October, 1942
It started as a friendly argument over dinner. Really. That's all it was. And, truth be told, in Stalag 13, Newkirk and LeBeau arguing was a lot like the mess hall's infamous cabbage soup: you were neither expected nor required to like it, per se, but you did need to accept that it was going to be a large part of the backdrop of your life.
Interestingly, no one—not even the two of them—ever remembered, afterwards, exactly what they'd been arguing about. What everyone did remember, quite vividly, was Newkirk punctuating his line of reasoning by picking up a small chunk of bread crust from the edge of his plate and lobbing it at LeBeau. It bounced off of his forehead and landed in LeBeau's soup bowl with a satisfied little kerplunk.
Reflexively, LeBeau, his eyes blazing, picked up the bowl, with its newly acquired crouton, and dashed the contents across the table at Newkirk. Fortunately for all concerned, it had been barely lukewarm to start with, but very few people would really be what you'd call pleased to get an unexpected cabbage-flavored shower.
Olsen certainly wasn't one of those rare few, and, since between LeBeau's poor aim and Newkirk's excellent reflexes, he ended up wearing most of the soup, he didn't waste any time before explaining precisely why he found it unacceptable. The large handful of sauerkraut he flung back at LeBeau illustrated his point nicely.
But loose projectiles tend to be scattershot at best, with a tendency to spray in a wide radius around the target. Before you could say 'food fight,' Goldman, Carter, and Houlihan-pro-tem had fermented cabbage in their hair, it further transpired that none of them were too tickled about that fact, and after that there was no reconstructing the exact order of events.
The guards tried to break up some of the more enthusiastic brawls. Emphasis on 'tried.'
Some of the projectile produce seemed to be about settling old scores, personal ones. Some of it looked like international politics writ small. And some of it looked like targets of opportunity, purely for the sheer pleasure of keeping the battle raging.
In short, a memorable time was had by all.
By the time the guards had restored something akin to order, Colonel Klink entered the mess hall—which now lived up to its name in more ways than one.
"The ones who started this will step forward," Klink snarled. "If the instigators are not identified immediately, the entire camp will be punished! Colonel Hogan, I warn you—" he looked around, frowned. "Where is Colonel Hogan?"
Newkirk and LeBeau traded a desperate glance, took a deep breath… and, simultaneously, gave Olsen, standing in front of them, a hard shove in the small of the back. He stumbled into the open, but immediately spun on his heel and started for them again. Which, naturally, set off the rest of the POWs, and the brawl was back in full swing within seconds.
"Guards! Guaaaaaards! Stop them!" Klink shrilled. And, to their credit, the guards tried. Whereupon all the kriegies, without so much as a word or a signal, instantaneously put aside their differences and converged on their common enemy.
"Kraut for the Krauts!" someone yelled, suiting the action to the word.
"Blitz 'em! Blitz 'em!" someone else chimed in.
The second round was even more memorable than the first.
But all good things must come to an end, and by the time the guards had quelled the riot for the second time, Hogan and Kinch were in plain view. If anyone German had been paying attention, which, fortunately, they were not, they might have seen the two of them slip in the door, hurriedly splash some cabbage products over themselves, and melt into the crowd. Their arrival, for whatever reason, obviously disheartened the kriegies so much that they allowed themselves to be subdued almost immediately. And matters proceeded from there about the way they always did.
At the fervent request of the guards, several of whom were clever and foresighted enough to recognize that if the perpetrators were left to marinate in the cooler in their current condition, the resulting stench would be so hazardous to human life that the building would need to be burned to the ground, and to further recognize that they, the guards, would suffer nearly as much as the prisoners would, the POWs were permitted to shower and change their clothes before being frog-marched to the cooler until either the war ended or Klink calmed down, whichever came first.
Klink, dripping with fury… and soup… turned on the most convenient (or, at any rate, the largest,) target, taking a great deal of vicious pleasure in rescinding the three day pass Schultz had been granted the previous morning and tearing it to shreds. Schultz, therefore, spent the next three days patrolling a faintly sauerkraut-scented cooler instead of enjoying a long-overdue visit home. He didn't particularly appreciate it.
That was the whole story, really. Tempers flared, frustration got out of control, a few grievances were aired, and every cell in the cooler was occupied for a while. Nothing memorable at all.
Of course, by what was certainly a complete coincidence, the day after that, the Allies turned a top-secret military research base into a smoking hole in the ground. No one in the Reich ever quite figured out how they could possibly have known it was even there, much less how they had gotten the exact coordinates to bomb, or who could possibly have passed on the information. It was mysterious, really. Quite mysterious.
*.*.*.*.*.*.*
February, 1943
Capturing those high-level Underground leaders was quite the coup, and Major Hans Weissleber of the SS was smugly aware that a promotion was almost assured. All he had to do was get the prisoners to Berlin; they would be a veritable fount of information, sooner or later. All he had to do was get them there.
But it was a long journey, and he wanted a few extra guards to make sure that the spies didn't do anything rash; overnighting at a nearby Luftstalag seemed like the most logical course of action. Lock them up in the cooler, get dinner and then some sleep, commandeer some guards for the trip into Berlin, and he'd be a colonel by Tuesday at the latest. Simple and foolproof.
The first half of the plan went like clockwork, and Weissleber spent the evening enjoying a rather good French dinner, accepting some mediocre champagne, and enduring the camp's Kommandant. Everything was perfect. Until dawn, when he left the camp's VIP suite and walked into the compound.
For a horrible moment, he thought that he was seeing a small army of ghosts.
Every piece of clothing Colonel Klink owned was pinned to the fence; it looked like a whole flock of headless Colonels was cavorting around the perimeter of the camp. His underwear was pinned to the gates in neat rows, fluttering in the breeze like little white flags, making an utter mockery of any pretense at security the camp might have had. Klink's reaction was predictable.
