Newkirk moved swiftly down the tunnel towards the radio room. He wasn't late, not yet… if he moved right along he knew he could still make it out of the underground network and back to the barracks the roundabout way before the rest of the men returned inside for the evening meal and the fellows began wondering where he was.

He couldn't have been more surprised to come around the corner into the radio room to be met head-on by Colonel Hogan, who looked like he had something much more serious than being late for chow to discuss with him. Nothing unusual about finding the colonel in the radio room, of course. But the fact that the American officer was leveling a semi-automatic pistol directly at his chest definitely took Newkirk by complete surprise. Reflexively he slowly raised his hands in the customary response to such circumstances… after all these years a prisoner, he knew the drill. "Colonel…?" he managed tentatively, scarcely able to believe his own eyes. Had his commanding officer gone crackers in the short time he'd been gone?

"I want to know and I want to know now… what are you doing down here after I gave specific orders to stay out of the tunnel?"

Newkirk had heard the colonel's voice that hard and cold before on numerous occasions… never directed at anyone on the same side as he was, though. This was high-level stuff, no doubt about it. He meant business. "Sir, I… uh…"

"No stalling! I know you, Newkirk; you're one hell of a flim-flam man but that's not what I want from you right now! What are you doing down here?"

"I… I was…"

He was looking for a convincing lie; that was what he was doing. Nobody lied as smoothly and effortlessly as the British corporal… that talent was a valuable asset to them most of the time, but at the moment it was just one more possible reason to end up having to pull that trigger tonight. "Okay, I'll make it easy for you. You don't even have to talk. You can show me what you were up to, or one of us isn't leaving."

Given that choice… some choice… Newkirk nodded and turned around very slowly, hands still in the air, and began to head back down the tunnel in the direction from which he'd come. "I can explain everything, sir…"

"I sure hope so, Corporal." In his career as an officer, Hogan had occasionally been required to write letters of condolence to the families of men who had not made it through the war alive, but never to the family of a man he himself had killed, and he sure didn't relish the idea of having to try and compose one to Newkirk's sister Mavis in England. There was nothing in either the officer's manual or Emily Post that would help him there.

Dear Miss Newkirk… It is with great regret that I write to inform you that I had to shoot your brother Peter, but up to then I really liked the guy…

Past LeBeau's wine cellar and the short spur that led to the cooler was a dead-end that veered off to the left. This was a work in progress; when it was finished they'd have a secondary way to get in and out of the emergency tunnel… for serious emergencies. It was worked only very occasionally, hardly at all over the past two or three months since they'd had their hands full with other business that had a higher priority. Nobody had been down here, and nobody had had any business being down here, for weeks. Yet here was Newkirk. What was he hiding in this remote location? What was such a big secret that he was keeping it way down here, where he knew nobody else would stumble upon it by accident?

Newkirk paused, stood to one side, and gestured with the thumb of one raised hand into the void in front of him. A short, sharp, high-pitched sound startled Hogan momentarily… then when he heard it a second time, he realized what it was.

A puppy barking.

oo 0 oo

Newkirk's lucky halfpenny was on the bench where Hogan had put it, but the corporal hadn't yet quite dared to reclaim it. His promised explanation was in progress, and he wanted to be sure he lived to finish it.

"I couldn't let 'em do it, sir… I just couldn't."

As much as Hogan had doubted it while he had been following the corporal to his deep dark secret stashed in the farthest reaches of the tunnel system, it actually did make perfect sense. In an insane, you-gotta-be-kidding-me kind of a way. Leave it to Newkirk. This was by far the craziest one yet.

Everyone was down there now; his earlier order having been immediately rescinded once it had become clear not only that nothing was wrong, but that Newkirk was in need of a little of the old 'safety in numbers'. Carter sat cross-legged on the floor with the frisky, now quite healthy-looking pup jumping around in his lap, while nearby LeBeau spooned some minced beef scraps into a tin plate, and Kinch added an old blanket on top of the folded t-shirt already lining the bottom of the empty Red Cross carton that was serving as a doggie bed… a t-shirt that had Kinchloe J stenciled on the back of the collar and looked very familiar. Hogan had long since put the gun away. He was still having trouble believing all this, but he was finally sure that at least there was definitely nobody here he would have to shoot. "Of all the…"

"When I saw what the Krauts were gonna do to him I snuck into the guards' barracks, nicked him and brought him down here. He just needed a bit of help, is all." Newkirk risked a proud, almost paternal smile. "He's gettin' big, ain't he?"

That he was. On Uncle Sam's U.S. Government canned milk and Spam… empty tins were strewn all over. Some German Shepherd that silly mutt was turning out to be. It might look like a puppy, but it ate like a draft horse. Finally, all the previously-missing pieces were now here and beginning to fit together. "The petty thefts, of course…" Hogan nodded.

"Well, he needed some things I didn't have… the powdered milk and such. I lifted a bunch of stuff from the guards' quarters late at night, and I did take a few things from me mates as well… but strictly speakin', I paid for those with what I did have."

"Yeah," Carter laughed. "Puppies don't smoke."

"Newkirk, you should have just asked us for the stuff," Kinch told him, giving him a chummy cuff on the shoulder. "You dope. Talk about doing things the hard way. We would've helped you; you knew how bad we all felt about the little guy."

"Well, I didn't want anybody else gettin' into trouble over me little Winston, did I?"

"Winston?" LeBeau rolled his eyes. "Oh, là là… what do you think Churchill would say to that? You gave his name to a Boche dog. I would never do that to DeGaulle."

"By the way," Kinch went on, "where are my socks?"

"Oh… well… he, uh… ate 'em," Newkirk admitted.

"He ate them?"

"He's a right little termite, he is… chews up everything in sight."

"Just out of idle curiosity, Newkirk, what are you planning to do with this dog when he gets to be as big as his namesake and starts eating things bigger than Kinch's socks?" Hogan inquired.

"I, uh… hadn't thought that far ahead, sir," the corporal was forced to admit.

Newkirk was visibly nervous when he spoke to Hogan, and it wasn't just the fact that his secret was out. Hogan understood perfectly well that his own overreaction had rattled the corporal significantly… nobody liked having a gun pointed at him, much less someone who was supposed to be on the same side. That had been way too close. He didn't even like to think about the way it could have turned out, if he'd been a little too quick on the trigger.

As for Newkirk, he felt he'd come clean, acknowledged that he'd been behaving suspiciously, disobeyed direct orders, been secretive, left the barracks at night without permission, told a few lies, been responsible for the petty thefts that had had everyone on edge, and he now denied none of it… but even all of that added together didn't justify what had happened in the tunnel earlier. That had been the guv'nor ready to put a bullet in him if his answers hadn't been satisfactory… that not only rattled the corporal; it hurt.

Well, someone had to ask, and it might as well be him, since he was already in muck up to his neck… Newkirk had never pulled any punches before, so there seemed to be no reason to start now. But he still took up his ha'penny in hand before he spoke, and curled his fingers around it tightly, hoping to squeeze a little extra luck out of it… he had never needed it more than he did right now. "I still don't get it. What's goin' on, Colonel?"

Hogan nodded grimly. "Okay. It's cards on the table time. But I can promise you guys you're not gonna like it."