Official Air Force Records
Document No. 198652348-B45
Date – Unknown
Origin – Personal Correspondence – Col. R. Hogan
From The Closet Of: Col. R. E. Hogan
Dear Dad,
How are you?
How's Mom?
The dog? The cat?
The car?
It's unbelievable sometimes the fixes I get myself into. If you knew even half of what I've done since being 'captured'. Well…frankly, Dad, you'd be proud I think. The bridges, the bombs, the capers.
Except for this one. This one takes the cake! Worse still I have nobody to blame for it but myself. If I had listened to that little voice in my head, stepped back a few paces and really considered what I was setting myself up for.
I wouldn't be stuck in a supply closet, for one thing. I also wouldn't be two hours late for roll call, my men wouldn't be desperately trying to cover for me, and Corporal Newkirk wouldn't be out there right now playing secretary.
I'm a sitting duck!
It's just that all the pieces fell so sweetly into place! A handful of maps, delivered by courier to Luftwaffe headquarters in Hammelburg, right into the office of a Colonel who is about to be transferred.
Gregor Johann. You wouldn't know him. Mole-like face, short stature, giant mustache. The guy wears lifts. Very tacky.
Anytime the Krauts start moving their people around there's a little pandemonium, and that means I can stick just about anybody in a uniform and try to get them inside the heart of the German war machine. Usually.
I don't know what this Colonel Johann's deal is, but for a guy that's been absent for most of his military career, he sure picked a rotten time to become soldier of the month.
I can hear him now. He's been pacing for about three hours, and he's been dictating the war's longest letter to Newkirk, without so much as a smoke break. Newkirk has to be going crazy. And he's not a whiz at short hand, either. His German grammar is atrocious on paper.
But Newkirk can't fake it. Colonel Johann keeps demanding that Newkirk repeat the letter back to him. He's been trying to find another word for 'outrage' for the past five minutes. He used 'emporung' three times in the last paragraph.
But I digress, it was a perfect plan, Dad.
The Colonel is leaving, right? So it made sense that one sunny afternoon a giant moving van flying general's flags should show up to block off part of the street, filled with office supplies, records, and furniture for the new man moving in. Two guards and an officer go with the truck of course, demanding that they be allowed to empty and deliver the office supplies as quickly as possible.
"There's a war on! General what's-his-name ordered it and you'd best comply or risk the Russian Front", and all that jazz.
Gives a man a real sense of satisfaction to see some pale faced, paper-pushing corporal jump at the thought of spending the summer freezing to death in Stalingrad. For the moving truck bit I had Newkirk and Carter with me. It didn't take long to clog up the halls of headquarters with all of the "general's" supplies. In the confusion I had Newkirk slip off with a staff sergeant's uniform and change.
An hour after Carter and I left with the truck, Newkirk strode into Luftwaffe Headquarters with a clipboard and an attitude, and practically took over. He had every clerk on the main floor moving boxes and emptying ol' Johann's office out into the hall.
Intelligence reports had assured me that the colonel hadn't been around for weeks and that this was perfectly normal behavior for the little man. Just the same I had one of my contacts watching Johann's room in the hotel, in case the colonel decided to go for a stroll.
Newkirk set himself up as the new general's secretary and settled in to wait for the delivery of the maps.
The rest of us back at the Stalag covered for Newkirk at evening roll call with a human-size version of the shell game.
Everything was going perfect…and then it all went bad.
Staff Sergeant Kinchloe, my radio man, caught an unauthorized call from Hammelburg and woke me at about 0300 hours. Newkirk had called in a panic. Colonel Johann had heard about the invasion of his office and came storming in around midnight, all pomposity and righteous indignation.
Newkirk had done what he could to stand up to the little man but Johann started making phone calls, waking various officials in the area, demanding to know who this pushy new general was. Newkirk tried to stall the calls, stopping just short of cutting the phone lines out of the colonel's office.
Once he got the chance, Newkirk called the Stalag.
I spent about ten minutes thinking it over before I slipped into a general's uniform and headed out of camp.
At first it worked perfectly. I showed up, puffy eyed, rumpled, looking as if I'd just been awakened by a terrified aide, and stormed into headquarters with a underdeveloped Oberst to put down. Johann was bouncing off the walls. He'd started unpacking what the poor frightened clerks had spent the day boxing up and the office was even more of a mess than it had been before.
Johann was raising a stink about the inefficiency of generals and I caught him just as he opened his bushy mouth for another onslaught. He shrank a little when he saw my gold braid and Newkirk snapped-to with a smart salute, looking relieved. He didn't have to act for that one.
"General Hoganburger, sir. I apologize for waking you, General, but this colonel insisted. He's been tearing apart the office…and he smashed your plant, sir…"
The plant thing threw me off. I still don't know why Newkirk brought it up, but there was at least one potted plant knocked to pieces.
I did my best impression of Eisenhower and stood for a few minutes glaring and tapping my gloves against my palm. The maps hadn't arrived yet. We had to keep the office until at least 1000 hours, to intercept the courier, without the big brass getting wise.
"He was using your phone too, sir."
"Really? At this hour? Who were you calling? London?" I demanded.
"London!?" Colonel Johann squeaked. "Are you accusing me of treason?"
"Why else would you obstruct the duties of my secretary, disrupt my office and break my plant!? The underground couldn't do this much damage!"
The little colonel, acting very insubordinate in the face of a general of my caliber, wasn't fazed and Newkirk's twitching was getting to me.
"I was speaking to General Burkhalter." The little man said, rocking back on his heels and looking like a wobbly, tin soldier. I was looking down at the man and he was gloating. "He is on his way and he is very upset."
