It was about as pleasant a winter's day as Stalag 13 ever had. Which is to say that it was overcast and cold, with a sullen wind that bit through coats and a bitter chill that seeped up from the ground through worn boot soles. It wasn't so cold as to be inhumane, and they all—guard and prisoner alike— knew the difference, but no one was in any mood to stand out in it any longer than was strictly necessary, so roll call was going as smoothly as it ever did. Right until it wasn't.

Newkirk, when asked later, didn't even remember what he'd done to set Schultz off. Perhaps he'd grumbled. Rolled his eyes in a provoking way. Breathed too loudly. Perhaps he'd done nothing at all.

What everyone did remember was the unprecedented flash of hatred in Schultz's eyes and the sharp tap with the butt of his rifle that sent Newkirk backpedaling almost into Kinch's arms.

"No talking, Englander," Schultz snarled, with an emphasis on the last word that transformed it into an epithet.

Newkirk, who generally went on the assumption that the Bible's 'turn the other cheek' could only be the result of mistranslation, mistranscription, misunderstanding, or outright misinformation, started forward, his hands already curling into fists. Kinch, reflexively, grabbed his shoulders before the situation could degenerate any further; simultaneously, Hogan and LeBeau each seized an arm. Pinioned from three directions, tense with fury, he and Schultz stared one another down for a long moment.

"Next time, Englander," said Schultz, savoring each word. "Next time, it is the cooler. Verstehen?"

"…Ich verstehe," Newkirk got out, between gritted teeth.

"Good," Schultz crooned, and turned away.

Newkirk, shaking off the restraining arms with one vicious motion, stood stone-faced and stormy-eyed until they were finally dismissed.

"What the heck was that all about?" asked Carter as they filed back into the barracks.

"Bloody swine finally went and joined the German military, that's what," Newkirk said. "What else could you expect from a Kraut?"

"Filthy boche." LeBeau was in full agreement on that point. "See if I bring him any more strudel after this."

"Between yesterday and today? That makes no sense. More likely he's been getting heat from Klink, or maybe from Burkhalter," Kinch said. "Someone watched a few propaganda films too many and decided to tighten up security around here. Not the first time it's happened."

"Not the first time a Kraut tried to break my ribs, either. Heat, is it now?" Newkirk said. "I'll show him heat. Set his bleeding hair on fire, for a start—"

"Take it easy," Hogan said, cutting off that train of thought before it could schedule an express route to mayhem. "If someone's been putting the screws to Klink, we completely missed it. That's a big problem. If we've got that kind of a hole in our surveillance, what else haven't we heard?"

"Let's not jump to any conclusions. I don't know that we did," Kinch said. "I just said it was a possibility."

"Well, it's a possibility I'm taking seriously. When's the last time we cleaned Klink's office?"

"Um… last week, I think," said Carter. "When we were stealing those supply train schedules."

"Then it's had plenty of time to get dirty again. You and LeBeau head over there this afternoon, and I want you to get that place ready for a white-glove inspection. Olsen, you and Baker get the scuttlebutt from the rest of the camp; find out if any of the other guards started acting up. And while we're collecting gossip, Kinch, I want you to keep one ear on the coffeepot until something interesting happens; after that, use both of them."

"Can I at least turn it down if the violin comes out?"

"No, but if it does, I'll put you in for a Purple Heart. Newkirk?"

"Yes, sir?"

"If this isn't coming from above, that means the Jekyll-and-Hyde routine is Schultz's own idea, and I want to know what put it into his head. Go take a look around the guards' quarters; see if you can figure out what happened."

"Why bother? We already know what 'happened.' He showed his true colors, is all, and shame to us for not expecting it all along," Newkirk said. "Scratch a Kraut, find a sadist."

"No. That's too easy," Hogan said. "There's got to be more to it than that. Look, if you're too mad to do the job right, that's fine—I'll send someone else. But you've got to tell me."

Newkirk took a deep breath, visibly stuffing his anger back into its well-worn box. "No, sir. I can do it," he said, then found a wry half-smile. "Might be as simple as needing a good dose of salts. A dicky digestive system never improved anyone's mood."

"If that's all it takes, I'll let you have the honor of spiking his coffee," Hogan said.

Newkirk snorted. "If he hits me again, I'll be spiking his coffee whether he needs it or not."

"Yeah, but what with?"

"…Now, that's the question, isn't it?"

*.*.*.*.*.*.*

The guards' barracks weren't so very different from the ones the prisoners lived in, and there was something almost sad about that. In a way, they were trapped here, too; hemmed in by the same fences, enduring the same ungodly weather. Waiting out the same interminable war.

Newkirk, not particularly sympathetic, shrugged off the thought. So far, the only thing anyone had found out for sure was that Schultz had shouted at six other POWs, put three on report, and sent one to the cooler for no apparent reason. All of them were British.

He rifled expertly through Schultz's possessions. He didn't expect to find anything terribly interesting, and for the most part he was right. There were no surprises among Schultz's things, nothing out of the ordinary. Even the small packet of letters from home was a bog-standard soldier's cliché, but it was that or go back to studying Schultz's badly-darned socks, so Newkirk opened them up, skimmed through them.

Letters from his wife, from his children, from his brother, all saying pretty much what you'd expect them to. Quite a few snapshots of his children, showing Schultz how they were growing up in their father's absence, which had to sting a bit. Newkirk's lips tightened as he flipped through those; the little girls in their Jungmadelbund uniforms were bad enough, with their shy smiles and jaunty neckerchiefs. The boys in the Hitlerjugend regalia were worse still. And the last one, a posed shot of the oldest of those boys in full Heer uniform, was the worst of all. If he was a day over sixteen, Newkirk would have eaten his own boots without salt.

