Bed check, as a general rule, was at oh-two hundred hours. Long enough after official lights-out that everyone either was or ought to have been sound asleep, and could therefore be awakened as rudely as possible, and not quite long enough before reveille that they would feel fully rested after the interruption. Nazi efficiency at its finest. Most, if not all, of the men had decided opinions about being jerked from dreamland by a flashlight beam aimed two inches from one's nose, few of them friendly. Some dealt with the annoyance by entertaining elaborate revenge fantasies regarding very non-traditional uses of the heavy flashlights. Others simply learned to sleep through the intrusion, although at least one man complained that a very promising dream involving himself, Marlene Dietrich, Claudette Colbert, Ingrid Bergman, and a chafing dish full of melted chocolate had been entirely spoiled by the sudden glare; apparently, the women had collectively decided that he should fix the faulty light fixture and had spent the rest of the dream criticizing his lack of skill as an electrician. Freud would probably have had a field day with that one.

But at any rate, oh-two hundred was usually the witching hour, and precisely fifteen minutes before that time, the bunk nearest the door acquired an occupant. Ten minutes after two, the night guard—Corporal Otto, this time, and heaven only knew what he had done to be saddled with this very unpopular job on Christmas Eve instead of being back in the guards' mess having a celebratory schnapps with the others—slipped in, counted them as quickly as he could, which was not terribly quickly, because he had already had more than one celebratory schnapps that evening, and got out.

Ten minutes after they were sure he was gone for the night, the bunk by the door was empty again and the trap door was sliding closed.

Reveille was the same story; when Schultz came lumbering into the barracks to wake them, Newkirk was nestled all snug in his bunk, blanket pulled to his chin and hair fetchingly tousled. One might almost have thought he'd been in it for more than six minutes. (Which he had, actually. Seven—almost eight minutes. At the very least.) And he was a perfect little angel during roll call, smiling faintly while Klink delivered a rambling speech that contradicted itself at least twice, and was gone again as soon as they had been dismissed.

Most of the men rallied well enough. After breakfast, Olsen rummaged in his footlocker for a moment, emerging with a full pack of cigarettes festively tied with a ribbon. "Merry Christmas, Spencer," he said, handing over the small present with a flourish. "From me to you."

Spencer grinned. "Thanks, Olsen," he said, clapping him on the back. "Merry Christmas to you, too!" He looked around the barracks. "Merry Christmas, Foxton," he said, handing him the pack. "Hope you like it."

Foxton wiped away an imaginary tear. "It's just what I always wanted, buddy. How did you guess?"

"Aw, nothing but the best for my good pal," Spencer said. "Merry Christmas!"

Foxton, with the appropriate solemnity, bestowed the Christmas cigarettes on Kinch, who gave them, with a heartfelt word or two, to Baker, who gave them to quasi-Houlihan, and so on around the circle. With each exchange, as the joke got sillier, the actual show of gifting became more and more elaborate, until LeBeau, carrying the cigarettes on a pillow like the ringbearer at a wedding, presented them to Olsen with a torrent of rapid, flowery French compliments and a bow.

They laughed quite a bit throughout the whole process—the idea of holding an actual gift exchange had seemed somewhat foolish, to say nothing of labor-intensive. What did they have to give one another, after all? Odds and ends from Red Cross packages? Stacks of counterfeit marks, or the trinkets they produced in the metal shop? Besides, there were fifteen men in the barracks, to say nothing of several hundred men in camp, and while giving gifts to only one's close friends seemed rude, to say nothing of a very short cut to some very hurt feelings, trying to give to everyone would have been flat out impossible. Olsen, aided and abetted by Spencer, had cooked up this ridiculous round-robin idea, and had gotten the okay from Hogan, some two days previous. Their unwritten rule—when in doubt, make a joke—was operating in full force, and, Olsen had reasoned, Christmas morning in prison was more in need of some humor than any other day in the year. It was working, too; especially when Olsen capped it off by opening the pack and distributing them to all the men; he had tied personalized gift tags to each individual cigarette.

Carter looked at the cylinder in his hand, though, as well as the one left forlornly in the crumpled packet, and frowned.

"Boy… I mean, Colonel," he said quietly. "Don't you think I could go on down and… you know… just keep him company, maybe?"

