Disclaimer: I don't own Hogan's Heroes or any of the characters; I merely borrow them and play with them for a while.
He used to be an officer once, but now he's just another civilian, scraping by on his small pension, only barely making ends meet.
Albert Burkhalter winces as his boot scrapes against a brick lying forlornly on the steep sidewalk. Those old wounds he sustained in battle, years ago now, the ones that had him removed from active duty, still pain him sometimes. A sudden movement or a careless twist of a limb, and the agony shoots through his spine like fiery needles.
Still, he's gotten used to that pain by now and it doesn't really bother him much. There are fresher wounds, much deeper and infinitely more painful.
He's been trying to forget, to put the memories behind, but he can't.
The humiliation is still as fresh as it was on the day of Germany's defeat and unconditional surrender. The capture, the endless interrogations, the confinement – an unending string of degradation, looping around his neck and slowly choking him.
The worst part was how those Allied soldiers, simple privates and non-coms, considered his hard-won medals mere war trophies to be taken home to pass around among gaping friends and family while gloating how they got them from some captured Kraut officer.
Those medals, part of his pride and standing as an officer, embodying the valour and bravery he had showed in battle, reduced to mere bounty to be distributed among green soldier boys whose only claim to medals was to take them from captured enemy soldiers. He still remembers how those filthy, greedy hands had grabbed for the shining metal on his chest, and the rude questions of how he had earned this or that, questions he refused to answer.
But it didn't stop there, oh no.
Like so many of his fellow officers, he was accused of this as well as that and had to stand trial like a common criminal. But the evidence against him was weak. They never could pin any of their ludicrous charges on him, never prove that he was responsible, and in the end those Allied judges had to acquit him, to the sound of disapproving murmurs from the rabble filling the court room.
How disgraceful that had been, having to defend himself in court like a petty thief – he, who not long ago had been one of the Reich's most esteemed generals, an officer whose presence would command rigid attention and salutes. And respect.
But the judges, the jury, and the prosecution alike, even the men listening on the wooden benches showed him nothing but contempt. They didn't even try to hide it, but looked at him with mouths drawn into hard lines and narrow eyes filled with angry accusations.
The charges were, as expected, ridiculous. He had only done what officers always do in wartime – his duty – but the ignorant barbarians presiding to judge him had called it war crimes. Since when was it a crime to serve one's country, to give and follow orders, to conduct oneself as a true officer of the Reich?
No, they didn't understand. Could not be expected to understand, because they had never served their country with weapon in hand, never spilled their blood on behalf of Volk and soil.
And what's more, they never understood any of the values embodied by a true officer. Values he had lived for, values that he would have given his life for, should it ever have come to that.
Values that are now dead. Dead and meaningless. To the people scraping by on their meagre daily rations, they mean nothing. Wherever he looks, he only sees hunger and desperation in the eyes around him on the streets. Not one of those single souls cares about honour and valour anymore, if they ever did. If it can't be exchanged for bread, it's not worth the time and bother.
It's horrible, what the German people have been reduced to. Scurrying among the ruins of bombed-out buildings hoping to find something of value, no matter how insignificant. Resorting to begging on the streets, and worse. He has long since lost count of all the young and not-so-young women approaching him, reaching out to tug at his sleeve as he passes them by. But he always shakes the poor, loathsome creatures off, angry and disgusted.
He sees another woman like that eyeing him when he walks past her, tattered scarves tightly wound around her head and shoulders, so he speeds up his steps, quickly passing her by. Fleetingly, he wonders if her husband is dead, in a POW camp, or perhaps even one of those officers having to stand trial like he did. An officer, once proud and valiant, but now broken and powerless.
Germany's finest, reduced to criminals and thugs by the victors, who refused to leave the defeated even their pride. Everything that was important to them, everything that mattered, has now been dragged into the dirt, spit at and defiled. Everything they struggled to uphold has lost its importance, those who valued it now gone. And the wretched men he sees on the streets no longer have any love for the old martial traditions, the ones that separated the strong and worthy from the simple commoners.
The officers are all gone now, faded into the woodworks, those few granted their freedom now having forgotten the old glory and honour they once embodied.
He used to be an officer once, but now he is no one. And the values he used to live for, that made him what he was, are all gone.