said after a while, in a wondering sort of way.
"There ya go!" said Davis. "No wonder Colonel Hogan don't trust us with the big jobs. It's on account of we're thirteen guys in the thirteenth barracks at Stalag 13. We're bad luck, I tell ya."
"Nah," said Gilligan. "We just ain't that smart, that's why the Colonel gives us the penny-ante stuff."
We all nodded again. Gilligan had a point, all right. Although I gotta say I'm not sure why Barracks 13 has a reputation for being dumb. We're all sergeants, for Pete's sake—how stupid could we be?
In case you're wondering why everybody in our barracks is a sergeant, when you stop and think about it, it's not all that surprising. The only American airmen getting captured by the Krauts are bomber crews that get shot down, and the lowest ranking guy in a bomber crew is a sergeant. And if anybody ranks higher than a sergeant, he gets sent off to an Oflag somewhere. So that's why we're all sergeants—get it?
And hey, sergeants can be smart, believe it or not. This camp is full of really smart sergeants.
Look at Master Sergeant McMahon, for example. He's the barracks chief over in Barracks 10, and he's a real smart guy. He's a meteorologist, you know. Not that I know much about meteors, but Davis says that's what falling stars are, and I figure you gotta be pretty smart to know about them. Anyhow, Sergeant McMahon also knows a lot about the weather and winds and stuff, and the Colonel consults with him sometimes.
Speaking of the Colonel, he's got a couple of pretty smart sergeants right in his own barracks. We all know Kinch is the smartest guy in camp, and now there's this Kraut chump by the name of Battling Bruno who knows it too. Then there's Sergeant Carter, who looks sort of goofy but knows all about explosives.
Sergeant Wilson in Barracks 11 is one of the smartest of them all. He's the camp medic, and I think he's the oldest POW in camp, or pretty near. I guess a lot of us look to him for advice 'cause he reminds us of our dads.
And then there's Sergeant Wolinsky in Barracks 6. He's the only guy in camp with the nerve to take on Newkirk in a card game, and he says it's on account of he knows how to play the odds. Except once, he says—he's not real sure how he wound up in the Air Corps. See, the odds are terrible when you're part of a bomber crew flying over Germany, and he figures he shoulda known better.
Let's not forget Sergeant Preston, our barracks chief. He's from someplace in Canada. Davis said once that's almost like being an American, but Preston didn't agree.
"Not the same thing at all," he said, polite like always. "I'm a Canadian, not an American, eh? But you can call me a North American if you want."
We don't argue with Preston because besides being our barracks chief, he's another one of the really smart guys in camp. He was some kind of policeman before the war, out there in the wilds of western Canada, and he seems to understand the guard dogs better than anybody except LeBeau.
See? At least one guy in our barracks is smart. But as for the rest of us in Barracks 13—you could say we're real good at playing dumb. Just comes natural, I guess.
Gilligan was right—we're not all that bright. But Davis was right, too, and today he and I found out just how unlucky we could be.
It started out like any other day: roll call in the morning, then off to the mess hall, then the usual volleyball game in the compound. The sun was shining, and there was a dusting of snow on the ground like there always is.
I wanted to join the game on account of being tall and skinny gives me the edge over guys like Davis. Davis wasn't too excited about the game for the same reason, so he grumbled like he always does. I was a little surprised though that his grumbling carried on longer than usual, and louder too.
"What's your problem, bub?" I asked, as I returned Baker's serve.
"Pipe down!" Davis said out of the corner of his mouth, sort of like Edward G. Robinson or one of them guys. "I'm trying to keep the Krauts from getting wise."
"Wise to what?" I said, real casual-like, 'cause Schultz was watching, and that guy is smarter than he looks.
"Word is there's gonna be a diversion in the rec hall in twenty minutes—pass it on!"
"Okay," I said, but I had to laugh when the volleyball caught Davis unaware and conked him right on the head.
So there we were in the rec hall, and Colonel Hogan had just started in with his usual weekly lecture on "hygiene" when in came General Burkhalter, with Colonel Klink and assorted goons.
"Colonel Hogan," said Klink in that fussy way he has, "General Burkhalter would like a word with you. Kindly dismiss your men."
As a rule the Colonel doesn't take that sort of thing lying down, but today he agreed as pleasant as could be, and dismissed us, saying, "As you were, men. I know you want to get ready for the big dance contest next Thursday—just don't wear out the Tommy Dorsey records, okay?"
"Yessir," we chorused, and there was a commotion as everybody milled around as though we were going to leave the rec hall, but not really. Voices were raised, and a couple of phony disagreements became scuffles, and then...
WHOOSH!
