Later… much later… they would all think back on this, and they would all come to the same conclusion: everything had been going great, until Carter got hungry.

It was a beautiful day in Hammelburg. Everyone thought so. The locals, out on the street running their errands. The shop owners, glad of the fine weather that had brought so many people out of their homes, which would mean a good day for their tills. Even the four men in work clothes and billed caps walking down the Wilhelmstrasse were having a good day. They weren't even free to walk down that street in the first place, but it had never stopped them yet.

"We did it," LeBeau said with undisguised self-satisfaction.

"Smooth as glass," Newkirk readily agreed. And that was another good indication of what kind of a day it was: Newkirk was agreeing, rather than bucking someone else's opinion for a change. And why not? He had a strip of top-secret film snugly tucked in his wallet, fresh from the hidden safe of a local Underground informant, which would make life more difficult for the German High Command when it arrived in London on a courier plane in a day or two, and that was cause for celebration. He turned to look at Carter, trailing slightly behind. "You're quiet, Andrew. What gives?"

"I'm hungry," the American sergeant responded simply. Carter might have a knack for making things more complicated than they had to be on occasion, but sometimes when he was asked a direct question he managed to give an equally direct reply.

"It never fails…" So maybe Newkirk was about to lose his good humor after all.

"Well, we missed lunch."

"How could we miss lunch when we got the cook right 'ere?"

Walking a couple paces ahead of his men, Hogan wasn't listening all that closely, just enough to be aware that the status quo was indeed being upheld. The mission had gone off without a hitch, so that meant there had to be some squabbling on the way back to camp. It was their way to harmlessly blow off some excess energy when they were wound up.

"Can't we get something to eat before we head back? It's miles back to camp."

"You want to have a nice sit-down dinner in the hofbrau with candlelight and a strolling violinist?" LeBeau pressed. "You don't think the local Gestapo would have any problem with us doing that?"

"I don't mean anything fancy. Just a snack. It won't take too long." Carter paused and gestured to the fruit store on the corner that they often used as a rendez-vous point. "I'll just go into Max's and get a couple apples or something, okay? It'll only take a minute."

"Go ahead," Newkirk agreed grudgingly. "It'll take longer to try talkin' you out of it. But hurry it up."

Carter sprinted eagerly for the door. He was back in less than thirty seconds. And he didn't have any fruit in his hands. "I, uh… forgot my wallet back at camp," he admitted sheepishly.

"What, with your papers and all?" Newkirk demanded, even as LeBeau attempted to get him to lower his voice. "You been walkin' around out here all day bold as brass with no identification? We coulda been stopped by patrols a dozen times!"

"And we still could be if you don't tais-toi!" LeBeau assured him, with a glance all around to see if anyone was close enough to overhear. The Englishman had a voice that could be heard a quarter of a mile away, and he seldom remembered to lower his volume when he was angry.

"Can I borrow a few pfennigs?" Carter asked. "I'll pay you back."

That said something for Carter, Hogan mused silently to himself as he too came to a stop on the sidewalk: he had a lot of nerve to push Newkirk any farther than he already had, but he never thought twice about it, or even seemed to realize that he was pushing his luck down a steep hill towards the nearest cliff.

"When I get you home…" Giving up, Newkirk removed his own wallet from his inside jacket pocket and slammed it into Carter's open hand. "If you're not back out here in thirty seconds, we're goin' back to camp without you!"

LeBeau rolled his eyes in disbelief. "And you think it's a good idea to give him your wallet… along with everything in it?"

"Hold it!" Newkirk barked after Carter. He took the wallet back just long enough to slide the strip of film out of it and tucked it into his shirt pocket, then handed the rest back to Carter.

"What could happen to it between here and there?" Carter asked.

"That's exactly what I don't want to find out. Now get a move on."

Again, Carter scampered into Max's fruit store, and the bell on the door clinged as it shut behind him.

"I knew this was too easy," Newkirk fumed.

"What can happen? He's only going into Max's for a minute."

"This is Carter, remember? And you're the one who reminded me of it. He ain't gettin' a chance to lose this film." Newkirk patted his pocket. "We worked too hard to get it."

"And you're sure you don't have a hole in that pocket?" LeBeau prodded playfully.

"I'm a tailor; I ain't got no holes in any of me pockets."

