Hogan sighed, then opened the trap door again. He looked back at the men, who had been watching the drama with, variously, vague interest, outright dismay, and everything in between. "All right, everyone, remember what I said. Ding dong merrily on high, and that's an order!"

With that, he swung himself over the bedframe and down the tunnel. Ah, the joys of command. He wasn't the least bit surprised when he heard the pitter patter of three pairs of not-so-tiny feet on the ladder behind him. His men were only human, and they all lived in a very confined space, in fairly appalling conditions, and under incredible, unrelenting pressure. They easily could, and often did, get on one another's nerves.

But the moment that one of them needed it, he would have a phalanx standing at his shoulder to back him to the hilt. Every single time. Even—hell, especially– if he was pretending that he didn't need one.

Newkirk was in the radio shack. The mangled jacket was dangling forlornly from the ladder to the tunnel exit like a limp dishrag; the torn sleeve was on the floor. For once, he wasn't smoking. His cards were nowhere in sight. He wasn't doing anything at all, in fact; he was sitting, stock-still, with his head in his hands, staring at the rough planks that made up the table.

Hogan took a breath. He'd seen that stillness before, and it was never, ever good. "Newkirk. Talk. Now."

"Sir?"

"Let's not play games, Newkirk. What the hell is going on?"

"I came down 'ere for a bit of privacy, is all," Newkirk said. "You said yourself that there's no rush on the mufti. I'm taking a break. As ordered. Sir."

"Uh-huh. Right. Your obedience is just amazing." Hogan crossed his arms. "And my other orders? Did you forget about those?"

"Sorry, sir," Newkirk said. "Trying to act as normal as possible, sir."

"Making a scene and bringing everyone down on Christmas Eve is normal, huh? What's with you tonight?"

Newkirk stared woodenly ahead. "I'm sorry, sir. No disrespect intended."

"This isn't about disrespect! What's the problem? Why are you going to so much trouble to make everyone else miserable?"

Newkirk twitched faintly. "I'm not… that is, I came down 'ere so I wouldn't put the wind up anyone else, sir."

"Is this about the mission?" Hogan probed. "Is it the leak that's got you so tied up in knots?"

"No, sir. Like you said; we're as safe as we ever are. I'm not worrying about that."

"All right, then; what is it? Was it the caroling?" Hogan was trying to remember the precise order of the evening; how long had Newkirk been off-color? When and why had this happened?

"The lads can sing anything they like, for all of me," Newkirk said, almost convincingly enough. "I didn't care to join in, is all."

"Sure. Look, Newkirk, I know this isn't where anyone wanted to spend the holiday," Hogan said, fairly sure that he was on the right track at last. "I know it's not easy. But you've got to make an effort, here. Even without this whole mess with London, morale was always going to be a little iffy over Christmas. You're not making this easier on anyone, and I need you to get your head in the game. I'm counting on you!"

"Colonel 'Ogan… I'm not sure I can," Newkirk admitted. "I just don't know that I 'ave it in me. I'll stay down 'ere and not bother anyone, or if you've got a job I'll go do it, but I can't go back up there and play like everything is all right. I'm sorry, sir. I can't."

"No, you can't, can you?" Hogan said slowly. "Fair enough. But why not? Newkirk… this isn't like you. What's eating you? Why can't you pull it together tonight?"

"I'll lie to the Krauts with my 'and on a Bible, Colonel, you know that. I'll lie to the rest of the lads if it's for the greater good. But I'm not going to lie to you, sir. You or the others. Even if I tried, I don't think I could make it convincing. Not tonight."

"Why not? What is wrong?" Quietly, the other three men had entered the room somewhere in the middle of that, and LeBeau couldn't stay still another moment. "Mon ami, what is it?"

"It's none of your business, is what it is," Newkirk said. His eyes were darting about, looking for an exit that they all knew wasn't there, with the controlled desperation of a cornered animal. "What are you on about? I'm fine."

"Aw, gee, Newkirk—you haven't been 'fine' all day," Carter said. "You just said yourself that—"

"I know what I said! It… it doesn't concern you. And it isn't affecting my work, either. So it's nothing to do with any of you, and no one else needs to worry. Leave off."

"Like that's going to happen. Come on, Pete," said Kinch. "Who do you think you're kidding?"

"He's right, Newkirk," Hogan said. "Whatever you may think, you're already affecting everyone. Might as well spill it. Don't make me make that an order, because if I have to, I will. Talk."