A huge column of flame shot straight up from a stack of boxes on the table, and there was shouting and a commotion for real this time. Most everybody charged out of the building, with the Krauts in the lead. But I spotted Davis standing frozen near the flames like he was stunned or something, so I ran over to get him the heck out of there.
Next thing I knew both Davis and I were drenched after we were hit with bucket after bucket of water. Turns out the guys organized a bucket brigade in record time, and soon the fire was out.
When it was all over, Davis and I stood there soaked to the skin and shivering while the Colonel put down his bucket and gave us a long look. Then he tipped his head back to look overhead and we looked up too. The flames had gone right up to the rafters and through the roof, and there was a big hole right up above us.
At this point I guess Klink figured it was safe to come back into the rec hall, and the old buzzard was about fit to be tied.
"Colonel Hogan! What have your barbarians done this time—trying to burn down their own recreation hall?!"
The Colonel was cool as a cucumber. "Just an accident, Kommandant. Careless smokers, you know..."
"Smokers? All this from a cigarette?" Then Klink got a gander at the hole in the roof, and brother, did he blow his stack. "Ho-o-g-a-an!"
"Aw, gee, Kommandant! An accident, you know—boys will be boys, won't they? And if you're thinking that we should have to fix that roof, well, I gotta tell you..."
"Fix the roof? Of course you are going to fix the roof, and at once! Destruction of Reich property will not be tolerated!" Klink's beady eyes fastened on Davis and me, probably 'cause we were the ones who were dripping wet. "Those two men—they are the culprits, are they not?"
Colonel Hogan hemmed and hawed. "Well, I don't know that I'd exactly say that, Kommandant..."
"Thirty days in the cooler!"
So it was off to the cooler again for Davis and me, and we sat shivering in the same cell, sitting on the edge of the cot wrapped in a musty old blanket.
"Seems like old times," Davis said, his teeth chattering.
"Yeah," I said. Last time we got stuck here was 'cause we had to pretend we were the two guys who had tried to sneak out in the water truck. (1) This time around I just didn't have a clue why we were here. All I knew was, I was gonna start sneezing any minute.
There was a scraping noise in the corner and a block at the bottom of the wall edged its way into the cell. Davis and me just stared as an opening appeared and Colonel Hogan crawled through on his hands and knees, with Carter right on his tail. They both got to their feet and dusted themselves off.
"That was a nice diversion in the rec hall, gentlemen," the Colonel said, real pleasant-like. "But a bit of overkill, don't you think?"
"Don't blame Barnes," said Davis. "It was all me."
"It was all you?" I said. "What was all you? What the heck are you talking about, anyway?"
"I was just trying to add to the diversion," said Davis. "And put up a smoke screen, you know?"
"What exactly did you do?" asked the Colonel, still real pleasant-like.
"Well, you see, sir, it was like this," said Davis. "Back at Biggs Field one of the guys in my barracks—Peterson, his name was, but we called him Blondie—told me you could make a lot of smoke using ping pong balls. So during the diversion I dropped a lit match into one of the boxes of ping pong balls."
Carter's eyes got huge. "You set fire to a bunch of ping pong balls?"
"Well, yeah," said Davis.
"That explains everything, Colonel," said Carter. "Very flammable, ping pong balls. They're made of celluloid, which is pretty flammable in itself, but when the gases inside the ball get heated, and then exposed to flame—KA-FLOOEY!"
"I don't understand, sir," said Davis, sounding miserable. "I coulda swore Peterson made a homemade smoke grenade with ping pong balls...oh, now I get it. He ground the ping pong balls into powder first. Guess I shoulda remembered that part."
"Guess you shoulda," agreed the Colonel. "But hey—there's always a silver lining. We took care of business today, nobody got hurt during the diversion, and now there's a big hole in the rec hall roof."
Carter scratched his head. "And that's a good thing?"
"Sure," said the Colonel. "Now we have to fix the roof. And I figure we'll fix it so part of it's on hinges. That way we can swing it open any time we want."
Davis and I looked at each other. "But why would we want to do that?" I asked.
The Colonel smiled and shrugged, but he had a faraway look in his eye. "You never know when it might come in handy." (2)
Pretty soon the Colonel and Carter left, after promising to con Klink into letting us out early. Davis and I sat there munching on the sandwiches LeBeau had sent along and we didn't say anything for a long time.
Finally Davis said, "Guess Gilligan was right, about me at least. I'm too dumb to do anything but penny-ante stuff for the operation."
"You're not so dumb," I told him. "Just unlucky. Or maybe..."
Davis heaved a sigh. "Maybe I'm both."
And I guess maybe he's right.
(1) "Reservations Are Required"
(2) "The Kamikazees Are Coming"
Blondie Peterson is a character borrowed (ping pong balls and all) from the movie "Stalag 17".