Chapter 2 Kristina

The next day, Hogan allowed the three newcomers to come up out of the tunnel and join the rest of the barracks for breakfast.

"Do you feel, Sgt. Moffitt," said Hogan, pushing his powdered eggs around, "that one sergeant is worth all the trouble it takes to rescue him from Gestapo Headquarters?"

"If you knew Sgt. Troy, Col. Hogan, you wouldn't have to ask that. The patrol he leads is one of the sharpest in the whole of North Africa. We've destroyed more convoys, located and obliterated more ammo dumps and captured more high-ranking Jerries than there are grains of sand in the Great Sand Sea."

"Oui, mon sergent, but have you and this Troy ever blown up a bridge?" asked the petite Frenchman, LeBeau.

"Or a railway line?" threw in Carter, his hands in his pockets. As far as Moffitt, Tully and Hitch knew, he never took his hands out of his pockets.

"We blew up a petrol dump on our last mission," Tully said. "Sent the Jerries' oil and petrol sky-high. It was still raining barrels when we took off in our jeeps across the sands."

"What about starting an avalanche—we've got you beat there," said Newkirk, shuffling cards at the wooden table in the barracks. "Well, technically, it was a sneeze, Col. Klink started it. But we gave him the cold."

"I must say, that's a tall story, I believe," said Moffitt, with a slight tilt of his chin in the air. "But, at any rate, we don't meet with much snow in the desert. Mostly, it's sand." On his feet at the side of Newkirk's bunk, he leaned over the table into Newkirk's face. "Sand."

LeBeau made a grimace. Hogan, who had been rubbing his chin while in deep thought, now spoke up.

"Kristina, our underground contact—"

"The one with the scrub brushes," Moffitt countered. "Yes?"

Hogan smirked. "Well, as I say, Kristina made herself known to Sgt. Troy last night."

"That sounds interesting!" said Newkirk, grinning from ear to ear.

Hogan ignored the interruption. "We're to meet her tonight at the old barn."

"What for? Begging your pardon, sir," said Tully.

"Yeah, can't we just go in to Hammelburg and bust him out?" asked Hitch. "We do that all the time in the desert."

"Let's hear the man out, lads," said Doc.

"She'll give us the layout of his cell and tell us how he is," said Hogan. "Major Hochstetter is pretty thorough in his methods of interrogation. If Troy's too weak to move, he'll have to stay."

"I see," said Moffitt. "Well, we didn't travel over a thousand miles just to leave him to Major what's-his-name's tender mercies."

Hogan smiled. "That's what I was hoping you'd say. You guys are thick as thieves, aren't you?"

"We try to be. Every so often, one of us will try to break loose—" here, he looked over at Tully and Hitch, who both turned sheepish, "and we have to rein that one back in. But we get along."

"How are we going to get out of camp, sir?" asked Tully, the most practical of the Rats.

"Secret tunnel entrance."

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Later that day, Major Hochstetter's staff car, a Mercedes-Benz 260D, drove up to the gate and, as with magic words, the gate opened to allow his vehicle to pass through. Behind it, a truck of much plainer design drove in with six SS guards in it. Klink looked up from his mountain of paperwork just as Cpl. Karl Langenscheidt knocked rapidly on his door and entered without waiting for Klink to answer.

"What is it?" asked the nervous Wehrmacht colonel. Even after receiving a phone call yesterday about Hochstetter's visit, he was still unprepared for it. His hands practically shook.

"He's here," said the likewise anxious corporal, then he jumped a country mile as that wolfish voice of Hochstetter's broke out.

"Who's here, Corporal?" he asked, roaring out the words.

"He is, sir. I mean, you are, sir. I—I …"

"That will be all, Cpl. Langenscheidt. You may go now," said Klink, wishing he could go 'now,' too.

"Maybe he should stay—ready with iodine and bandages for Col. Klink." Langenscheidt smiled sickly and hurried to close the door behind him. When he was gone, Hochstetter moved cat-like towards Klink's desk. "Why are you always so afraid of me, Klink?" he asked with a sneer in his voice. "Have you got something to hide?"

Just my fear of you, the commandant thought. That, and the Russian Front! He kept that answer to himself, though, and tried another.

"Afraid of you, my dear major? Whatever would I be afraid of you for?"

"Because I could brand you a spy and have you shot? Or maybe because I could write you a ticket for Stalingrad?"

"I'll remind you, Major Hochstetter, that I outrank you. Whatever you could do to me, I could do to you."

