Disclaimer: I don't own Hogan's Heroes or any of the characters; I merely borrow them and play with them for a while.
Colonel Rodney Crittendon hasn't always been a colonel, of course. Even though he is now one of the finest, most outstanding officers in the RAF.
What few might suspect, though, is that he didn't always want to be a colonel.
No, as a young boy, he had no such aspirations. On the contrary, war and military life were far from his mind. Instead, he drew inspiration from his mother. She was a housewife, but took great interest in flowers and floral arrangements. It was only a hobby, really, but she had such talent for it that townspeople frequently asked her to arrange the floral decorations for their weddings, funerals, and celebrations.
He enjoyed watching his mother work, as her nimble fingers placed a rose into a bouquet here, braided a lily into a wreath there. She was beautiful, his mother, and looked so regal as she sat there with flowers strewn all around her. Just like a princess, he would think. A fairy princess, from a land faraway.
Sometimes, he helped out. His mother smiled as he did, and gently instructed him in the art of combining flowers to bring out their different characteristics most effectively.
She always liked geraniums the best, though. They were rather inconspicuous flowers, neither very colourful nor particularly eye-catching, but had a sort of quiet, modest beauty to them. Often she would sneak one or two of them into a bouquet or wreath, but place them so that they weren't really visible among the other flowers, just because she liked them so much.
One day, so he decided, he would become a florist. His mother taught him that word, and he liked the sound of it and how it rolled off his tongue so smoothly. Yes, he would become a florist when he grew up.
But his world fell apart before that happened.
One day, his mother took ill. She coughed and coughed, and her face was so pale, almost translucent in its stark whiteness. Tuberculosis, the doctors said. It was a word he had never heard before, but it nevertheless sounded terrifying. He and his father visited her in the sanatorium once; he brought a bouquet of geraniums with him that he awkwardly placed at the rickety table along her bedside. She thanked him, and kissed him on the cheek before collapsing into a terrible coughing fit.
His mother never returned from the sanatorium.
At her funeral, he placed the wreath of geraniums he had made on her chest, tears silently spilling down his cheeks. He thought she looked like she was sleeping in the coffin, like she was about to rise up any minute and give him one of those smiles she reserved for him, and then playfully ruffle his hair.
But his mother remained still and unmoving, and the coffin with the geranium wreath was lowered down into the cold, hard earth.
From that day on, young Crittendon became a very solitary child. After school, he would go out into the hillside, and look down into the valley below. There was an old castle ruin close nearby; he would sit on the withered stone wall encircling it – the part that still hadn't fallen to pieces – and imagine that it was one of those castles pictured in his fairytale books, with a drawbridge and white towers stretching into the sky, one in each corner. The surrounding forest was the Royal Park, where he – a knight in shining armour – would ride his fine horses, hunting fleet-footed deer with bow and arrow. And beyond the hills in the distance lay the Forgotten Lands, where trolls and giants and other monsters roamed freely. Sometimes, they would stray into the human realm, but he would chase them off with sword in hand, bravely protecting their peaceful kingdom.
And of course, his mother, the fairy princess, would be living in the castle with him. They'd be together, always.
And so, he dreamed his boyhood away, living in the imaginary world he had created for himself where harsh reality wasn't allowed to enter and no sorrows could reach him. In his fantasies, he was invincible, able to perform any feat imaginable. There, he could be anything he wanted. Never again would he have to feel so utterly powerless as when he had watched his mother wither away on her sickbed, unable to do anything to help her.
However, one day his father suddenly announced that he was being sent off to military school. His son would become an officer; it was a proper career choice that suited the only son of a fine family such as theirs. Also, it would take that head of his out of the clouds and put his two feet back on the ground again.
It was a bit of a shock for poor Crittendon, who'd never wanted to join the army. But perhaps, he thought, as he sat on the train that would take him to England's most prestigious military school, an officer was a good choice after all. If his father wanted him to become one, he would not disappoint. In fact, he'd become the finest officer the British Kingdom had ever seen! Bravely doing his duty, just like the knights of old, upholding traditional values and chivalry.
Military education wasn't very fun, though. Nor was it very glamorous, and a far cry from what he had hoped for. He had imagined it would be more about being a fine, upstanding gentleman, skilled in horsemanship and fencing, and less about polishing uniform buttons until they could serve as mirrors. Lessons were for the most part boring, and he would instead sink into fantasies of what a fine officer he would become one day, defending the English crown and its King, standing up for justice and truth, just like those knights used to do that he had read about as a boy.
But one day, he was a lieutenant in the RAF. And for a brief moment, that struck him as slightly odd, because hadn't there once been something else he had wanted to be? But no matter, officers didn't complain or question, and he was an officer now, ready to embrace all the ideals and expectations that went with it.
His military career started off pretty slowly, he had to admit, but then took off as war broke out and quickly thinned out the ranks.
And before he knew it, he was a colonel. A fine rank to attain for a fine gentleman such as him. Still, there was something gnawing inside of him, something that wouldn't leave him alone, try as he might to push it aside. But as he never could put his finger on just what it was that was bothering him, he ignored it until the feeling faded into a misty vagueness.
Besides, he soon had other things on his mind to deal with. One unlucky day he was shot down over Germany, and ended up a POW. A sad fate for an upstanding officer like him, but he would simply have to make the best out of the situation, because that's what officers do, after all.
However, it wasn't until he met Colonel Hogan that he finally realized what that gnawing something inside him actually was.
He had expected Colonel Hogan, a fellow officer, to be on his side, to understand him. To play by the same rules. But the man was so different from Crittendon's idea of what a proper officer should be like; there was no common ground to stand on, no kinship at all. At the end of their encounter, Colonel Hogan had finally lost it and in a very un-officerlike way – if he may say so himself – yelled angrily at him. Crittendon can't remember the exact words, but it was something along the lines of just why in the world had he ever decided to become an officer, when he was apparently so much more interested in freaking geraniums?
And for a stunning moment, those words made all the old, protective barriers and self-delusions in Crittendon's mind fall away, letting the reality he had stubbornly kept at bay for so long wash over him.
Yes, why in the world had he decided to become an officer, when there was something else he had always wanted instead? Before his inner eye he suddenly saw the painfully striking discrepancy between the man he was and the man he had once wanted to be.
A florist. He had wanted to become a florist. Not an officer.
Once the war is over, he had promised himself, then, he'd retire from the RAF and become a florist.
Yes, the English crown is still in need of his fine, gentlemanly services, but once the war is over and he can choose his own path with a clean conscience, that's what he's going to do.
And Crittendon realized that day that even though Colonel Hogan might not be much of an officer, he will still never forget about the man.
Because Hogan was the one who made him remember the dream he had forgotten, so long ago.