The end came and it was easy. After nearly four years of nonstop twists and turns and dead ends and the constant overbearing sense of death following them- this didn't feel right. It felt almost like a trick when the message came through.

Hogan gave a few simple orders, then went topside as Baker stood there, his hand still held out from when he handed over the message in the first place.

Klink had surrendered without a second thought to Colonel Hogan when the man had walked into his office with the simple statement that the Americans were coming within the week. Hogan accepted the surrender and told Klink to start taking out his papers and pack them so they could sort them all in London. Klink seemed to be at a loss of words, for once looking his true age as he slowly sank back into his chair. Hogan watched him, for once knowing that he had won, but he didn't know how to feel about winning over a man he had considered below him, but also as a pseudo friend.

"Kommandant?"

"Yes, Colonel Hogan?" Klink looked up with a tired face, and Hogan gave him a legitimate salute before he walked out of the room with all of the confidence of a true officer.

Klink stares for a moment in the wake of Hogan, then he leans back in his chair while letting out a breath he didn't even know he had been holding.

.

...

.

When the day arrived, the Colonel walked right up to the open gates to welcome the trucks of Americans. He gestured his hands around to each of the barracks as he gave his orders to the armed men as to which men needed to do what. The barracks of the sick and injured were evacuated first, some of the healthy men even pitching in to help, even Langenscheidt, dressed in his civilian clothes as he jumped right in to grab the other side of a stretcher.

Two cars pulled up between the number of trucks. One contains a surly captain, who couldn't have been older than thirty, along with a handful of officers, who solemnly loaded their Ex-Kommandant in the car, a pair of handcuffs on his wrists. Almost the rest of the Germans were on one truck, all of them looking either nervous or resigned, cuffs on all of them as well. Under heavily armed guards, they were transported out first after the most sick and injured men.

Schultz and Langenscheidt, the only two men who Hogan had already told they were free as soon as they were debriefed in London, had helped the Americans who liberated the camp with keeping the other officers in line and loading the tired prisoners into the trucks, not pausing for a moment as they kept busy. Schultz was doing one final roll call to make sure each and every man was accounted for, checking them off on his garbled mess of a checklist as he tried not to take too long with any one soldier. Langenscheidt was comforting some of the more overwhelmed men who didn't know how to process finally being free for real, sharing bits of a chocolate bar amongst them. Wilson takes a seat next to them on the step, clasping a hand on Langenscheidt's shoulder as he tells him he's doing a great job, but Hogan didn't say a word after he saw the exchange, instead he continued on his rounds and helped his own men with the removal of everything from the tunnels.

The last he saw of them, Shultz was dabbing his eyes as he was telling Olsen and Thomas about how excited he was to see his children again, Thomas sharing the same sentiment. Wilson had finally agreed to leave as Langenscheidt goaded him along to join him in the truck, telling about his new bride and how Hogan had already sent her to London where she would be safe until the damned war was finally over. He saluted the men as they left, promising to meet up with them in London.

Long after the last vehicle leaves, full of the last few troops who helped until their CO practically ordered them out of the camp like a mother telling her children to go to bed after a long day, they were finally the last five to leave; Lebeau, Newkirk, Baker, Carter and Hogan, wanting to make sure that every last man had been taken care of and shipped off to London. They had even made sure that every last bit of their equipment and had that shipped ahead of them before they all spent their time saying their last goodbyes to the place that had been their home for so long.

That alone may have been the hardest thing to do out of all the whole ordeal.

Newkirk entered the building of barracks 2, Carter by his side before he headed to and then down into the tunnel. Newkirk watches him before he disappears under the bunk that leads into the tunnel. He leans against the door frame for a moment, then pushes off, favoring his left leg as he immediately swings to the right, passing by Thomas' bunk and heading right up to the door of the colonel's room. He pauses for only a second, his hand having been raised to knock before he caught himself.

He opens the door and props it up that way, then starts helping himself to the charges that had been stored there for this moment. Newkirk picks up the first box and gets to placing around the Colonel's room, making sure to check inside of cabinets and drawers as he moves along. All the furniture except for the bed had been removed, making the room seem a lot bigger than it ever did. It may have also been the lack of people in it, but he's not thinking about that as he leads the wires out from the small side room to the main room.

