Chapter Twenty-One: Cheerio, London

It had gotten late and Kinch had returned the radio to its hiding place in the tunnel, but none of the prisoners who had watched him fail to contact Mama Bear were willing to give up yet. Because even the suspicion that London wanted to speak with them had changed everything. They had to know. They had to talk with Mama Bear and find out the truth.

"Sir, someone in the Underground is bound to have the capacity," LeBeau stated. "Maybe we could request to use one of their radios?"

Hogan shook his head. "No. Until we know what Mama Bear wants, we need to operate under the assumption that if they wanted the Underground to know, they would simply have given them the message."

"So we just rig up an antenna on the roof," Newkirk said sarcastically. "When Klink sees it, we'll just tell him we wanted to listen to the latest cricket scores."

"That's our first problem. Where do we put an antenna?" Hogan said, trying to keep the conversation on track.

"A guard tower," LeBeau proposed.

"The antenna will need to be connected to the radio," Kinch stated. "I doubt the guards would ignore us taking over one of their towers."

"Would any of the buildings work?" Hogan asked.

"Yes, and we could run wires down the side of a building. But we're still in trouble if the guards spot it."

Turning serious, Newkirk suggested, "Could we jury-rig something?"

Hogan liked that idea. "We could make something we can easily set-up and take down."

"But which building?" LeBeau asked.

Hogan tapped his fingers against his desk and then suddenly stopped as a mischievous look came over his face. Knowing that the Colonel had most likely come up with another impossible idea that would somehow work, Kinch said, "Okay, sir. How are we going to do it?"

On one hand, LeBeau was pleased that the Colonel had come up with a plan that required use of his talents. But on the other hand, he wondered if perhaps this job wasn't actually an affront to his skills. For when the chef looked down upon the unappetizing, monotone lump of dough, he had to resist the urge to throw up.

"This is not food."

"Looks no worse than the slop you served us for dinner," Newkirk joked.

LeBeau responded to the insult to his cooking with a heated glare as he murmured darkly, "No French chef worth his apron would feed Boche food to a pig."

"Schultz will love it," Kinch reassured the nervous chef.

"Have you seen what they serve in the mess?" Newkirk added.

Hogan didn't even attempt to look sympathetic. "We all must make sacrifices."

LeBeau once more considered his dish. He tried to convince himself that it had been necessary, but the sight of the grub – he refused to call it food - on the plate made him feel like he should be demoted to dishwasher.

"I could have made a wonderful soufflé but no, someone ordered strudel."

"Apple strudel," Kinch said with a grin.

"It looks disgusting."

Hogan placed a supporting hand on his shoulder. "If you survive the encounter, I'll put in a recommendation for an Insignia for Military Wounded."

"For what?" Newkirk cried.

"Injured taste buds."

Feeling a little guilty, LeBeau relented. "It's okay, Colonel. I consider it a challenge to cook terrible food."

"That's the spirit." Then, turning to Kinch, Colonel Hogan asked, "Are we ready?"

Kinch held up a flag pole and a coil of wires. "Yes, sir. And Newkirk has the rest of the tools."

It was hard to believe, but inside that metal tube was their antenna. All they had to do was manually raise the thing, and then connect the radio to the wires they planned on running down the side of the building and under the front porch. They hoped that anyone who spotted the thing raised would just think that the flag was at half-staff. With the war going on, there were plenty of reasons for it to be. Furthermore, they were counting on the drainage pipes to hide the wires. Also, they had timed the sweeps of the spotlights down to the second.

Everything was planned out. Kinch and Newkirk would do the job while Hogan kept watch.

And LeBeau was left holding the strudel.

Hogan gave his last order, "LeBeau, Schultz is sitting right outside. Distract him while we go out the window. Keep him occupied for as long as possible. We can't risk him spotting us."

"Yes, sir."

Once the others were in position, LeBeau took a deep breath, maintained a tight grip on his tin and opened the barracks' door. Immediately, he wondered why Hogan had even bothered to take this precaution; Schultz was sitting on the water barrel, asleep.

LeBeau debated whether to go back inside when the smell of the strudel triggered something within the guard. He stirred on his barred as he sniffed the air and then slowly opened his eyes.

As soon as Schultz saw him, he jumped up. "LeBeau, what are doing out of the barracks? You are supposed to be in bed."

"Fine, I'll return to my bunk. But this is the last time I cook something for you!"

Schultz's eyes lit up at the suggestion of food. "I thought I smelled something. What are you hiding behind your back?"

"Nothing! I don't give gifts to rude enemies."

"But LeBeau, how many times do I have to tell you that I'm not your enemy. I am nobody's enemy. I don't want to fight anybody."

The Frenchman conceded and showed the guard his tin pan.

Schultz' face lit up like a child's on Christmas morn. "Strudel…" Drool was beginning to form on his lips. "Where did you get strudel?"

LeBeau shrugged. "I made some as an experiment. Want a taste?"

"Oh, definitely." Schultz had the first forkful halfway to his mouth, when his suspicion kicked in. "Why are you giving me strudel?"

"Well, I thought that if I could learn to make the best possible strudel, I would send some to those goons that are occupying Paris. Once they die from the poison, the Resistance would retake our home. So I needed feedback from a live Boche."

"Cockroach!" the horrified guard gasped. "You mustn't joke about such things."

LeBeau decided to say that he hadn't been joking. He had really considered the plan before.

Schultz's love of strudel quickly won out over his suspicions as he took his first bite. The moan that followed was one of pure pleasure. "This is wunderbar! Where did you get cinnamon?"

"Klink's kitchen."

"Don't tell me. I want to enjoy this little snack."