That was debatable, but LeBeau decided not to pursue that topic of conversation any further when something much more interesting caught his attention. A girl, looking to be in her mid-twenties, rounded the corner and headed into Max's fruit store. She was blonde, shapely… and most importantly, not too tall. "Oh, là là…" he murmured. "We need to get into town more often."

"Now that I think of it, I'm feelin' a bit peckish meself." Newkirk took one confident step towards the door of the fruit store, doffing his cap and giving his hair a quick smoothing-over as he did so. LeBeau swiftly moved ahead to cut him off, an ill-conceived move that left them momentarily jammed shoulder-to-shoulder in the narrow doorway, with neither able to either proceed or back up onto the sidewalk.

"I saw her first!"

"So what?" Each of them elbowed the other to try to get across the threshold in first place; Newkirk finally managed to squeeze inside a split second before LeBeau scurried in after him.

Hogan was pretty sure he'd seen that doorway maneuver in an old two-reel comedy back in his civilian days. He sometimes felt less like a colonel than a referee. At times like this, he had a choice: he could let the scuffle blow over on its own, or he could pull rank. He preferred not to go to the second option unless it was absolutely necessary; these guys were only human. They might be able to come and go as they pleased a lot of the time, and there were other perks on this assignment that prisoners in the regular POW camps didn't enjoy, but this voluntary assignment at Stalag 13 was still a few ants short of a picnic.

In a few minutes, it would be over and forgotten… Carter would get his apples, Newkirk and LeBeau would likely both get their faces slapped by the pretty blonde, since apparently neither of them had bothered to notice that she was wearing a wedding ring, and that would be that. Back to business as usual.

So, while he waited for his Three Stooges to emerge from the fruit store to rejoin him in the street, Hogan occupied himself by admiring the display of stylish ladies' dresses in a nearby shop window. The blue sheath on the mannequin in the middle would look great on Fraulein Hilda; the shade almost exactly matched her eyes.

The next pedestrians to come down the street were a pair of SS troopers marching purposefully along the pavement in lock-step, obviously headed someplace in particular, and Hogan automatically turned slightly away so they wouldn't get a good look at his face as they passed. It was a pretty safe bet that they weren't looking for him or his men; they hadn't missed a roll call, and as far as he knew nobody even had any idea they weren't in camp. Still, it paid to be on the safe side. What they didn't see, they couldn't report back on later.

The two troopers arrived at the door of the fruit store at the same moment as an elderly man walking a bit unsteadily, leaning heavily on a cane, was coming out. The taller of the two SS men barked "Papers!", and the old gent hesitated not a single moment before reaching into his coat pocket to produce them. Nobody dared argue with an SS man using that tone of voice. Apparently what he showed them met their approval; in a moment the taller of the two soldiers shoved the documents back at him and then pushed past him to step forcefully into the fruit store. "Achtung! Ihre Papiere! Schnell!"

Hogan's blood ran suddenly cold in spite of the warm sunny day. Papers. Carter didn't have his fake ID papers… he had Newkirk's. That left Newkirk with no official identification, plus a top-secret strip of negatives in his pocket. If the SS men realized that… and they certainly would, within a minute or two…

Oh boy. Now they were in trouble.

Inside the fruit store, Max and his four customers had frozen in their tracks when the SS men burst in. Carter was at the cash register, just about to pay for the three apples he'd selected; nearby, Newkirk and LeBeau were standing one on either side of the pretty blonde who'd been in the process of choosing a ripe tomato while trying to ignore both of the unfamiliar men showering her with unwanted attention.

Newkirk's problem was the most immediate one; he was patting his pockets in search of identity papers he well knew weren't there, since he could see them on the other side of the shop in Carter's hand. He had to stall for time, think of something… anything… to tell the troopers that might distract them from the fact that he couldn't officially identify himself, and also ditch that film before they decided to search him. Out of the corner of his eye he watched one trooper check the ID Carter had handed over, and apparently satisfied that it was legit, handed it back. Swell. His forgedID had passed muster. Too bad he didn't have it.

Carter looked on with an expression that was about twenty-five percent pure nerves and the other seventy-five percent stomach-churning guilt. Newkirk was going to have his guts for garters when they got back to camp. If they all got back. And their chances weren't looking too good at the moment.

"Papers!" the other trooper said again to Newkirk. "Schnell!"