In all the chaos, Weissleber didn't really have the time or the patience to pay any attention to the guards he'd been allotted; all he really cared about was making absolutely certain that his prisoners were still in their cells. Which they were.
Fuming, he had the guards take them to his truck and shackle them at the ankle into a long coffle.
"Are they secure?" he asked the guard.
"Yes, Herr Major," the man answered, snapping the last one into place and carefully putting the key in his pocket. He smiled, cruel amusement in his green eyes. "These swine are going nowhere except where we want them to go."
"Good," Weissleber said, with a smile of his own, as the man shouldered his rifle and took up his position in the rear of the truck.
The other guard, his driver, saluted, his blue eyes shining with excitement, and the truck lumbered out the gates and down the road.
Schultz, frustrated and upset about forfeiting yet another pass for what seemed like nothing more than a juvenile prank, was unwontedly gruff as the POWs unpinned all the clothing and took it to the laundry, and the news, some few days later, that Weissleber had apparently been secretly in the pay of the Allies, and had set the Underground leaders free in a daring rescue, didn't do much to improve his mood.
*.*.*.*.*.*.*
February, 1944
His orders had been to guard the truck. And he had guarded the truck. He had.
No one had ever so much as suggested that he should have been dividing his attention between whatever piece of terribly important razzmatazz was inside the godforsaken truck and the general's staff car. Guard the truck, they had said. He had guarded the truck.
He didn't know how the staff car had ended up on the roof of the prisoners' laundry. He didn't want to know how it had gotten there, and he most certainly didn't want to know why it had been put there. And if he had his suspicions as to who had put it there, he kept them to himself. It was a moot point, anyhow.
He did know that his pass was probably forfeit, and that no amount of pointing fingers was going to get it back; a guard who admitted that he had not seen the prisoners he was supposed to be guarding sneaking around the compound after lights out, while they were merrily stealing, dismantling, and rebuilding cars, could, in all likelihood, look forward to a trip to Stalingrad, not the Hauserhof. Better to forfeit a beer or six than have to learn to like vodka.
And if, while the rest of the camp was having hysterics about the car, someone had slipped into the truck and, say, photographed and sabotaged the experimental bombsight equipment it contained, well… Schulz had already been off-duty by that point, and therefore it was officially not his fault.
*.*.*.*.*.*.*
June, 1944
Schulz didn't even wait to be asked. Staring, aghast, at the scene before them, neither he nor Klink had anything to say.
He just silently handed over the pass.
*.*.*.*.*.*
November, 1944
Schultz was in a fairly good mood as he walked into the biergarten. There were a long list of errands he had to complete in the next few hours, but the sun was shining, he was out of camp, and he was sure that he had time for at least one beer. Life was good.
…Life was good until he saw a horribly familiar face at the next table. Dark hair, dark eyes, an air of unflappable confidence, all wrapped up in a decidedly civilian trenchcoat.
No. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening.
"Oh, hi, Schultzie," said Carter, walking unconcernedly past his table, carrying a few mugs of beer. He didn't even slow down.
Schultz stayed where he was, his jaw agape, as Carter sat down at his own table and began distributing the drinks.
Maybe it wasn't really them. Maybe this was all some sort of terrible dream and he would wake up soon.
Newkirk and LeBeau, also dressed in civvies, came into the biergarten, too, putting paid to that little hope. They joined Carter and Hogan at the table. Newkirk even lifted his glass, nodding in Schultz's general direction in a cheeky toast, before taking a sip.
That tore it. Sputtering, Schultz came over to their table. "Colonel Hogan… you cannot be here. This is verboten, for prisoners to be here. Oh, this time I will have to report you. Back to the camp! Back, back, back!"
Hogan looked calmly up at him. "Don't worry, Schultz. We're going back. Just not quite yet."
"Yes, I have not even finished my drink yet," LeBeau said helpfully.
"You are not supposed to be having any drinks at all!" He took a deep, calming breath. "Colonel… if you wish to escape, then escape; this is a good day to choose. I am not in camp to be blamed. Go. But you cannot sit here drinking beer!"
"Wasn't my first choice, either, but they didn't have any Irish whiskey," Newkirk said. "I asked."
"There is a war on," Carter said. "We all have to make a few sacrifices."
"I'll bear it as bravely as I can," Newkirk said.
"No! Colonel Hogan, this time you have gone too far with your monkey business! You are prisoners! I am the guard! And it is against regulations for you to leave the camp more often than I do!"
"Sit down, Schultz," Hogan said. "It's all under control. Have I ever steered you wrong? We'll be back before roll call. Scout's honor."
"Hey, I didn't know you were a Boy Scout," Carter said.
"I wasn't. But I dated a Girl Scout once; that counts, right?"
"It is good enough for me," LeBeau said. "On the condition that you tell us all about her, of course."
"Happy to. She knew just about everything there is to know about tying knots, for a start," Hogan said with a lascivious smile.
"Colonel Hogan…!" Schultz whimpered.
"Shush," Newkirk said. "I want to hear this."
"So do I," said LeBeau.
"I thought the knot-tying merit badge was pretty dull," said Carter. "I liked the one about making fire without matches better."
"Why does that not surprise me?" asked Newkirk, rolling his eyes.
Schultz gave up. "You promise that you will all go back before the Big Shot misses you?"
"Would I lie to you?" asked Hogan, not actually answering the question. "Come on, Schultz. Have a beer. My treat."
"You think that I will see nothing just for one beer?" Schultz said.
"Naturally not. Two beers?"
"And a pretzel," Schultz clinched it.