"No, Carter," said Hogan. "Give him his space." Newkirk, once one looked past the creative complaints and sour witticisms, didn't actually ask for much, and discussing a problem much more personal than their chronic lack of tea was a complete non-starter. If he wanted solitude badly enough that he was willing to publicly admit that he needed it, Hogan didn't quite dare risk seeing what would happen if it was refused. There was only so far you could push a man, and there was only so much it was fair to ask of him. War was never kind, but it did not follow that it was either necessary or wise to be needlessly cruel.

"But…"

Hogan put a hand on his shoulder. "Look, Carter, I understand where you're coming from. But if you go down there today and start trying to cheer him up, all that's going to happen is that someone will end up doing a lot of apologizing on Boxing Day. Don't start."

Carter looked rebellious, then sighed. "Yes, sir."

"He'll be all right, Carter. But for now, go give LeBeau a hand. I'm sure he could use a sous-chef."

LeBeau caught Hogan's glance, and nodded enthusiastically. "Oui, I would very much appreciate some help, Andre. Will you peel these potatoes while I am icing the cake?" He smiled. "You can even lick the bowl afterwards, if you like."

Carter, who was by no means stupid, knew exactly what they were trying to do, but he allowed himself to be drawn into the preparations anyway. They were right, after all. Being busy helped. They were all, one way or another, trying to force themselves to be merry so that they could at least sort of forget all the things that made the holidays hard—like the fact that they weren't at home with their families. Like the fact that, even if they had been home, there would still be a war on, which meant rationing and air raids and the constant threat of bad news hovering over every waking moment. Like all the people who were never going to be home for the holidays ever again.

And Carter did his dogged best not to think about any of those things, but that only left more room in his head to think about a beat-up Newkirk being dragged into a half-built camp all those years ago, and it was making him sick to his stomach.

LeBeau sat down across from Carter, and after one shrewd glance at his troubled face, began piping neat rosettes of frosting onto his cake. "I remember… when I was young, the whole family came to our home for Christmas, and the year I was six, I insisted that I would make cookies for the feast. All by myself, of course; I was positive that I needed no help, and that I knew exactly what I was doing."

"I smell a disaster coming," Kinch commented, and stole a fingerful of icing.

LeBeau slapped his hand away. "So did my grandmere. She stayed in the kitchen the entire time to make certain that I didn't burn the house down. What I did not realize until years later is that she also quietly switched the cookies that I had made for a fresh batch. One that did not have bits of eggshell in the dough, as well as being half-raw and half-burnt, and Heaven only knows what else. She must have been up half the night to make them. Anyhow, she then served them to all the cousins on Christmas Eve, and told them what a fine baker I was, and how proud she was. And the week after New Year's, she began giving me lessons in cookery."

Carter smiled. "Boy, that sounds really nice."

"Ah, she was a wonderful woman. I miss her." LeBeau sighed. "What was your best Christmas memory, Andre?"

"Gee, I don't know," Carter said. "Every year the whole family would get together at my grandfather's place—the house would be about to burst at the seams!—and it was always great to see everyone. On Christmas Eve, we always made a big fire in the fireplace, and we'd write down everything good that had happened that year, and everything we wanted to do over the next year, and one by one, we'd throw them in the fire and let the smoke carry them up to heaven."

"We used to do the same thing with our letters to Santa," said Houlihan pro tem. He smiled wistfully. "The old boy always came through, too. Mind you, my mother always read our letters first. To check the spelling, she said."

"Makes sense. You wouldn't want Santa to think you'd been slacking off in school," said Spencer, with a laugh. "You used your best penmanship, and looked up any words you weren't sure about in the dictionary."

And the conversation wandered across several continents, hitting essentially the same notes each time—shiny new bicycles, mom's famous entrée/side dish/dessert, plots to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus when they were supposed to be asleep. The afternoon slipped past almost before they noticed it, and LeBeau's turkey was ready to serve long before anyone was tired of debating the age old question of whether stuffing should be cooked in the bird or on the side.

And if nobody missed the significance of LeBeau filling a plate with a succulent piece of perfectly cooked turkey, accompanied by a fluffy mound of potato and the most golden brown of the dinner rolls, then covering the dish and setting it aside before serving the rest of the men, no one said anything, either.

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

Author's note: I've always tended towards the 'stuffing on the side' variation of the dish. And before someone chimes in to explain why I'm wrong, and why even call it stuffing if it isn't stuffed into the bird, and so on and so forth, do understand that I've already heard every possible argument on the topic. As the old joke has it, to a certain extent, both ways are traditional. And the lively discussion on why the other person's way is wrong is the most traditional part of all.