"All right, I hear you… they were right here a minute ago…" Again the Englishman fumbled through all of his pockets; again he felt nothing except the secret film that he fervently wished was not there. If he could just manage to unload that before they discovered it, there might be still some hope that with some mighty fast thinking he could bluff his way out of being without official ID.

That hope was dashed a moment later when the trooper poked him in the side with the barrel of his rifle. "You are under arrest!"

"Now hang on just a minute…"

That time it was less of a poke than a solid thrust to his ribcage that forced him two steps closer to the front door. "Silence!"

Hogan had been watching this whole nightmare unfold from the corner of the shop's front window, and in the short amount of time afforded to him to think it over there was only one thing he could think of to do about it. He pushed the door of the shop open and stepped inside, feigned surprise at the sight of the two armed Gestapo men, said "Sorry, I thought this was the laundromat", turned and ran out of the shop as fast as he could go. As anticipated, the guards eagerly snapped up the bait of his conspicuously guilty reaction, immediately forgot all about Newkirk and ran after Hogan instead.

LeBeau, Carter and Newkirk followed as far as the door to the fruit shop, where they stopped short to look down the street after the fleeing men. "We gotta do something!" Carter said.

"You already done somethin'!" Newkirk countered. "That's how we got into this mess in the first place!"

The soldiers caught up with Hogan in half a block… or, more accurately, he let them catch up, since he had no faith in his ability to outrun bullets. He selected a spot when he figured he'd drawn them away far enough, stopped short in the middle of the sidewalk and raised his hands in surrender. It would work out, he reminded himself as he heard the clatter of heavy-soled boots rushing up behind him. It would sure be better than those soldiers finding that contraband film on Newkirk… that would notbe explainable under any circumstances, and it would be likely that nobody would ever see Newkirk alive again.

On the other hand, he'd been caught in town before - usually when he'd intended for it to happen, but there was a first time for everything. At any rate, Hogan knew the drill: he'd identify himself to the Gestapo as an escaped Luftwaffe prisoner from Stalag 13, Klink would be called to come to headquarters to get him, would read him the riot act and gloat all the way back to camp, and then he'd draw a couple weeks confinement to quarters… or, if Klink was in a particularly German mood, there was always the chance he might end up in the cooler for a few days. It wasn't the way he'd planned on this mission ending, but it was workable. Now if the boys would just realize what it was he wanted them to do next: run like crazy in the opposite direction.

Back at the fruit store, LeBeau had indeed realized what their next move had to be. "We need to get back to camp," he told the other two reluctantly.

"What, and leave the colonel with them goons?" Newkirk demanded.

"What do you think he did that for? It was a diversion so we could get away with the film!"

"I ain't gonna let 'em just take him!"

"We have to! You think he wants all of us to get caught, with the film, and one of us with no papers?" The Frenchman spared a cold glare towards Carter, who at that moment was almost completely sure he would never be hungry again. Certainly not for apples. "Allons-y, back to camp. Max, can we go out the back?"

The shopkeeper, still waiting for his heartbeat to slip back into a more regular rhythm after the near miss, nodded as he mopped perspiration from his forehead with a red bandana. "You'd better hurry; the Gestapo garrison is right down the street. It won't be long before others come here. They leave nothing to chance."

"Merci. Et bonne chance, Max." LeBeau grabbed Newkirk and Carter by their sleeves and pulled them away from the doorway to the street. Neither he nor Newkirk gave the pretty blonde near the tomato bin even a passing glance on the way to the back door that led to the alley.

oo O oo

The beautiful spring weather was also shining down on Stalag 13 later that afternoon. It's said that in the spring, a young man's fancy turns to love. That was also true of a certain middle-aged man's fancy: Kommandant Klink was in his office, but not even the most sympathetic of observers could have described his activity as official business. He stood in front of the small wall-hung mirror in his shirtsleeves, trying out a series of attempts at different seductive poses in preparation for a planned foray into town that evening. The waitresses at the Hausnerhof were about to meet their match, if he had anything to say about it.

His preening was interrupted by the strident ring of the phone on his desk. "Fraulein Hilda, please answer that call!" he shouted towards the closed door to his outer office. "I'm far too busy for any interruptions!" He turned his full attention back to the mirror. That last pose, one more time, but with his chin lifted just a bit more to bring out the strength of his jawline… ja, that was better… then add just the slightest hint of a rakish smile. Receptive, but not too aggressive… that was the ticket…

The knock at the door was a bit of a surprise; normally Fraulein Hilda followed his instructions to the letter. "I said I'm busy!"

