Chapter 9: Missing Time
Hogan ordered two men to guard Hochstetter every moment. Yes, Hochstetter proved himself, but he still didn't trust him. Probably never would. No matter how grateful Hogan was for Hochstetter getting his men back, he still wouldn't accept the thought of forgiving him.
Hogan still wasn't sure if he was going to send Hochstetter back alive or not. The more the idea of shooting him and blaming it on the Gestapo went through his head, the better it sounded. No, a quick death is too good for him. He deserved for it to be as slow and painful as possible.
"Get some sleep, Rob. You look bushed. There's nothing you can do for Carter by staring at him," said Tom standing behind Hogan.
"I can't help it. His hand is like that because I didn't get to him quick enough. Heck, I should've never sent them on the mission in the first place," said Hogan.
"Rob, did you order him to go out?" Hogan shook his head. "Did you put a gun to his head and make him go out?" Again, Hogan shook his head. "He volunteered. He knew the risks. I bet if you ask him, he doesn't blame you for what happened. I believe what bothers him though is he feels like he let you down."
"He didn't let me down. I'm the one who messed up," said Hogan.
"When Wilson is done with him, talk with him. Both of you will feel better," said Tom.
Hogan stared at Tom. He was right, but how did he figure Carter out so fast. "I'll get some sleep after I talk with Carter."
"There's nothing more for me to do here. If you don't mind, I have a camp to run and need all the sleep I can get," said Tom as he headed toward the ladder.
After about an hour, Wilson walked up to Hogan. "How is he?"
"His hand is pretty busted up. He's young though and as long as we can keep it stable there's a chance. The bones need time to heal. With time and some therapy, he should get most of the use of his hand back," said Wilson.
Hogan breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm going to talk with him. Thanks for your help."
"He may not talk long. I gave him something for the pain since I found some medicine in my desk I forgot about. He should be out in a couple of minutes," said Wilson.
"How you feeling, Carter?" asked Hogan.
"Sorry I messed up and got caught. If I hadn't tripped and fell, we wouldn't have gotten caught," said Carter.
"I don't blame you. You did nothing wrong. I'm glad you are alright. I guess I now have someone to help me cheer during the football game," said Hogan with a smile.
It worked. Carter smiled back at him then fell over asleep.
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None of the men slept much. Hogan still hadn't explained Hochstetter to them. During morning roll call, Hogan ordered Hochstetter to be tied up.
Schultz smiled when he counted all the men present. "Carter, what happened to your hand?"
"I had a nightmare last light and punched the wall. I ended up breaking my hand," answered Carter.
"Awe, I'm sorry you hurt your hand," said Schultz sympathetically.
"Report!" yelled Klink.
"All present," said Schultz proudly.
Klink nodded in Hogan's direction. Hogan smiled, nodding back.
"Wait a minute. You mean to tell me Klink knew they were gone and he didn't do anything?" asked Tom.
"Yep," answered Hogan.
"Why would he do that? Doesn't he know how much trouble he could be in for keeping it a secret?" said Tom.
"Yep. The reason he didn't tell is because he's on our side. Who do you think I asked for the truck?" Hogan patted Tom on the shoulder and went back inside. He wanted to have some time alone with Hochstetter. But first, he owed Newkirk and Carter an explanation.
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"You got to be balmy to believe him," said Newkirk. "How could you trust the likes of him? Have you forgotten everything he's done to you?"
"No, I haven't forgotten. I checked his story out with London. Even though it appears he's telling the truth, I still don't trust him. It wouldn't surprise me if he was playing both sides. But for now, I have my orders," said Hogan.
"Colonel, he scares me. He knows too much. If he's on both sides or if he wants to save face with the Gestapo and prove his loyalty to them, he could turn us all in," said Carter.
"He's right, Colonel. Say the word, and I'll put an end to our problem," said Newkirk, sliding his thumb across his throat.
"I appreciate the offer, Newkirk. If anyone is going to kill him it'll be me. Yes, Carter, I have thought about that. That's why I'm taking every precaution to make sure he can't communicate with anyone," said Hogan.
"But what about when you left him alone at Gestapo headquarters while you took us out to the truck?" Newkirk pointed out.
"It was a risk. I figured the best thing to do was to get the two of you out of there. If things would have turned sour, I would've held the Gestapo off as long as I could so you could get away," said Hogan.
The men felt ashamed they had put Hogan in such a position. They had hoped by having a higher ranking officer, he'd order Hogan to not take as many chances. It looks as if Hogan's duties have been split. Tom would run the camp as expected, but he would leave running the operation to Hogan.
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Hogan sat across from Hochstetter. He left orders for no one to disturb him unless necessary. He made sure he had no weapons around him in case the urge to kill Hochstetter became too strong. Not that he needed a weapon any way.
"I suppose you want me to untie you?" asked Hogan.
"You do what you feel you have to do," answered Hochstetter.
"Just stop it! Stop playing all meek and mild. Yesterday when I was beating the crap out of you, you didn't try to defend yourself. Now you're all 'whatever you want.' Don't think for one moment anything you do will change my feelings toward you. If I had it my way, you'd be experiencing the same pain you put me through all these years. I still haven't made up my mind yet if you're worth risking a court-martial over. I would love nothing better than to break every bone in your body right now and then when I was finished, if you were still alive, I'd kill you the most painful way I could think of. If I did that, I'd be disobeying orders and court-martialed." Hogan leaned close to Hochstetter's face. "It's a good thing I'm a stickler for following orders. Right now, those orders are the only thing keeping you alive. Be careful though; they may not hold forever."
