Author's Note, from TheSailingRabbit: Presenting the 2024 Guess Who challenge! This year we have nine stories from eight authors, following the prompts/themes of scam, scram, and/or scream.

Participating authors:

Tallsunshine12
TheSailingRabbit
snooky-9093 (wrote entries 3 and 6)
Deepbluethinking
Fear-Of-The-Cold
Sierra Sutherwind
Tuttle4077
Abracadebra

Christmas Cheer

"Mail call!" The shout echoed through the old wooden barracks. A rotund German sergeant cringed as a dozen men began grabbing at his pack of letters. He held onto them as tight as he could, yelling, "Get back!"

"Come on now, fellows. Schultz has to do his job," Colonel Hogan said, as he pulled several men off the cowering Kraut.

"How long's it been now, Schultzie?" asked LeBeau, the barracks cook and all-around helper. "Four weeks?"

"Yeah," added Carter, his gloved hands in his pockets. "It must've been at least four. You can't blame us for being excited."

"You've been 'oldin' out on us?" Newkirk asked, helping Colonel Hogan right Schultz on his feet again.

"Yeah, Schultz, what gives?" asked the radio operator, Kinch, and Hogan's second-in-command.

When the men backed off, Schultz glanced down at the letters in his hands. Coughing, clearing his throat, he began calling out the names as he found them, not in alphabetical order.

"Carter! Beauchamp! Newkirk, Kinch …" here, he hesitated, then burst out, "LeBeau!"

The Frenchman leaped up and grabbed the letter Schultz was holding out. He raked it across the bottom of his nose, and said, "Chic nocturne. I love it!"

"Does anyone understand what he's saying?" asked the calmed-down Schultz.

"He's saying his too-thin bird in Paris, wearing some unholy holy water that smells like a Parisian sewer, has written to him." Newkirk, looking around himself, laughed at the men's shocked reactions.

Schultz laughed, too. "That's supposed to help me understand what LeBeau said?"

Meanwhile, Hogan had taken the rest of the letters and passed them out. Now he was avidly trying to hustle Schultz, who made one and a half of Hogan, out the door. A blast of Arctic air came in and all the men's letters flapped this way and that.

"Let's let the men enjoy them now, okay, Schultz?"

"See you at roll call!" yelled Carter to the Sergeant of the Guard. He meant the night roll call, another chance like the one that morning to do the brass monkey act while Schultz took a head count. He had to take off his shoes when he got past ten.

In a few moments, Hogan noticed a change fall over the face of Newkirk, what he could see of it. The RAF corporal was buried deep in his letter. Hogan walked over.

"Anything I can do?" he asked.

"It's from Mavis, Tom's missing. 'Dear Peter, Tom's plane didn't return from the last mission, and I fear the worst.'"

"What's wrong?" asked LeBeau, coming up with two steaming cups of coffee. He handed one to Hogan. Newkirk reached for his, but set it down on the table next to his blue RAF cap.

"My sister," he confided. "They can't find 'er Tom. It's been two months now. She wrote me back in October."

Everyone in the room, his barracks brothers, perked up to listen.

"He didn't make it?" asked Hogan.

"Letter doesn't say, Guv," replied Newkirk, using the name fondly for Hogan.

"Let me see it, if you don't mind."

Hogan took it gently and Newkirk reached for his cup, taking a sip. "Oh, man," he exclaimed, "this gets worse every day, LeBeau."

"I had to water it down again," said the chef. "I threw in some sawdust, too. I thought you wouldn't notice."

"Blimey! What's this war comin' to?" Newkirk waggled his head and took another sip. His emotions were in turmoil and his hand shook.

Hogan had been reading. It wasn't a long letter, but he wanted to see if there was a code in it. He couldn't find any, so it had to be legit. Mavis Newkirk's fiancé's was missing, or dead.

Three hours later, they had a message from London, in code, about Wing Commander Tom Howard, RAF. In his office, Hogan shared it with the rest of his core group, Kinch, Newkirk, LeBeau, and the ever-effervescent Carter.

"They've gotten word from the Red Cross. Wing Commander Howard bailed out of his Lancaster before it blew, and he's been tracked down to Offlag XIII-B. I'll get Klink to request a transfer."

"He won't do it, Guv," said Newkirk, using his nickname for Hogan again. "'aving one colonel in the camp is enough for 'im."

Hogan laughed at Newkirk's raw humor. "We'll see."

"How will you lie to him this time?" asked Kinch.

Hogan thought about it. "I could always tell him the truth." Oohs and ahhs filled the room. Colonel Hogan almost never told Wilhelm Klink, the camp commandant, the truth. "He's practically your brother-in-law. You want to see for yourself that he's okay."

"It'll take some wranglin'," said Newkirk, feeling a bit more hopeful now. "But if anyone can get Tom out, you can."

"And then the Underground rescues him before he ever sets foot in Stalag 13," offered Kinch, in step with what Hogan was thinking.

Hogan smiled a canny smile. "Precisely, he'll get here, but not through the front gate."

On board now with the others, Carter said, "And then we'll arrange for a sub pickup."

"He'll be home by Christmas," said LeBeau. "Pity. He'll miss my Bûche de Noël. I was going to have fake snow on it, too."

"I'll have to let Mavis know, she'll be so relieved. And Tom's mum and pop."

"Not yet, Newkirk," said Hogan, firm that no details of their operation ever left the camp, except to a chosen few. "Only Mavis."

Three weeks later, WC Tom Howard came in via the tree stump with Carter and Newkirk, looking amazed at the Stalag 13 tunnel system. Then a call was made to London, and rerouted to Bletchley Park, where Mavis worked as a codebreaker.

"Hi, pet," he began, welling up.

"Who's this? Is that you, Peter?" Mavis hoped it was, but she was even more overjoyed when she heard the voice again.

"This spring, right?"

"Spring?" she asked, catching on slowly in her zeal. Then a scream. "Tom?!"

The End

A/N: Bûche de Noël is a Christmas cake, or Yule Log. Confectioner's sugar makes the snow.