Little snack! LeBeau had made a whole pan! And Schultz was eating it at an alarming rate. He needed to slow the guard down.

"Schultz?"

"Hmm."

"I'm not sure that I'm happy with the recipe. In your opinion, what makes a good strudel?"

That was apparently the right tactic, because Schultz was still answering the question when the barracks door opened and Hogan joined them. "What is going on out here?"

Schultz jumped up. "Colonel Hogan, I was guarding my post when I saw this prisoner outside the barracks. Now prisoners are not supposed to be outside after lights out. So I was interrogating him."

"Right, Schultz. Then why are there crumbs on your uniform?"

"Crumbs? I see no crumbs." Then, looking down at his uniform, he added, "Oh, these crumbs. The bread at the guard's mess was better than usual today. I saved some for when I was on duty."

"Hey, you don't have to explain it me. Explain it to Klink."

"Klink?"

"When you take LeBeau to his office to be disciplined for being outside the barracks."

"I…"

"Or you could let LeBeau back inside, and Klink will never know."

Schultz hesitated. Duty conflicted with his desire to stay out of trouble. Fortunately, self-preservation won out. "Thank you, Colonel Hogan. Now go to bed, LeBeau, before I get in trouble."

Back inside the barracks, LeBeau noticed that save for his all the bunks were occupied. "Well?" he asked eagerly.

Kinch answered from his bed. "It's all set up. We'll test it tomorrow."

Hogan's neck and back were complaining as he crawled among the pipes underneath the Kommandantur. However, he absolutely insisted on being present when Kinch made first contact with Mama Bear – even if it meant crawling around in the dirt.

Kinch found the place where they had hiden the ends of the wire and went to work attaching them and making the final adjustments to the radio to compensate for the larger antenna. Once he was finished, he said, "Are you ready, Colonel?"

Hogan nodded and listened as Kinch tapped out the words, Papa Bear calling Mama Bear.

The response came quick and the Morse code was too fast for him to follow, but Kinch wrote it down and went to work decoding it. "Sir," he whispered, "Mama Bear says, 'The best ale I ever had was at the Cross and Crown.' "

Hogan couldn't believe his ears. His hunch was right. "I shared a drink with my CO at that restaurant a few days before I was shot down. No one else knows we were there."

"We really are speaking with London, aren't we, sir?"

"Yes. Now give HQ our regards and ask them if we can be of any assistance."

Kinch coded, sent, received and then decoded again. "Sir, they want to know if we are really operating out of a POW camp."

This was why they had sent the code book. This information was not something one said plainly on an open channel. Even in code there was a risk, but this was a risk they had to take. With London's assistance, he might just live to see home sooner than he had ever thought possible. "Give them the location of Stalag Thirteen."

The waiting went on as Kinch continued to faithfully send and receive and London continued to ask a full report of their activities over the past month. HQ asked about Crane and the ammo dump. The POWs told them about the tunnels and the wire. Only when London asked about their Underground connections did Hogan choose to hold information back, sharing only code names. There was some information too valuable to risk, regardless of who was on the other end of the line.

When Mama Bear asked to arrange to talk tomorrow night, Hogan handed Kinch a sheet of paper with a message he had already written out in code. It was their request for assistance in pulling off a camp-wide escape.

Mama Bear didn't immediately say no, which was encouraging. And before signing off, their contact did say he would pass on the request to his superiors before signing off.

"Colonel," Kinch whispered as he packed up the radio. "Tell me I'm not dreaming."

"If you're dreaming, then I'm in this dream with you."

Kinch grinned, his white teeth a flash of brightness in the darkness.

Hogan crawled back to their opening and pushed the wood aside, checking to see if the coast was clear. LeBeau had run interference when they had left the barracks, but not knowing how long this communication would last, he was unable to set up anything specific for the return trip.

Thankfully, the immediate way was clear and Hogan wriggled out, grateful to stand on his own two feet. He gestured to Newkirk, who was hiding nearby to climb on the roof and lower the antenna while Kinch also crawled out too.

The three POWs carefully dodged the spotlights as they dashed across the compound to their barracks. But just when Hogan reached the door, he heard a dog bark nearby.

"Quiet, Bruno," Schultz said from around the corner. "We don't want to wake the prisoners."

"Hurry," Hogan hissed as he pushed Newkirk inside. But Kinch, who was carrying the radio, wasn't able to move as quickly. And if Schultz spotted him, there would be no way to convince him not to report them to Klink.

Suddenly, he heard a window on the other side of the barracks slam open. A prisoner must have jumped out, because the next thing he heard was Schultz's voice crying, "Halt!"

There was no time to thank God for their quick-thinking helper as Kinch and Hogan rushed inside the hut and closed the door. LeBeau was prepared and had opened up a half-empty trunk for Kinch to hide the radio in.

Everyone in the barracks was awake, but no one dared ask the question that was on all of their minds with the window wide open and Schultz right outside. But they all could guess – they had been gone for almost an hour.

Marching over to the window, Hogan stuck his head outside and called, "What is going on out here? How do you expect my men to sleep with all this carrying on?"

"Colonel Hogan, I caught this prisoner attempting to escape out the window," Schultz announced as he prodded his captive with his rifle.

Hogan knew he should have had a witty response, but he had finally recognized the prisoner who had distracted Schultz by jumping out the window.

At first, Hogan thought his eyes must be deceiving him. This prisoner was the last one whom he had expected to pull a stunt like that. Not that this person avoided crazy stunts. It was just that this soldier tended to stick to stunts that offered some reward to him. Not stunts where he was the one who bore the cost for someone else. But there was no mistake.

The man who had saved their operation was Sergeant Olsen.