"…All right. All right. You lot want to know why I'm not feeling especially jolly? You really want to know? It's my anniversary, okay? As of today, it's four long, awful years I've been in 'ere, and at the rate things are going, it could be forty more after this. Satisfied?"

Hogan looked taken aback. "No, it isn't," he said slowly. "I've seen your file. You were shot down in November."

"November eighteenth, to be exact," Newkirk said. "But they didn't bring me 'ere straightaway, now did they? First it was a few weeks at the Dulag, where they did everything they could think of to try and get information out of me. Which they didn't get, not that I 'ad much to tell in the first place. And once any information I might've 'ad was too out of date to be of any interest to them, they did it all a second time, just for the fun of it."

Carter tried. He really did. "Boy, that's awful," he sympathized. "The Geneva Convention—"

"Didn't matter to them. Why would it? You 'ave to understand," he said, impatiently. "It was 1939. Far as anyone could see, the Krauts were invincible. We were losing on all fronts, and everybody knew it. We were prisoners… and, in six months when the war came to its inevitable end, we were going to be slaves. And everybody knew that, too."

No one said anything.

"They were so damned sure that they would never be called to account for anything they did. Ever." Newkirk's mouth twisted. "So they didn't need to worry about the Geneva Convention. And they didn't."

Hogan met his eyes. "Okay. And then what?"

"And then they took all of us what were still lively enough to fog a mirror, chained us up, threw us in the back of a truck, and we rolled into Stalag 13. It was Christmas Eve, and cold as charity," Newkirk said. "Christmas. I'd long since lost track of the days. But you can just bet that they made sure to remind us. The Kommandant then—Louie, you remember that bastard Muller, right? 'E just smiled at us, smiled like it was all just the funniest thing 'e'd ever seen, said 'Frohliche Weihnachten, Englanders,' and made some jokes about Saint Nick coming early this year, and that we must've been very bad boys indeed. I can still remember watching 'im caress that little whip 'e liked to carry around and thinking, 'well, that's not my idea of a Christmas cracker.'"

"You were brought here on Christmas?" LeBeau stared at him. "You never told me that."

"Well, now you know," Newkirk said. "Look, I'm not trying to be the death's 'ead at the feast. It's nothing to do with you, anyhow. Go on, wassail yourselves silly, and God rest ye merry gentlemen. Just leave me alone, all right? That's all I'm asking. Colonel, even if we are laying low, isn't there anything you'd like done? Aren't there any papers to forge? Messages to pass to the Underground? Shall I dig a tunnel to somewhere? Anything?"

"I'm afraid not," Hogan said. "Everyone seems to be taking the holiday weekend off. Newkirk, hiding down here isn't going to change anything. It'll still be Christmas, and you'll still be dealing with all those rotten memories."

"And I deal with them just fine. I'm not 'iding, sir. I'd just rather stay busy and not wallow. Is skiving off a ruddy dinner party really such a crime as all that?"

"It's not a crime at all. But you shouldn't be alone with this. We can't help you if you won't let us."

"I never asked you to! I don't need any 'elp! All I want to know is whether it would irreparably damage the war effort if I refrained from sitting in the barracks with the lot of you, wearing a paper 'at and singing carols to celebrate the day my life bloody well ended?"

There was a horrible silence, which oozed into every crevice of the bunker and spawned a clutch of new silences.

Hogan cleared his throat. "You're trained on the radio. London's still mopping up their leaks, and the Underground will be keeping pretty low to the ground, so I doubt there will be anything coming in, but someone has to monitor it, just in case. If you take a few extra watches down here, Kinch could have Christmas off."

Kinch, who, as a general rule, reacted to someone else manning his radio with all the pleasure and confidence of an overprotective father watching his daughter go on her first date, nodded acquiescence. "I'd appreciate that," he said. "To tell you the truth, I wasn't too happy about the idea of missing Christmas dinner."

"Good, then," Newkirk said, after a moment. "That settles that."

"I guess it does," Hogan said, and turned to go, shooing the other men back up the tunnel and away from the small puddle of light and the silent radio.

A very subdued, "Thanks, Guv," wound its way to his ear. Somehow, it didn't make him feel any better.

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

Author's note: We do actually see Newkirk manning the radio in at least a couple of episodes. Not just the walkie-talkies; the whole set-up. As regards the early days of the war, well, it is a fact that the Nazis were doing rather well for a while, there. I'm no expert, and I don't know what conditions would really have been like for their POWs, but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that they would have been at least somewhat unpleasant. Perhaps especially so for a man with a sharp tongue and a short temper.