I felt that old familiar friend panic start to set in and I glared at Newkirk wondering why he couldn't have told Kinch that tiny bit of news.
"You didn't tell me Al was on his way, Sergeant." I said pointedly and Newkirk's eyes darted back and forth.
He would have if he'd had the chance, he was telling me. Before I could respond there was a squeal outside.
The town was dead, the building empty but for the three of us. It wasn't hard to figure out that the squeal was a pair of brakes, and the door slamming was about to be one angry, woken-far-too-early-in-the-morning General.
Don't get me wrong, Dad. There've been worse scrapes, harder puzzles to solve. It was just that little colonel. The gleam in his eye, and the way he tried to dominate the room even though his shoulders came up to my belt. Trying to retake command when he had never really been around to have it in the first place.
I didn't like him. As an officer.
"Well…we should go and meet him, Sergeant. Mustn't leave him standing on the doorstep." I said, scrambling to get it out in failing German. Newkirk was right behind me but Johann shouted for a halt.
The way he shouted I could have sworn that he'd pulled a gun on the both of us. But when we turned he had a paper weight in his hand instead. Shaped like a railroad spike, it looked enough like a gun that I almost ducked. Almost.
"Sergeant, you have not finished cleaning my office and will not get out of your duty so easily." Johann stomped a foot down then pointed at the stupid, dumped plant in the corner.
Newkirk gave me a look…the kind of look that a drowning man gives the guys in the life boat when he realizes there isn't enough room for him.
Newkirk might slip by Burkhalter's notice, but I knew that I couldn't. I had to get out, and fast, before the General made it up the stairs.
I gave Newkirk the nod, went out the door like I was anxious to greet an old buddy, and ducked into this supply closet just before the Burkhalter rounded the first landing.
He wasn't a happy camper. The door to the supply closet was thin anyway, but at the volume that Burkhalter started tearing into Colonel Johann, and Newkirk, the barrier seemed to be a moot point.
Colonel Johann tried to get a word in edgewise. "But…but General the man was just here. He went down to greet you, I…"
"Dumkopf! There is no one here but us! And very soon, you will not be a part of that number!"
Burkhalter raged on for a little longer, then apparently glanced at his watch and realized the time. An hour till sunrise, and not that long til he would be expected at Stalag 13 either.
"Since you interrupted my sleep to complain about a general who does not exist, I will interrupt the rest of your sleep. You will give me the key to your hotel room, and you will spend the rest of the day putting this office back in order!"
The first smart thing Colonel Johann had done all night was to keep his mouth shut. I heard boots slap together and the floorboards creak has Burkhalter headed back down the stairs.
Of course the mini-colonel couldn't be expected to give up that easily. He ordered my man Newkirk to search for me.
That's about when I found this stationary. Pens, ink, paper, staples, tape, glue…a treasure trove for a public accountant, but not much good to me.
I wrote a note to Newkirk, though, and slid it under the door when he passed by.
"Get him out of here!" It said and I heard the barest of taps on the door in acknowledgement before Newkirk went to report that I was nowhere to be found. My boy the Englishman then suggested that it might be easier to find me if the colonel were to lend a hand.
Johann didn't like that. He wanted to write a letter, he said, to the Chief of Staff. That was at 0445 hours. It's almost 0955 now. About an hour ago I noticed a sprinkler head here in the closet. I've also managed to find a few boxes of matches. I've got an idea. Not a smart one, but an idea none-the-less.
Just gotta wait for those maps to get here, and I'll get things moving along.
End Personal Correspondance
Cataloguing Note:
No other continuations of this correspondence have been found. There is no date on the letter. Paper is slightly deteriorated and shows signs of mild water damage, and singeing on the edges. Stationary is of German design, including a water mark confirming that it originated in South Africa made by what is now called the Sappi Company. Composition of stationary confirms that it was created during WWII.
Contacted Col. R. Hogan (retired) concerning correspondence. Response follows.
Lieutenant Sumner,
I can't express my surprise at receiving this little gem in the mail this morning. So much happened during the war years, all of it top secret, that in many ways it is as if it didn't happen. I have a granddaughter who loves to hear my stories, however, and she was all smiles when she read the copy of this letter that you sent.
The details of the rest of the story are a little muddled. I am, after all, an old man now. But I remember that fire pretty well. It didn't take long for the piles of crumpled stationary to turn into a brilliant blaze, and my little closet became a smoke filled inferno.
I had to stay in the little room long enough for the smoke to be seen and the alarm and the sprinkler system to be activated. By this time, remember, Luftwaffe Headquarters was swarming with the day's activity. The alarm and the sprinklers created a mad dash for the door and our courier was nearly trampled in the process.
I could hardly see or breathe by the time I made it out of the closet but then Corporal Peter Newkirk was on the ball and snatched up the maps in the confusion. We made it out, alright, and got back to the camp without too much trouble.
Nobody could figure out how the fire started, or where the mysterious General Hoganburger went. I had a few burns and a mild case of smoke inhalation to worry about. Poor Newkirk smoked like a chimney the whole way back to camp.
I forget the excuse we used to get past Kommandant Klink but I remember the three weeks in the cooler.
You mentioned in your attached note that you were curious about the plant.
Lieutenant Sumner, if you ever want to steal secrets from the enemy, hire a pick pocket. Newkirk had been plenty busy during the day he spent moving Colonel Johann's office into the hall. He snitched more code books, secret communiques and fancy cigars out of that room than he could carry. And he'd hidden about half of it in the pot of that stupid plant.
It came as a great surprise to him when the first thing the tiny colonel did was to smash the thing to bits.
Lieutenant, you've brightened my day. I think I may call the boys together for a card game, and share this little trip down memory lane.
Sincerely,
Robert Hogan
End File
June 18, 1975