Operation Bedtime. It would be executed with precision, speed and skill. In fact, it would probably go down as one of the greatest military feats of WWII.
"Everyone in their pyjamas?" Hogan asked the children in hut two.
"Yes sir," they chorused back, offering a few salutes.
"Everyone's brushed their teeth?"
"Yes sir."
"Washed their faces?"
"Sir, yes sir."
"Good, now climb into bed and go to sleep. I'll see you all in the morning. We've got a big day ahead of us."
There, simple. Now he could finally get some rest. Operation Bedtime was a success.
Of course it could never be that easy.
"Where's he going to sleep?" Newkirk demanded, pointing a finger at Klink.
Hogan groaned. He hadn't quite thought that far into Operation Bedtime. "He'll have to bunk with one of you," Hogan said evenly, bracing himself for the outburst of indignation.
"One of us!"
"Well, look at it this way: whoever shares with him gets to share his nice, big, thick blanket too."
Newkirk seemed to consider that for a second. "All right. I'll share with him." Apparently the idea of being warm for a night trumped Newkirk's immense dislike for Klink. Of course, Hogan wouldn't be surprised if in the morning Klink was knocked out on the ground and Newkirk and the blanket were alone in his bunk. Hogan sighed. That wouldn't be good.
"Forget it. He can sleep on my bottom bunk. Now into bed with all of you."
Newkirk rolled his eyes but climbed up onto his bunk without further complaint.
"Come on, Klink," Hogan sighed. This was going to be a long night. He could only imagine how annoying Klink was when he was sleeping. Knowing Klink, he was probably a bed-wetter as a kid too.
"Can I sleep on your bottom bunk too?" Olsen asked, coming up behind Hogan. "My bunk's too high."
"Well if you're asleep then it won't matter how high up you are," Hogan reasoned. Olsen was not convinced.
"But what if I roll off and fall?"
"You won't roll off," Hogan assured him.
"Please. I don't even mind sharing with Klink."
Hogan could almost feel Olsen's eyes widen and he refused to look down. Drat. Somehow they had caught on to his weakness. Now they'd use it to walk all over him.
"No, Olsen, you just-" And then he looked. Olsen just looked so pathetic with his eyes watering up with tears, his bottom lip quivering slightly. "Oh all right! As long as you don't mind sharing with Klink it's fine by me! Now come on, both of you." Hogan let out a frustrated grunt and marched into him room, Klink and Olsen trailing behind him.
"All right, in you go," Hogan ordered as he motioned the two children to his bunk. They both climbed in obediently. "Good night," Hogan grumbled. Quickly he turned out his lamp and climbed up to his top bunk. He patience was at an end. He just wanted to go to sleep and put this day behind him.
"You're not going to tuck us in?" Olsen asked quietly after a moment of silence.
"No."
"Okay… night." Hogan ignored him. He just needed sleep. Goodness, how did real parents do this day in and day out?
"Sleep tight." Olsen continued. There was another pause. "Don't let the bedbugs bite!"
"Good night, Olsen!"
"Night," Olsen squeaked.
Silence filled the room and Hogan shifted in his bunk to get comfortable. His body had finally relaxed when another voice came from below.
"Hogan?"
"What Klink?" Hogan mumbled in German.
"Aren't you going to tuck us in?"
Hogan groaned and buried his head under his pillow. "No! Now go to sleep!"
"Okay… good night… Don't let the monsters come out and eat you!"
"Don't worry," Hogan grumbled. "Any monsters come out, I have two kids I can use to distract them."
There was finally silence from the bottom bunk and Hogan took a moment to soak in the peace. "Good night," he muttered to the ceiling. He was just about to fall asleep when he heard the door creak open.
Sitting up and squinting in the dark, he saw two little forms in the doorway. "What? Who?"
"We're scared in there," a little voice said. Goldman, Hogan guessed. "There's all these noises. Can we sleep in here?"