Klink followed up this inane statement with several hand flutterings and contortions of his torso into various letters of the alphabet.

"Bah! You don't have the guts to challenge me—and you know it, Klink!"

While these two old chums were thus engaged in very fruitful conversation, Cpl. Langenscheidt ran to Sgt. Hans Schultz' quarters, woke him up in his long johns, and spewed forth about the visitor. Schultz, who had been on guard duty all last night, should have torn his head off. Instead, he jumped up and with the jittery corporal's help, threw on his entire uniform in less than four minutes. He was starved to death, but didn't even think of delaying what he had to do. He wanted to head off trouble by seeing what Hogan was up to in relation to the Gestapo major's visit.

To that end, he fairly flew over to Barracks 2 and knocked. He entered without waiting for an answer and ran into TSgt. Andrew Carter who was at the door and supposed to be guarding it. Schultz threw himself inside, like a damsel in distress, all fluttery, and landed at the table in the middle of the barracks. He sat right down nose to nose with the tall Britisher who was visiting from the desert regions of North Africa and, outside his usual stomping grounds, calmly having a cuppa in Bavaria.

"Nicht wieder der Fremde!" he exclaimed, looking at Sgt. Jack Moffitt, who smiled grimly at him. Not the stranger again!

"Just ignore him, Schultz. Remember, he's a transient."

"A transient, Col. Hogan?" Schultz looked at the desert Brit again. "But he's still here, in the barracks." He pointed out Tully and Hitch. "They're still here, too! Oh, Col. Hogan, now you've gone too far!"

Hogan thought it best to change the subject. "What about Hochstetter, Schultz? We saw him drive up."

"He's with the colonel now, according to Langenscheidt."

"Schultz," Hogan quickly advised. "I hate to break up the party, but we've got to go make a pot of coffee!"

"Oh, I would like some. I missed breakfast coming over here. LeBeau's coffee is always so good, too."

Hogan, Newkirk and Kinch all lent a hand and began raising Schultz from the chair at the head of the table.

"Was ist los?" What's happening? "Col. Hogan, there's some monkey business going on here."

"Schultz, you want me to explain to you what they're really doing here?"

"No, Col. Hogan, I see nothing! I know nothing!"

"Well, that's original," piped in Newkirk.

"You boys have a good pot of coffee. I'm leaving." Schultz headed for the door with several hands helping to propel him in that direction.

When he was sufficiently gone, and toddling off to his breakfast, they raced into Hogan's quarters and hooked up the coffee pot. It was a listening device that plugged into the wall, and, connected to a microphone in Klink's office, it picked up on his conversations with visitors.

"As I was saying, Klink, before you began jabbering again about security at Stalag 13, it's possible that several of Sgt. Troy's team members are here in Germany. Our contact in Libya notes that they've been conspicuously absent from their usual desert haunts. They may be trying to rescue him."

"Why do you think they're here, Major? I run a tight ship."

"I know, Klink. As tight as the Titanic—after it hit the iceberg!"

'I still don't make the connection between this Sgt. Troy and members of his unit in North Africa."

"I'm holding their leader in my jail this minute at Gestapo Headquarters."

"You are?" said Klink. "And you think the others may be here?"

"A ray of sunshine!" Hochstetter's voice dripped with sarcasm. "Klink, I believe you're getting it at last."

Inside Hogan's office, Moffitt murmured, "Bloody Kraut! I'd like to—!"

"No more than we would, Doc," said Tully, putting a hand on his shoulder as they stood by Hogan's desk. With Tully's calm, reassuring pressure, Moffitt calmed down—but only somewhat.

In Klink's office, the 'conversation' continued, the two men standing and facing each other. Klink was more than a few inches taller than the Gestapo major, but he was trembling from his well-shined, balding head right down to his well-shined, patent leather shoes.

"We have descriptions of each of Sgt. Troy's men, sent by wire from Africa."

Hochstetter paused for effect. Was he trying to make Klink any more nervous by making him wait for the inevitable?

"You have? And what do you plan to do, Major?"

"I've instructed my men to search this camp thoroughly."

Hochstetter relished telling Klink this, knowing that the commandant would have angry, sullen, riotous prisoners on his hands and hours of clean-up ahead of him.

Klink paled. "There's no need to search the camp, Major. They're not here. No one is here but the prisoners who should be here."

"I wonder sometimes if you're even here, Klink. I mean, up here." He tapped his forehead.

"Now, that's hitting below the belt, Major Hochstetter."

