Klink's vaunted Christmas dinner, courtesy of the Fuhrer himself, was just about what one might have expected. And received precisely the respect and appreciation that it deserved. Mind you, there were sprigs of holly festively shoved into the mashed potatoes. What more could a man ask?

"Hark, the hungry Allies sing, 'Oh, good grief, what is this thing?'" Mills was still in fine fettle, tapping out the beat with his fork against the rim of his tin plate.

Houlihan—or, rather, whoever was being 'Houlihan' this week; LeBeau didn't actually remember his real name and wasn't about to ask—took up the challenge. "Peas on toast, and turnips boiled; Bread that's stale, and milk that's spoiled."

"Cabbage slop and spam surprii-iise; One by one our gorges rii-iise," Olsen couldn't quite hit the high notes; that didn't stop him from trying. "Eeeeven Germans must admit; Their cuisiiiine all tastes like—"

"All right, pipe down," Hogan said mildly. He couldn't really argue with the sentiment, but he'd always held to the musical rule that one should hit the notes, not bludgeon them to death in a dark alley. Besides, the guards were beginning to look cranky.

"Ach! It is not nice what they were singing," Schultz said. "It was true, but it was not nice."

"Neither is this meal," LeBeau said. "Christmas dinner should not feel like the Last Supper."

"Cockroach…! That is a terrible thing to say," Schultz said, more in sorrow than in anger. "Remember what day this is. We should all be nice. Newkirk is not complaining, see?" He blinked, as the undeniable oddness of that fact struck him. "Why are you not complaining, Newkirk?"

"Me complain, Schultzie? The very thought. Why, this brings back precious memories of Christmas dinners when I was a lad." He paused to examine an unidentifiable beige forkful from all angles. None of them were flattering. "I used to leave the table 'ungry then, too."

Schultz scowled. "Jolly jokers." He lumbered away, with visions of French cuisine dancing in his head. LeBeau had not said that he was not preparing a less dismal meal, later. Obviously, it would be his bounden duty, as a conscientious guard, to go to the barracks and be sure that all was in order. After all, cooking in the barracks was against the rules, and it would be very bad if one of the less… amiable… guards found out about it.

The men settled back down to their meal with no more than the usual chaos. Newkirk, for a change, was not contributing to said chaos; he was keeping his head down, concentrating only on his rapidly emptying tray. LeBeau frowned; he had not liked that comment about leaving the table hungry on Christmas. Was that the problem? Dark memories? Just what had Christmas in Stepney entailed?

"Boy, Newkirk, you were just kidding, right? You didn't really have this stuff for Christmas at home, did you?" One could always count on Carter to jump head-first into the nearest cesspool, LeBeau thought. For once, he was grateful.

"You daft, Andrew?" asked Newkirk, briefly and scathingly. Not actually answering the question, Hogan noted, but it did effectively end that line of conversation. He finished off the beige stuff and moved on to a gray slab of something that was probably either fried liver or an asbestos shingle. It was difficult to tell.

The jollier end of the table was starting to get rowdy again; ersatz-Houlihan and Olsen were tossing peas into the air and catching them in their mouths, or occasionally other prisoners' mouths, Mills was trying to come up with a workable chorus for 'We Three Klinks,' and Boucher was re-enacting the dance of the bread rolls, a la Charlie Chaplin, who, on a strictly professional level, didn't have much to worry about. As the rolls segued from dancing to goosestepping down the table, to the amusement of Boucher if not the guards, Hogan thought to himself that it was definitely time to get out of here. Preferably before anyone's table manners devolved any further, if such a thing was even possible.

Apparently the Germans agreed. "Dinner was sehr gut, but now it is time to go back to your rooms and go to bed. And Frohliche Weihnachten," Schultz added. "I used to tell mein kinder that the Christkindl could not come while they were awake. So back to the barracks, and be good little prisoners."

"So if we're good and go right to sleep, Santa Claus just might fill up our stockings, right, Schultz?" Olsen mocked.

"Ooh, yeah! Whaddya think he'll bring us, Schultzie?" asked Mills.

"How about a tunnel?" wisecracked Baker.

"Aw, that's what he brought us last year!"

"I do not wish to hear this, and I do not wish the Big Shot to hear this, and I do not wish you to say such things!" Schultz was getting redder by the moment. "You will all go back to the barracks, quietly, or I will have to report all of you! Back, back, back!"

"Down in the stalag, what the hell? Schultzie's yelling, 'Raus, macht schnell!'" chanted Mills. "Back to the barracks, quick, quick, quick; And hope that the goons don't shoot Saint Nick!"

Newkirk shot Mills one of his trademark Looks; the one that asked, wordlessly but unmistakably, how the recipient of said Look managed to tie his own shoes in the morning, whether being so inutterably stupid was actually painful, and, most of all, why he, Newkirk, was being forced to endure any of this. Mills didn't notice, but then his self-preservation instinct had thrown in the towel somewhere around the third cup of ersatz eggnog. Lovely stuff, that; compounded from a little powdered egg, a little powdered milk, a little sugar, and a whole lot of Barracks Eight's special Home Brew, which was almost never entirely lethal.

Schultz made a frustrated noise, somewhere between a car engine revving up and a teakettle boiling over. "That is enough! No more singing, no more talking, no more anything! Raus!"

"Okay, fellows; you heard the man! I'm surprised at you," said Hogan. "For shame! Giving Schultz a hard time, on this of all nights. Christmastime should be about comfort and joy. Treating even your enemies like brothers….oops, sorry Schultz. No offense."

Schultz shrugged. "None taken. You have not met my brothers," he said dryly.

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

Author's note: The bread roll dance sequence is an iconic scene from the 1925 Chaplin film 'The Gold Rush.' It's exactly what it says on the tin; he sticks his forks into two rolls, and makes them dance. If you've never seen the film, I highly recommend you check it out. It's pure, masterful, graceful, straight-faced humor, random and silly and perfect.

And as for Olsen's little comment about German cuisine, any opinions expressed by the characters are strictly their own, and I do not necessarily agree with any of them. In this case, while I don't doubt that prison food is dreadful, regular, civilian German food is very much the contrary. And Newkirk wants me to assure you that his mother was a right wizard in the kitchen, and never, ever produced anything even remotely like whatever that beige stuff was.