"Bottom bunk," Hogan ordered, laying back down.
He heard the two of them patter across the room and felt the bed shake as they jumped into the bottom bunk. Olsen and Klink both muttered their protests but otherwise didn't put up much of a fuss.
"Good night Colonel Hogan," Goldman called.
Oh no, not all this again. "Good night already. Don't worry about bedbugs or monsters."
"I won't… but did you check under the bed for the boogeyman?"
"Yeah, he's not there. Now go to sleep."
Any quiet that followed wasn't to last because the door opened again. "Colonel Hogan?" It was Newkirk.
"You scared too?" Hogan asked, not bothering to look up.
"Me? I'm not scared. Just wondered where everyone else went. Thought I would join 'em. Your bunk must be comfier than ours anyway. You are an officer after all. Move over you lot. Make room, make room!"
Hogan completely gave up on the idea of any peace and rest when the door opened a few more times. Finally, all his men, with the exception of Carter who had been out like a light earlier, were in his room, trying to squeeze themselves onto the bottom bunk.
"Oi! You're squishing me!"
"Get your foot out of my face!"
"Cochon!"
"Your feet are freezing!"
"Colonel Hogan, can some of us come up there with you?"
All right, he had to step in and put an end to this right now. Hogan jumped off his bunk and stood over the children with his arms crossed over his chest and a firm look on his face. "No. Now all of you up and back into your own beds, right now."
None of them moved. "Sorry, Colonel. We didn't mean to fuss," Newkirk finally said. "We'll be good." To prove his point, Newkirk closed his eyes and started to snore.
"Nothing doing. Bed, all of you."
"All right," Goldman pouted. "But can you at least tell us a story first?"
"Yes! A story! Puh-lease, Colonel Hogan?"
He was outnumbered. Fourteen pairs of eyes against little old, weak-willed, sucker of a colonel him. "One story," Hogan conceded. "Then bed! I mean it!"
Of course, Hogan didn't know any stories to tell. Flipping on his lamp, Hogan searched through his bookshelves for something to read to them. He took down a magazine and flipped through it. Nope. They definitely wouldn't appreciate that one. How about Popular Mechanics? How'd he even gotten that anyway? He flipped through it. 'How to wrap a bear for mailing'? Oh yeah, that would come in handy. He shelved it. What else did he have?
The Army Officer's Guide. Now there was some fine reading. Or a weapon's manual. How come that one hadn't been confiscated? Hogan shrugged and pulled it off the shelf. "Let's see." Maybe if he spoke in a very interesting voice, they would buy it. "Field stripping, cleaning and routine maintenance of Garand rifles. Section 22!" he began as he paced in front of the bunk. "Repeated disassembly and assembly causes excessive wear of parts and will eventually reduce the accuracy of the weapon. See figure 57. Oh look, pictures and everything." Hogan crouched down and held the book out for the kids to see. Only Klink and LeBeau bothered to look, both genuinely interested only because they couldn't understand what he was saying. The other children didn't seem pleased.
"What is this!" Kinch demanded.
"This is the worst story I've ever heard," Goldman shouted indignantly.
"Boo!" Newkirk yelled.
"All right, all right." Hogan tossed the book onto his desk. "So that did stink. But I don't know how to tell a good bedtime story."
"Well, tell us about when you were a kid," Olsen suggested.
"Only seems fair," Kinch agreed with a shrug.
Hogan rolled his eyes. How did he get roped into this? "All right, I'll see what I can come up with. But I warn you, I was a very boring child." His men just gave him sceptical looks.
"All right mates, clear out, let Colonel Hogan in." Newkirk shoved a few of his bed mates to the edge of the bed. "Don't look at me like that. Go onto the top bunk." There was a bit of grumbling, but half the children slipped out of the bottom bunk and climbed up top. "There you go Colonel. Plenty of room down here."