"Klink! My men are at this moment moving into Barracks 2 to search it from top to bottom. If they're to be found anywhere, it'll be there."

When Hochstetter had mentioned that he had wired for the desert commandos' descriptions, Hogan got up posthaste. He never liked visits from the SS.

With Kinch's help, he herded his guests towards the bunk that led down into the tunnels. Carter and LeBeau stood in front of the door as the SS guards began to hammer on it. Newkirk sat at the table, looking worried from bunk to door and back to bunk again. His rapidly-shuffled cards began to take on a life of their own and flew everywhere as the SS men pounded away.

The desert Rats slipped down the ladder three at a time and the bunk closed up just as the SS men broke through Carter and LeBeau's feeble obstruction. They fell into the room with fury in their pale blue eyes and began to tear the place apart, throwing mattresses everywhere and turning over the bunks to look for hidden tunnels.

Sitting peacefully in his office on his upper bunk reading a spy novel, Hogan looked up as they barged their way in, overturning his desk and chair as they began a search.

"Do come in," he quipped. "If you tell me what you're looking for, maybe I can help you find it."

The ferocity of their reply started him. He jumped down so that they could commit third-degree homicide on his bunk, too, just like the ones in the outer room.

Down below, Tully said, breathlessly, "Gosh, I never moved so fast."

"You and me both!" said Hitch with energy.

Moffitt held up a hand for quiet, tilting his head up as the pounding and thumping continued up above. Both younger men nodded, knowing that they couldn't give themselves away now, not with all that Col. Hogan was doing for them.

Even though Hogan planned to meet Kristina at a barn later that evening and had intended to take them along, they had to stay in the tunnel until Hochstetter's men were gone. The SS tore up the rest of the camp and found nothing, not even a smidgen of North African sand—all the dirt they found was German dirt. Hochstetter, impatient as a rampaging bull, was not at all gratified that the desert Rats seemed to be nowhere in the camp. He huffed out of Klink's office, met with his men and then hurried them all into their respective vehicles, taking off without so much as a wave.

When he thought it was safe, Hogan allowed the three men to come up from the tunnel and rejoin the rest of the barracks. LeBeau fixed a special dinner just for them of Spam cutlets and fried wild onions. These he had plucked himself from the weeds at the edge of the barbed-wire fence, daring the guards in the guard towers to shoot him just for picking wild onions.

"That was a close one," breathed Moffitt when he first stepped out of the bunk. Shaking his head, he looked around at still so much devastation two hours after the SS had vamoosed. Bunks overturned. Mattresses slit and bulging straw. Two men nursing black eyes. He came to the right conclusion and voiced it. "This Major Hochstetter is thorough."

"Yeah, a thoroughgoing rat!" said Newkirk, then he added, "Beggin' your pardon, guv."

"No offense taken," said Moffitt. Seeing that Hogan and his crew were still cleaning up from the six SS tornadoes that had swept through, he said to his companions, "Well, lads, let's pitch in and help put the barracks to rights. It's the least we can do."

Hearing that, both Carter and Newkirk, sharing a look, just shook their heads. If they ever got to the desert themselves, for whatever reason, and they couldn't think of any, both men intended to tear up some dune or other and make the Rats build it back on their own!

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That night, the three Rats and Hogan, plus Newkirk and Carter, left by the tree stump and shot off into the woods between the time in which the two-man guard outside the wire crossed paths. Looking around at the snow-powdered stumps in the area, Moffitt marveled at how they would manage to find the right one when they returned later that night.

"How do you keep all of these stumps straight?" he gently asked Newkirk as they made their way to their meeting with Kristina.

"Ours is the one with three points broken on the top."

"But with the snow? How can you tell which one has three points broken on the top?"

"Better pipe down, mate," Newkirk warned him. "The forest has ears."

Moffitt was quick to obey, turning his mind to thoughts of Kristina and what she could tell them of Troy. Was he well enough to travel? So much would depend—his rescue, even his very life—on what she told Hogan about Troy's fitness for a quick getaway.

The barn was traditional-looking. Heavy rafter beams, straw-laden stalls and dirt floor. There were no animals left, though, and that looked strange to Tully, who had been raised on a farm and tended his own cows, pigs and chickens, when he wasn't running 'shine, that is. He expected to hear moos, oinks and clucks, but only the snow-bound silence hit his ears.

Kristina, a twenty-something Bavarian girl who worked for the Underground, helping in her own small way to defeat the Austrian-born madman in Berchtesgaden, ran to Col. Hogan and took hold of his arms. He took hold of hers, staring into her eyes.

