Disclaimer: I don't own Hogan's Heroes or any of the characters; I merely borrow them and play with them for a while.
In a way, Schultz supposes he is lucky, because Karl came back from the war, whereas so many others sons didn't.
He remembers it as clearly as the day it happened – the image of Karl standing in the doorway, hesitant, unsure. Like a ghost he just hovered there, an apparition returning to his former home but afraid to step inside lest he might no longer be welcome. Weary and thin, but alive.
Schultz could do nothing but stare, because his entire body was frozen. He couldn't speak or move, not until Karl took a hesitant step towards him, still looking unsure whether he had any right anymore to cross the doorstep. As if he thought he had committed some act heinous enough to forever banish him from the house he grew up in.
His paralysis let up, then, and his feet moved more quickly than he remembers them ever doing before. In a few short steps, he was there in the doorway, gathering Karl up in his arms, because he looked so frail, so unsteady, that Schultz feared he might collapse into a heap and never find the strength to stand again.
And as they stood there embracing each other, tightly, he realized that Karl was crying. He was crying, and Schultz hadn't seen Karl cry in many years, not since he was a little boy. But now he stood there with silent tears rolling down his cheeks and he didn't even seem ashamed, didn't make any attempt to hide them.
And he had cried too. Because ever since that frightful drafting order came, he had thought that he would never see his son return home again.
But now, Karl was back, he was home. And he was alive.
Or so he thought, until he looked into his son's eyes.
And he realized with horror that he had seen eyes like that before. During the Great War. Soldiers who had seen too much, been through too much, and who were never quite the same again. Perhaps they couldn't handle their comrades being killed, or perhaps they couldn't handle having to kill others. Perhaps they'd hidden in one trench too deep as bullets whistled over their heads, or heard one anguished cry too many from the men dying all around them.
Whatever it was, he had seen eyes like that before. And looking into them always made a chill pass all the way to his bones, because it was like looking into the ghastly realm of death itself. There was no life in such eyes, no hope, no happiness.
And he would think, then, that perhaps those men were already dead, that death itself had already claimed them as its own, having breathed its icy coldness into their very souls. Drinking life from them, leaving only a hollow shell.
And now those eyes are in the face of his own son. It feels as if they follow him wherever he goes, haunt him when he tries to sleep.
The eyes dredge up memories as well, old, almost forgotten memories that he has tried to tuck away under years of happier ones, aware that he would never quite succeed. He saw so many things that are now etched into his soul, and there is no way he can just shrug them off and pretend that they never happened.
He wonders, maybe he also had eyes like that, once the Great War came to an end. He isn't sure. At the time he tried to avoid mirrors, because he didn't want to look into them, afraid of what he might see. Perhaps there'd only be an empty shell staring back at him. The sad remains of a man that war swallowed whole, and then disdainfully spit back out again.
But he wants to believe that everything will work out, that everything will be fine. That in the end, things will be alright. After all, some of those men he remembers, the ones with the dead eyes, did eventually get better. Time healed, and they returned to their former selves.
A few of them.
His wife doesn't understand. She didn't fight in the last war, of course, and he never had the heart to tell her of all the horrible things he experienced during those frightful years that never should have been. Unlike him, she has no way of knowing what her son has been through. So she tries to reason with Karl, asks him to please tell her what is wrong, and if there's anything they can do to make him feel better. To make him return to the young man he once was, before the war. Of course, she doesn't really say this out loud, but he can hear it in her voice; it's there, along with the despair that comes with being powerless to help.
But he knows that there is nothing they can do. Because he was there too, in another war that is now all but forgotten in the shadows of the one that has just come to an end. And he knows that nothing heals but time.
They can only wait. And hope. Hope that the lost, forlorn expression in Karl's face will eventually fade, and that there will once more be a flicker of life in those eyes.
He tries to take comfort in the fact that at least their family is complete, unlike so many other families that have lost loved ones.
He looks at the young man sitting in front of the fireplace, staring into the dancing flames as they engulf the firewood, slowly consuming it. Karl will probably sit there until darkness falls, until the fire eventually dies out, and there is nothing left of the firewood.
Nothing but burnt-out husks and ashes.
And that's when Schultz wonders, even though their family might be complete, if it will ever be whole again.