Chapter 3: Next Morning
Breakfast, such as it is, gets brought by a guard, and I finish it off all too quickly. At least the ersatz coffee is still pretty warm, if not exactly hot, and after warming my hands around the tin mug for just a minute I try to get it inside me as quickly as I can to take advantage of the heat left in it. I'm finally dry, though when I asked earlier if he'd dried out yet Davis grumbled that his leather jacket and hat are still damp and will probably mold before they dry completely. But I know he's exaggerating. The cooler is still chilly, but not as bad as yesterday, and at least we were both able to sleep last night.
I'm sitting back on my bunk doing math, using the cement blocks in the long opposite wall to pass the time, and I've gotten through counting them, and doing addition and multiplication and am working on division when to my surprise I hear the door to the building open off schedule; even more to my surprise I hear multiple well-known voices coming in. I stand up and move to the door, listening avidly to figure out what's going on.
"'Ave a 'eart, Schultz!" A British cockney accent I'd recognize anywhere.
"Yeah, we've been working all night!" A Midwestern drawl, high pitched with outrage.
"Right, Schultz, at least let us wash up first. The tap's right here." Kinch's calm, convincing, deep-pitched voice, laced with an authority that no one in the barrack disputes, and that even the Colonel listens to.
"Oui, and it's worth a strudel for you when we get out, Schultzie." A French-accented voice cajoling persuasively.
"Ach, you will get me in trouble!" Schultz's voice, but he's clearly wavering.
"C'mon, Schultz, just a quick wash up. It'll only take a few minutes, and how's the Kommandant to know?" Kinch's voice is persuasive.
"All right, but you must hurry. Quickly now!"
Next comes splashing and spluttering, with various comments of "Ooo, that's cold!" "Now I'm more mud than dirt," and various huffings and puffings, plus a few choice comments in French that I've heard before but still don't understand, since neither LeBeau nor Kinch will translate them. It's really aggravating, having people say things all the time that you can't understand and then not telling you what they mean by it!
"All right, that's enough. Into the cells you must go now!" Various clinks, clanks, and iron squeals as doors shut and locks turn. "Be good boys, now!" Schultz warns, to answering catcalls like "Oh yeah, what're we going to do from in here?" Then his heavy footsteps plod down the corridor away from us. The far door to the building clangs shut yet again, and quiet descends, but only for a moment.
"Barnes! Davis!" Kinch's voice. "You two okay? You dry out by now?"
"Yeah, we're fine!" I call back, followed by Davis's query, "What're all you guys doing in here? Is everything okay?"
"Oi, just peachy keen," Newkirk's sarcastic voice answers. "The Colonel's brilliant idea, this is."
"Really?" I hear disbelief in Davis's voice. "What's he doing giving you guys up for this?"
"Newkirk!" There's reproof in Kinch's voice. "You know it was the only way to get the Stalag 9 guys out."
"A night of 'ard labor movin' enough dirt to refill a tunnel, followed up by thirty days in the cooler for each of us, don't seem to me at the moment like the best idea the colonel ever 'ad," Newkirk grumbles, but then he adds with reluctant fairness, "Not that I can think of what else 'e might've done, mind you."
"Well, we got plenty of time to sleep now," Carter's cheerful voice responds. "And Schultz did let us wash some of the dirt off. At least it's not all in my eyes now."
"Sounds better than being drenched like we were," Davis gripes, obviously still intent on his own grievance.
"At least you didn't have to run through the woods with guards shooting at you!" LeBeau snaps back.
Well, he's right about that. I'd rather be shut up wet in here than dashing around out there with bullets flying around me! Sometimes second string's not so bad. . . .
"Cool it, everybody," Kinch retorts. "Carter's right, we've got the sack time now that we missed last night – and the night before it too, getting those guys ready to go – so plan to take advantage of it. The Colonel will get us out of here as soon as he can. This wasn't his first choice, just a makeshift plan. So just deal with it."
Davis apparently just can't help himself. "Well, I don't see the Colonel in here, so I guess he was able to weasel himself out of the Kommandant's punishment. It's no skin off his officer nose for us enlisted to take the heat – or in this case, the cold."
I groan inwardly: that was not the kind of comment my buddy should be making about our C.O. to his right-hand men! Plus, I really don't think the Colonel deserves it.
Apparently neither do the others, given that Kinch and Newkirk respond at the same time. Newkirk's more strident voice wins out over Kinch's this time, though. He might have been complaining earlier, but now he's apparently all on Colonel Hogan's side.
"You weren't there, Davis, and you didn't see 'im. I was in ol' Klink's office when the Kommandant told the Colonel that we'd all get thirty days for that tunnel, and I could see that it 'it 'im 'ard, the way 'e looked over at me. Sure, 'e was willing to tease me about bein' all over dirt when I first came in the office, but 'e was also worried about 'ow 'ard we'd been workin' all night. Plus, ol' Klink meant our sentence to get to 'im, all gleeful like 'e was and makin' sure the Colonel knew we were takin' the consequences. There weren't nothin' the Gov'nor could do right then, and I could see the regret in 'is eyes when 'e looked at me, plain as the nose on me face, even if 'e couldn't say nothin' about it right then and there with the Kommandant listenin'. 'E knows it's 'is responsibility we're in 'ere, and 'e's none too 'appy about it. So don't you go makin' assumptions that it don't bother 'im none. 'E did what 'e 'ad to then, and 'e'll do all 'e can for us, soon as possible."
"Right," Kinch affirms. "So like I said, just cool off and get some shut-eye. We've been short on that for a few days, so we might as well enjoy the break."
"Cool off? I guess it's a good thing we're in the cooler, huh?" Carter's irrepressible cheerfulness comes through again with a chuckle.
Everyone groans.
"'E thinks that's funny, 'e does," Newkirk mutters just barely audibly.
I have another question I just have to ask, though. "Just one more thing before you guys sack out – did the Colonel give Braden and Mills a good chewing out yesterday?"
That provokes a handful of rueful snickers.
"Oh boy, did he ever! I didn't think he'd ever stop!" Carter laughs.
"What, you mean you couldn't hear it in here?" Kinch asks, and I swear I can actually hear a grin in his voice.
"Yeah, I rather thought me sister Mavis in London could've 'eard all that 'e 'ad to say to them," Newkirk says thoughtfully. "Not that some of that language was fit for a lady's ears!"
"The only problem was he denied me permission to punch them each in the nose!" LeBeau adds indignantly.
"Did you really request that?" asks Davis, and the laughter I hear in his voice makes me relax.
"Oui!" LeBeau answers emphatically.
Kinch backs him up with a chuckle, "He really did, and I think the Colonel was wanted to say yes but was too tempted to do it himself. But he restrained himself – I think I heard him mutter something about 'conduct unbecoming'!"
Grinning at the picture their responses create, I sit down on my bunk and look around my bare cell again. I really hope the Colonel will figure a way to get us all out of here soon. I know he'll work on it as hard as he can – he's pretty short-handed with six of us in here, after all, and probably feeling pretty guilty about having landed us here in this most recent scheme of his. But in the meantime, I do have a chance to catch up on sleep, something often in short supply for all of us who live in Barrack 2. And I'm not alone, not really, not with my best buddy just across the corridor and the other guys of Barrack 2 nearby in earshot too. I just have a little more privacy than usual. Yeah. That's the way to think about it. I lie back on the bunk, wrap my blanket around me, and close my eyes, willing myself to sleep.
The End