"It's good to see you again, Colonel," she said, smiling.

"I wish it could be under better circumstances, Kristina. Anyway, you're looking great!"

"Could this mutual admiration society please come to an end, so that we may discuss what we came here for?"

Moffitt's accent gave him away to Kristina. She looked over at him, sized him up and down and turned back to Hogan, saying, "Who's the high and mighty Brit?"

"He's a friend of Sgt. Troy. He's here with the others—Pettigrew and Hitchcock—to rescue him from the Gestapo."

"Yeah, if you ask me," said Newkirk, "I think the whole idea of taking a guy away from Hochstetter is barmy."

"If you mean half-witted," said Moffitt in an icy reply, "we should wait until we hear what our friend has to say."

Newkirk turned to Carter and rotated his index finger beside his temple, signifying someone in the party was missing a few nuts and bolts. Moffitt saw it and chose to ignore it, as one would the spilling of a water dish by an anxious puppy.

Kristina, wearing a scarf over her long, brown hair and a skirt and sweater outfit, found a convenient hay bale to sit on and got right down to business.

"I drew up a map." Here, she pulled out of her small shoulder bag a piece of paper. It had a distinct smell of chlorine on it. "I'm sorry for the chlorine smell—I spilled a bit of cleaning liquid on it."

"It smells heavenly," said Carter. When Newkirk turned to give him the eye, he immediately said, "I loved it when my mom used to get down on her knees to clean the floor."

"Odd thing to like about your mum, Carter," said the British corporal, slapping him against the upper chest. "Be quiet."

Carter made the motion with two fingers of zipping his lips. Moffitt saw it, too, and this time he didn't ignore it—he rolled his eyes heavenward.

Hogan was already discussing the map with Kristina. Both of the two American privates had gathered behind her, peering over her shoulder. Moffitt took up a position on her left, with Hogan on her right.

"Sgt. Troy is in the farthest cell of the block, Number 12," she said, guiding their eyes with a finger on the map. "It's the cell Hochstetter tells every new prisoner has a rat in it." She laughed, looking up at Moffitt. "I guess he's right this time."

Moffitt bristled slightly at the allusion, throwing his arms behind his back but maintaining his slightly bent posture as he studied the map.

Pulling one arm free again, he pointed out some boxes Kristina had drawn. "Here, and here," he said. "Are these guard stations?"

"Yes, there are two of them. Major Hochstetter is keeping them manned 'round the clock because of your friend."

"How many guards in total?" asked Hogan.

"Four. Two at each station. One station is on the ground floor, the other's in the basement where the cells are."

"Do you know what they're armed with?"

"Each guard has a pistol and a carbine."

"What about meals?" asked Moffitt. "When do they bring them?"

Kristina laughed again. She had a ridiculous habit of doing that, Moffitt thought, when he wanted to be serious. "Meals? You think Hochstetter feeds his prisoners?"

"The Geneva Convention—" began Hitch, then he added, "ma'am."

"Hochstetter threw that out the window with yesterday's bath water."

"Then Troy is starving," said Moffitt, regretfully. "I hope he can travel."

"Oh, I brought him something last night when I came to clean the cells. The guards don't watch me that closely. I've gotten to know your friend. We talk some."

"What about interrogation?" asked Hogan. "What's been going on there?"

"Hochstetter hasn't beaten him, not yet. I don't know why he's delaying it. It usually happens on the first day with new prisoners. Troy must have a lucky rabbit's foot."

"Troy?"

"I mean Sgt. Troy," she corrected herself before they sensed the familiarity she had built up with their friend.

"Kristina, thanks for the information," said Hogan. "We couldn't rescue him without a good map of his location."

Kristina got up to go, brushing off her red skirt with one hand. The other she extended to Hogan, who clasped it in both of his. She turned to Moffitt and put out her hand again. He looked at it, then softened, and took it in his own long-fingered hand.

"You've been a good friend, Kristina, to us all. You may call him Troy if you wish."

"Does he have a first name? He didn't tell me."

"Sam."

She thought for a moment and then said, "Ah, I like Troy." She turned to go, but paused at the barn door, saying, "You can use the Underground's car to get into Hammelburg. It'll be waiting tomorrow night right here at the barn."

Waving, she left the barn and slipped into the night, two men from the Underground waiting outside in a huge, dark car to drive her back to Hammelburg.

"Did you get a whiff of her cologne, Colonel?" asked Newkirk, closing his eyes to savor the last waft of it on the chilly air. "Pure heaven."