"But Herr Kommandant, it's Major Hochstetter on the phone. He says it's urgent."

"That Hochstetter; he has no idea of the dedication it takes to run this camp efficiently!" Klink reached up to smooth what little remained of his hair. "What could he possibly have to say that could be more important than what I'm doing in here right now to ensure that these dangerous Allied prisoners are kept under my constant, iron-fisted vigilance?"

"He says he has Colonel Hogan at Gestapo headquarters in town, wearing civilian clothes and carrying forged identity papers."

Klink's elbow struck the mirror as he whirled to face the doorway, and it fell to the floor and shattered into a thousand pieces. Just like his romantic hopes for the evening. "What?!"

oo O oo

Almost at the same moment, Kinch was in the barracks pouring himself a cup of coffee when the mechanism of the trap door covering the entrance to the tunnel triggered and lowered the ladder to the tunnel below below. "How'd it go?" he tossed over his shoulder towards the open hole. "You're back early. Must've been a cakewalk."

First LeBeau, then Newkirk, then Carter scaled the ladder as fast as they could go. They had been moving at that same speed since downtown Hammelburg, pausing only for the time it had taken them to throw on their respective uniforms down in the tunnel, and they were by now completely out of breath. "We ran…" Newkirk gasped.

Kinch was sharp, but even someone who wasn't quite all there would have immediately been dead sure that something had gone horribly wrong. "Why?" When nobody answered that question, he had another one ready. "Where's Colonel Hogan?"

A shrill whistle sounded from the compound outside, and the remaining men in Barracks Two looked at one another with confusion. "It's not time for roll call," Garlotti said. "What gives?"

Kinch was absolutely certain that Newkirk, Carter and LeBeau had all the answers to every question any of them might be able to think of… but before they had a fair chance to try and answer, two armed guards burst into the barracks, weapons raised. "Raus! Sofort!" the one in the lead shouted. The other one went straight to the door of Colonel Hogan's office and kicked in the flimsy batten boards with one thrust of his boot. The door banged open, but it didn't disturb anyone inside. There was no one inside. Which was exactly what the guards had just been told by a frantic Colonel Klink when he'd ordered them in here to issue a special in-person invitation to every prisoner in Barracks Two to get outside and be counted.

Kinch had the picture then, at least as much of it as he needed immediately. This was big trouble.

Outside, Schultz ran back and forth in front of the barracks unsure of exactly what he was expected to do, or where exactly he ought to be doing it. Since he didn't know, it seemed like a good idea to cover as much ground as possible and try to look extremely busy. He had heard the Kommandant give the order to the two guards to proceed immediately to Colonel Hogan's barracks and find him, as if giving the order would be enough to make the American officer appear out of thin air. He was immeasurably grateful that the locating of Colonel Hogan was not, at least this time, his direct responsibility. It looked like there was a very good chance that the senior POW officer would not be joining them for the emergency roll call.

The Kommandant was waiting for them in the compound when the guards hustled the unenthusiastic prisoners outside, but for once he hadn't bothered about being present and correct. No cap, no riding crop, no gloves, and his shirttail hung down a bit at the back of his uniform jacket, which was buttoned crookedly. Few of the men had ever seen him in that condition in public before; he looked fresh off a three-day bender. "Where is Colonel Hogan?" he demanded without preamble, of anyone who might be able to give him an answer that would appeal to him. Anything except what Major Hochstetter had just lambasted him with over the phone. "I demand to see Colonel Hogan, now! This instant!"

The only three men who had answers for him weren't planning to clue him in anytime soon. Kinch couldn't help him, not that he would have anyway, but he hadn't even had a chance to get up to speed on what had happened in town. For their parts, Carter, Newkirk and LeBeau just seemed to be making an exhaustive study of feet… their own, those belonging to the guy standing next to them, the guards'… any excuse not to have to look up and make eye contact for fear of betraying themselves.

Hochstetter had been right, Klink soon realized with a desperate, sinking feeling. Any hopes he might have been holding onto of this whole scenario being some sort of sadistic Gestapo prank were fading fast. If Hogan wasn't here… and he wasn't here… he must be right where Major Hochstetter had said he was.