Still, that didn't really explain anything. Newkirk put the bundle of letters back where it belonged. An instant before he could shut the trunk and leave, his sharp eyes saw another small envelope, a bit crumpled, half-hidden under a pile of handkerchiefs. He opened it, read the first few lines. And, just like that, he understood.

It wasn't even surprising when he heard the floorboards creak behind him, and he knew, before even turning to look, that Schultz was standing in the doorway.

He stood up, the message still in his hand, and turned to face him.

"So, Englander," Schultz said, in a flat, lifeless sort of voice. "Have you found something more to steal from me?"

"No," Newkirk said, and held out the envelope.

Schultz took it. "He did not want to enlist," he said, as though continuing a completely different conversation. "I did not want him to enlist, either. He had no choice."

"Most of us didn't," said Newkirk. "War's a mug's game at best."

"He's only a boy," Schultz said, ignoring that. "He should never have been sent out there in the first place. How could you Englanders not see that he's only a little boy?"

There wasn't really any good way to answer that. There was only the truth, which was that a gun in the hands of a child can be every bit as deadly as one carried by an adult, and what help was that? They both knew that already.

Schultz looked down at the letter, although the blunt words were already seared into his brain. The army had finally received confirmation that Private Gunther Schultz, MIA since a reconnaissance mission five weeks earlier, was a prisoner in the hands of the British. His wife had held off from telling him until she knew for sure; she said she had not wanted to worry him. If anything—anything—could have made him feel worse about the tragedy, it was the thought of her trying to protect him by bearing it alone.

"Take it from an expert," Newkirk said. "Being captured's no picnic, but it's a long way from dead. Might be the best thing that could've happened to him."

"How can you even say such things? This is terrible! Inhuman! He should not have to be locked up," Schultz said, not seeming to notice the irony. "He does not deserve to be in a place like this."

"If bad things only happened to those what deserved them, this world would be a very different place," said Newkirk, fighting back the impulse to ask the exact criteria for who deserved what in wartime. Intoning bromides seemed easier than pursuing that particular topic any further. "At least he's not in the fight anymore."

"No. Now he is helpless, with no way to fight back. And I do not think that most guards are like me."

"Probably not," said Newkirk; that one was inarguable. "But if he keeps his head down, he'll likely make it out all right."

Schultz hung his own head. Softly, almost pleading, he said, "You are an Englander. Tell me; what will they do? What is going to happen to my boy?"

"What, afraid we'll do as we've been done by? No fear. He'll be treated as he ought. According to the Geneva Convention and that," Newkirk said. "Three hots and a cot, and no torture, if that's what you're worrying about."

"No. I know that part. I am asking you what will happen to him." He looked straight at the younger man. "Please, Newkirk. You know. I… I need to know."

Newkirk was ruthless when he needed to be, and he was calculating more often than not. But he wasn't as heartless as he often pretended. He frowned, searching for the right words.

"…He'll be scared," he said, after a long, long moment. "All the time. He'll hate the food and the roll calls and the screws and the fence, and that'll distract him some, but underneath all that, he'll be trying not to think about being totally at the enemy's mercy, and he won't manage it all that well. Once he learns to live with the fear, there's just the boredom, and the despair, and the anger, and the cabin fever to worry about."

He hesitated, then continued. "As time drags on, he'll wonder more and more often if he's going to die in there. And if he's anything like me, sometimes he'll wish... well, never mind that. If he's lucky, he'll find a mate, and they'll get each other through the bad days. If he's really lucky, he'll find a few of them. And you and the missus will write to him, I'm sure, and that'll help, too. After that, it's just a matter of waiting until peace breaks out."

"…Will he be all right?" Schultz asked softly.

"There's no telling," said Newkirk. That was true, but it sounded a little too stark. "Maybe. Probably. But be warned; he'll never be quite the same."

"He… he's a good boy. He never asked for any of this to happen."

"None of us did."

"No. This is true," said Schultz, and turned away. "You should go now. Before one of the other guards sees you here."

"Yeah," Newkirk said, and awkwardly moved towards the door.

"Newkirk?"

"What?"

"Can you help him? Can Colonel Hogan?" The naked hope in his face was painful. "I know there are… things you can do."

Newkirk opened his mouth to protest, then stopped. He knew and Schultz knew that there was no point in denying it. "I'll ask," he said instead.

"Danke."

"Well? What did you find out?" asked Carter, as he walked back into the barracks in a brown study.

"Huh? Oh. Well… I was half right. Schultz went and joined the German Army."

Hogan frowned. "What's the other half?"

"…I didn't realize which Schultz."

And he explained the rest of it, omitting only the fact that he'd clearly heard Schultz crying as he closed the door behind himself. But he suspected they could guess that part for themselves.

*.*.*.*.*.*

Author's note: Especially towards the end of the war, many boys were conscripted directly from the Hitler Youth groups into the military; the casualty rate among these children's brigades was horrific. Newkirk might well have been right about capture being the best outcome Schultz's son could have hoped for. More than three million German POWs were held in British custody during and for some time after the war. The UK had by far the lowest fatality rate among their prisoners, and a serious effort at rehabilitation and deNazification was made on their behalf. Some of the POWs chose to stay in the UK afterwards.