"I did," came the answer, but it came from Sgt. Jack Moffitt, not Col. Hogan. All the others looked at him in surprise. Had he been smitten with the fair Kristina? Was it even possible? Then he added, "It clashed with the chlorine."

Now it was Newkirk's turn to roll his eyes.

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The third night of his captivity, he was sleeping when Kristina—Troy didn't know her last name—brought her broom and dust pan down to the cells. She was fighting with a particularly large cobweb in the corner of the cell across from Number 12 when the sound of her struggling woke up Number 12's prisoner. He grunted as he came to, lost for a short minute as to his whereabouts.

"Moffitt?" he groggily asked. "That you?"

"It's me, Sgt. Troy, Kristina. I'm sorry I woke you. It's a big spider web. My broom can't quite reach it."

Troy prized one eye open at a time and sat up, rubbing his bearded face. "What time is it?"

"Oh, it's early yet, Sergeant. About 7:00 in the evening. I usually have my work completed by 5:00, but with you here, my schedule's been turned upside-down."

"I'd come over and help you, if I could."

Kristina kept swatting away at it, but the corner was too high. "I'll go and get one of the guards to help me."

"And I'll go back to sleep. I was having a dream about … sand fleas."

Kristina looked at him. "You said, sand fleas? The bugs? You dream about them?"

"Mm-hmm." Troy yawned and lay back down again. He murmured, "I wonder what the others would say if they knew I went to sleep on a beautiful woman."

Kristina stopped swatting for a moment. "You think I'm beautiful, Sgt. Troy? Are you kidding me? The Americans, I've heard, are great kidders."

"No, I mean it, now let me get back to sleep. Big day in Hochstetter's office tomorrow."

Kristina went out of the cell block, silently closing the door behind her and approached the guard's station.

Speaking in German, she said, "I wonder if one of you could help me. There's a really big cobweb in the corner of cell #11. I can't reach it."

The two guards, both tall men, looked at one another and one got up from his side of their card table with a sigh.

"I'll go," he said, tossing down his hand. The other gefreiter took the opportunity to look at his cards. Ah, he would have lost anyway!

With the guard behind her, Kristina pushed open the cell block door and went inside again. She gestured to the dark cell—unoccupied at this time—where the cobweb was supposed to be. Troy, still awake, watched from the sidelines. Once, on the desert, he had wondered why the Jerries never slept. Now he knew. Cobweb battles. Made sense.

When he thought the cobweb had been sufficiently eliminated to please even Kristina, the guard handed her back the broom and prepared to go back to his station. Just then, a blustery noise filled the air in the outer room and the other guard rushed in, whispering something to the first guard. Troy understood one word, "Hochstetter!"

He threw his legs off the cot and sat up, running a hand through his hair. Wishing he had a comb, he licked his fingers and tamped it down a bit with them. He had an image to uphold of the fearless desert leader and he didn't want to look a fright.

All fury and ferocity, Hochstetter threw open the door to the cell block and strode in. He looked at Troy and then at Kristina in the opposite cell. Rather, he looked at her legs. She had commandeered a stool from #11 and was standing on it to reach a smidgen of cobweb missed by the guard. All Hochstetter saw was her knees and red skirt.

"What is this woman doing here!" he demanded in a fiery tone. Both guards jumped.

"Guten Abend, Herr Major," she said, swacking at the cobweb again with the straw end of the broom.

Hochstetter bristled at the non-answer. "What is this woman doing here!"

"I couldn't clean the cells earlier, Herr Major, as you said no one was to disturb the prisoner."

Realizing she didn't look much like a cleaning lady, not with those legs, he fairly yelled, "What is this woman doing here!" Now it was no longer a question, but a shout.

In his cell, Troy winced. He threw his head back against the wall and prayed that this noisy sideshow in Hochstetter's jail would reach its climax soon so that he could go back to sleep.

Kristina seemed satisfied. She came down off her stool and picked at the pieces of the cobweb on the end of her broom, dropping them onto the floor.

"I'm done, Herr Major. I can go now."

Troy thought she should have gone ten minutes earlier, or never have come in the first place, as she had only angered his chief interrogator. He opened his eyes and watched Kristina put back the stool and gather up her broom and dust pan and then squinch by Hochstetter in the hall, who regarded her as something out of a B-rated horror film.

He turned to Troy when she was gone. The evening that had begun with a noisy cleaning lady now would be brought to a close by a Gestapo interrogator. Wundebar!