"Thanks, Newkirk," Hogan ground out as he looked up at his top bunk. He had a bad feeling he wouldn't be sleeping up there tonight. In fact, he had a feeling that if he really wanted to get some rest, he would have to wait until all the kids were asleep in his room and sneak out into the common room.
Hogan climbed into the bottom bunk and settled in between Klink and Olsen. Newkirk slid up beside Klink and practically pushed him over until the Kommandant was in Hogan's lap. "Ready, sir," Newkirk announced as he curled under Klink's blanket. Klink scowled and pulled it away from him. The two fought for a moment until Hogan grabbed the blanket and laid it across all of them. Then LeBeau settled on top of it, on Hogan's knees. Hogan shifted uncomfortably under him, but didn't have much room as the other children pressed closer. Oh yeah, this was just dandy.
"All right, let's see, a story from when I was a kid, huh?" Leaning his head back against the wall, Hogan looked up at the top bunk, trying to search his memories for a good one. "Well, I remember one time, my brother-"
"I didn't know you had a brother," Kinch interrupted from the top bunk. Hogan craned his neck to the side and found all the children up top peering over the side of the bunk.
"Well I did, okay."
"What's his name?" Olsen asked.
"William. Willie, actually."
Klink shifted in his lap and looked up. "Willie?"
"Not you. My brother. His name was Willie," Hogan explained in German.
"Interesting."
"Yeah, anyway," Hogan continued in English, "so one Christmas me and my brother Willie and our friend Heinie Zimmerman got bicycles for Christmas. It was a really big deal for us. Not many kids had 'em. Of course, you can't ride 'em in five feet of snow- although we tried a few times- so we had to wait for summer to really use them.
"Usually we would spend all summer playing baseball, but that summer we just went all over town on those things. We'd come home real late sometimes and Mom would be worried and Dad would threaten to hide the front wheels if we worried her like that again.
"Anyway," Hogan continued, "so one day we rode to this new area of town. They were going to build houses there or something. Anyway, we get there and there's this big pile of explosives. Willie wanted to go but Heinie picked up a rock and threw it at the pile." Beside him, Newkirk and Olsen tensed. "Don't worry, nothing happened. So Henie threw another rock. Then I did. Nothing. Not a thing. So we got a little closer. And Heinie started poking at the pile with a stick. Still nothing. Must've been duds, we figured. But we all decided to see if we could get it to blow. Eventually we were riding our bicycles over the pile. Still nothing.
"Finally we got bored of it. We really tried everything to get it to blow. So we get on our bikes to go and just as we're leaving, I scoop up and rock and just toss it over my shoulder. All of a sudden- BOOM!"
All the children jumped and Klink and LeBeau let out cries of surprise. "Did it go off? Did you die?" Olsen asked, his voice filled with worry.
"No, we were fine. But it did go off."
"How are you so lucky?" Kinch cried from above. "You should've been blown to bits long before that."
Hogan shrugged. "Fate was on my side, I guess. Anyway, so we high-tailed it out of there. Then Willie said we ought to find a policeman or something before anyone else went there and got hurt. So we finally found Officer O'Malley and told him about what we had found. We took him to the place and when we got there, there were a bunch of dumb kids throwing rocks at another pile!
"Well Officer O'Malley went down there, grabbed them by their ears, chewed them out and told them that he would make sure their mothers found out about how stupid they were. Came back to us and asked us if we had done anything like that. 'No sir,' we said. So he took us home, told our Ma's we were heroes and exemplarily youth and all that. And we lived happily ever after. The end."
"That was a pretty good story," Newkirk yawned. "But the ending could use a little work."
"Tell us another one," Olsen murmured in a sleepy voice.
"Don't have anymore," Hogan shrugged.
"That was your whole childhood?" Kinch asked incredulously.
"Pretty much."
"Then tell us a real story. You must know one or two."
Hogan sighed. It was going to be a long night. "Ever heard about Androcles and the lion?"