He uses the beds as a brace as he leans against them to put the charges around them. It's simple and mindless, a rather repetitive job as he just gets lost in the constant flow of the job, until he gets to the small table that used to feel like it took over the entire room, but now he sees that it barely obstructs his way. He had played many a card game with the boys, discussed many missions, and sometimes just sat at with a hot drink in his hands while nattering on with the men he thought of as just more family at this table. It felt like it could hold a whole army, which it practically did, with a bonus troop or two from another.

He shakes his head at the thought, trying not to be put off by it, even though it seems to keep creeping back in his head as he climbs up onto it carefully to put the last charge up on the ceiling above the single light.

Carter marched his way right down the way through the bunk, which was now just permanently open, there being no need to close it any more, and stood there for just a moment in the awe of the empty tunnels, just a few sporadic lanterns to light the mostly dark tunnel. It felt lonely and empty down here, not at all like the home that he had grown to think of it as. He slowly reached out and touched the wall, as if wanting to make sure that this was all real and not just some crazy dream.

He started pulling the charges out of his heavy bag and had begun to line the tunnels with explosives, wondering if he would even consider this to be a dream. Somewhere, deep inside, he almost wondered if this could be considered a nightmare. What was to happen to them once they left those gates for good? What if, when they destroyed what was here, they ended up destroying what they had created together over the last few years of the war. He hesitated, his hand holding a wire that he was meant to attach to the box in the other, knowing that they had to destroy any and all evidence that the operations there ever existed, but a small, maybe selfish part of him didn't want to. Here, he got to be someone important, the person he wanted to be. Sure, he got teased, but he was still allowed to flourish and be the person he wanted to be. Would everything change and he would go back to being the simple, dumb Carter he grew up being?

Carter takes a slow breath, then connects the pieces before heading back up to the barracks.

He pauses before decidedly pulling off his gloves, carefully tucking them in his shirt pocket before he let his bare hands touch the walls. He slowly meanders back along the way he came, tracing his fingers along the dirt as he remembers his first time actually seeing the hard work that had been put into it and dedicating this moment with the same reverence as that one.

Lebeau trudged to the cooler, unpacking the boxes of charges that had been dropped off by it earlier. He makes sure to place them carefully as he makes his way down the stairs and to the cells themselves. Absolutely nothing of the operation could stay, even though he hoped they could wipe every single mention of this place from history books, that would be even more suspicious than just this place having been bombed and falling into disrepair.

Lebeau pauses and looks at his handiwork, a chill rolling down his back at the cold, dark concrete walls. He knew he would still always remember the nights where he sat in this damned tiny room, hoping and praying that he would get out sooner than later. The Colonel always got him out, especially when it was his own plans that got him in, however, the nights he was stuck tight, the plan having gone awry, he could always count on Newkirk to go out of his way to piss Klink off enough that he ended up right beside his best friend. It was little things like that that made him feel like Newkirk should have been his brother, keeping him company and talking him down from his heart-stopping panic over right spaces.

He shakes his head and places the last few charges before heading back up into the sunshine where he can breathe real air again.

Baker lined the recreational hall with more bombs, unable to keep a smile from his face as he remembered the first time he really started to enjoy himself here; when he watched his now former mentor lay out a German soldier in a mock boxing game. The fight seems still fresh in his head, the dodges and the punches, the waiting and precision as he dragged out the match, not going down no matter the amount of hits he got. The final punch that laid Bruno out cold.

Then, he was asked personally to join them as Kinch's understudy in the radio room. It was honestly a treat, and, ever since Kinch had been personally asked to come to London to help out with their operation, he used that little memory to help keep the faith.

He easily hooks up the charges that he hauled into the room, the thought creeping into his head that he really became a large part of the operation in his time at the Stalag. He could never imagine himself setting charges as easily as he currently is just a few years ago. He would've been so excited before he actually joined to know about this, but first entering Stalag 13? He would've thought it would've been a faint pipe dream.

As Baker sets up the last few boxes, he leans back on his heels and wipes the sweat from his brow. Time to meet back up with the others.