"I'm not doing it to change your feelings about me. If I was you, I'd hate me to. You know what it's like to have a secret that you let no one see. It's almost like having an evil shadow hanging over me. I use to hold my alter ego at bay, but despite my good intentions, it always got away from me. He would always do the things I don't want to do. You don't know what it's like to feel like Jekyll and Hyde. For the longest time it felt like two men were warring inside. One gives, one takes. This prevented me from doing my job properly. I had to decide1. I buried who I really was and allowed myself to become the monster you know. On the day I beat you with the cat-of-nine-tails, I realized the monster had gotten out of hand. Your scream awoke the real me. I lost sight of what I was assigned here to do and I allowed myself to become something I despised. I'm ashamed for everything I've done. I'm sorry mostly for the way I treated you," confessed Hochstetter. "I should have done things differently."
"Right. You're sorry. You have to have a conscious to be sorry. The way you uncaringly tortured people to death proved you don't have one!" Hogan yelled.
"I know who all the members of the underground are. I knew who to stay away from or who to not question as much when we did a round up. I knew who would break easily, so I killed them quick to protect what they knew. I knew you were strong. I knew how far to torture you to make it convincing, but stopped shy of the point where you would talk. I've always known how to break you and stayed away from it," said Hochstetter. "Unfortatunatly, I'm not the only person who figured it out."
Hogan's eyes went dark and his jaw set. "That's why you let Koch break me? Did he figure it out on his own or did you help him?"
"I would never help anyone who was really trying to break you or any other member of the underground. Because I lost my temper with you, my superiors were displeased with me. An answer to your question earlier is yes, they tried to brainwash you2. Orders were to push, but not get too physically abusive," said Hochstetter. "I was put on probation for my actions. Unless I caught you red handed, I wasn't to have anything to do with you for six weeks."
"Why? They afraid you would ruin their experiment? So tell me. When did they try to brainwash me?" asked Hogan as he folded his arms across his chest.
"When you were first shot down and again after Koch broke you. When you were first shot down, I had heard of them trying to brainwash Allied pilots. They wanted to send them back to the allies so they could fly again. This time, when they got in the air, they would shoot down their own planes," explained Hochstetter.
"I take it they didn't get anywhere with me?" asked Hogan.
"Even at your weakest point, they couldn't break you. They figured watching your crew die would do it. When they realized it wouldn't work, they tried using drugs, sounds and pictures to weaken your defenses. Still nothing worked. The only thing they succeeded in doing was getting you to follow typical prisoner rules such as saluting your captures and other such orders," said Hochstetter.
"I have no memory of that or all the escape attempts I made. Why?" asked Hogan.
"The drugs they gave you caused short term memory loss. I substituted most of the drugs for saline solution. Before I could get them all replaced, they had already given you a couple of doses. They came up with the excuse of the escape attempts so no one would ask questions about your treatments or why you were handed over to the Gestapo or the length of your stay at Dulag Luft. Supposedly the reports had the escape attempts spaced out enough so your punishment would extend your stay there," answered Hochstetter. "As far as I know, you only tried to escape once from them."
"I knew it!" Hogan was thankful a part of his life was being reveled to him. He knew there was about two weeks of his life he couldn't recall after being shot down. What Hochstetter said brought back some of his missing memories. He remembered at Dulag Luft, once given the chance, he tried to escape. Regrettably, he didn't get far before he was captured again. As a matter of fact, he didn't even make it out of his cell3.
"Back at Dulag Luft, were you there with a female Gestapo colonel?" asked Hogan.
Hochstetter nodded. "Ja. Colonel Geiger. She is a member of the underground as well and the one who got you out of Stalag 14. At the time, neither one of us realized the other was working for the allies."
Hogan paced. The stories he was told, don't match the memories he has. It was still all confusing in his mind. He didn't know who to believe. All he knew is they made him pay for the "escape attempt."
"People tell me I was at Stalag 1 for a while, but I have no memory of that either." He sat down again with his head in his hands. Part of him was glad he was starting to remember what had been done to him, but the other part wished he could still forget.
Hogan didn't remember all the details, but he did remember strapped to a chair and Nazi propaganda images flashed on a screen before him. Headphones were over his ears. Nazi rhetoric played so loud, he couldn't think about anything else. His arm had some sort of IV in it.
His men didn't know about the attempt at brainwashing. None of them ever asked about his scars or what happened to him before Stalag 13. All they knew is what was in his file in Klink's office. This wasn't part of that file.
"I knew the allies needed you back up in the air. I asked German High command to send you to Stalag 13 as a means of keeping tabs on you. I convinced them you were too important to kill. I figured you could escape easily and get back to London. Shortly after having you transferred here, I learned about your operation," said Hochstetter.
"If they didn't succeed in brainwashing or breaking me the first time, what was it they were worried about?" asked Hogan.
"Since the brainwashing didn't work, they wanted me to kill you. I had to come up with justification for keeping you alive so I had you sent here. It was more or less for observation to see if there might be a delayed reaction to the brainwashing. I told them it made perfect since; place you over a bunch of enlisted men and if you escaped, all the men in your barrack would be punished. They came up with the idea of shooting them. You were a menace to the Luftwaffe. They wanted you broken and grounded. Since they couldn't have both, they preferred grounded and would work on broken later. They wanted to show all the allies the Great Colonel Hogan was too scared to escape. The fact you didn't escape when everyone else was, was meant to humiliate you. Problem is there were no successful escapes," said Hochstetter.
"So you are the one I have to thank for being stuck here." Without warning, Hogan delivered a punch to Hochstetter. "Thanks."
1 The idea for Jekyll and Hyde comes from a song by Petra called Jekyll and Hyde. Some of the paragraph are lyrics from the song.
2 Brainwashed by Nitestalker
3 Once Upon A Time by Nitestalker
4 Broken by Nitestalker