Hogan himself waltzed through the Kommandantur. The charges had already been set around what once was the desk of Helga, then Hilda, and he was just checking the timers on them, knowing they would go off in half an hour, just as they were just out of sight of the camp.

However, he couldn't help himself.

He instead walked through the door he had gone into too many times that led into Klink's office.

The room was empty, nothing on the walls, nothing on the desk or in the filing cabinets; the safe was opened and emptied. No framed picture of Hitler bugged with a wire, no cigar case for him to pilfer, nor schnapps for him to pour a shot of. It was almost somber, the little things he seemed to take for granted that gave the dingy little room a bit of life. He wouldn't say he missed it, but it seemed rather unusual to no longer have them there as little staples in the room. In each corner of the room instead there was a bomb that would make sure the whole building would come down, just like all of the barracks and everything above and under the ground.

Hogan strolled his way to the desk, glancing around to make sure everything was in place, despite how he already checked twice before. He let out a sigh that just seemed so full of finality and took off his cap, setting it where Klink used to set his helmet, looking out the window to take it all in from here just one last time.

.

...

.

An American car stood in front of Stalag 13, the American captain, Meyers, and a British lieutenant, Stanhope, standing outside of it as they watched the last of the heroes set up the final present for the little camp that they had spent a good deal of the war in. The captain smoked a cigarette as the lieutenant looked over the barren grounds, wondering how such a small camp could have such a high priority, but then settled on the simple answer that he may never know.

They both had heard the rumors, of course, because who hadn't heard the rumors, but there was no way they could be true. About three hundred men, give or take, knowing fully of an operation that was said to do everything from espionage to sabotage to running a grand central station of people from Germany to London like it was nothing. Impossible. A phony tabloid story. There's no way one man and his crew could manage such a huge operation while under the watchful eye of a Nazi Colonel who had the reputation of never having a single confirmed escape from his Stalag.

And yet...

Stanhope looked to the captain, wondering if he was thinking the same thing as he was, but he doesn't say a word of his own thoughts, knowing General Barton's orders were to just get the men, take care of the job, and not ask any questions.

"Do you reckon they really did it?" Meyers asks, not looking away from the front gates.

Stanhope bristles, looking for a moment at the camp, then back again.

"I mean, it sounds like a fairytale, but even they got some bits of truth in them, don't they? Do you think…?" Meyers glances at Stanhope as he takes another drag of his cigarette, looking more casual than he should be in Stanhope's opinion. This is a top secret assignment after all.

He nods at Stanhope's stunned and maybe a bit disgusted silence before he flicks his cigarette to the side, brushing off his uniform a moment later as a second thought, " 's what I thought. Here they come, Lieutenant. Look alive."

The five men met up in the middle of the camp as their two escorts retreated into the cab, knowing that they had little to no time to waste.

Lebeau had climbed into the car, thankful he never had to see another explosion as long as he lived after this, Baker hopping in after him, grinning as he practically melted into the comfortable seat, "I can't wait until we get out of Germany. I've been here too long."

"We have been here longer than you," the Frenchman said with an over-dramatic eye roll. They had all been in Germany too long, so the sooner they said goodbye the better.

Carter had an arm around Newkirk's waist as he helped him into the car, letting Newkirk use him as a support for his lame leg. The Englander's pride had kept him from going with the first wave, instead waiting for the last with the rest of his crew, his friends, but he still got a lecture from Wilson a few days before the man left with the fourth wave, only getting the man to take off when he promised to get a cane when they made it to England.

Newkirk gets settled into the other window seat before Carter seats himself smackdab between his two best friends, "Boy, that was fun, let's never do it again."

Newkirk made the ugliest snort as Baker and Lebeau tried to muffle their laughter behind their hands. Somehow Carter knew exactly how to get some laughs, despite how utterly bone-tired and wrecked the men felt.

"Alright, no dying, the war's already over. Let's try to stay alive until we at least meet up with Kinch," Colonel Hogan gently chides as he climbs into the seat next to Baker, looking more tired than he ever had before, even though he had a faint smile on his face.

They all saluted with a chorus of 'Yes, Sir' before the car started to move and they all watched as the camp slowly faded away into the distance.