what_we_dream (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
what_we_dream) wrote2010-08-05 08:29 pm
what_we_dream) wrote2010-08-05 08:29 pm
Entry tags:
Hogan's Heroes: Lucky Day
Title: Lucky Day
Series: Hogan's Heroes
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Summary: Newkirk has never considered himself lucky.
November 20th, 1939
Newkirk has never considered himself lucky. He has talent, but it’s not at all the same thing. For one thing, while talent can put food on the table, luck will see that you’re assigned to one of the few squadrons likely to see action in the middle of a phony war.
The whole world is waiting, and everywhere the tension is palpable as everyone wonders when the next real offensive will begin. Whether, when it does, they’ll be any position to respond with ol’ Neville at the helm.
Newkirk isn’t thinking about that, not about the tension or Chamberlain or even luck, good or bad. Not today, for two reasons. First, it’s his birthday, and as the only day in the year his mother ever saved for a rich chocolate desert solely for him for nearly sixteen years, the date still holds an imbedded weight in his mind. Second, he’s just been assigned to the 601st Squadron, patrolling the skies over Britain to beat back the still only occasional Luftwaffe raids. One of the only squadrons to have actually engaged the enemy and shot a plane down on British soil.
In many ways, he’s proud. Proud, and excited, to serve. He has five siblings, and now apart from supporting them with his pay, he’ll be protecting them as well. Making sure they can live safely in their own city, can sleep safe in their beds. Fighting’s not what he signed up for – there aren’t too many employers around now with the economy the way it is who are willing to take kids with little education a small-time record for pick-pocketing, and money’s scarce even with five wages being pooled – but he loves his family, and for all the kicks it’s given to a boy who grew up in the East End slums, he loves London and even England. Most of the time, he’s strong enough to know that he’s not going to lose them.
The rest of it, he’s scared out of his pants. Fortunately, that’s not hard for someone with even his limited stage experience to hide. And anyway, he can see it behind the eyes of most of the rest of the men. He’s not alone. He knows he won’t be in a fighter, so he’s safe for now, but if they start taking loses they’ll be training up new captains and he’ll be right there when the time comes.
The only reconciliation possible is the decision that he won’t train for pilot, but he won’t avoid it either.
His sister Mary – always the organizer – sends him a card signed by the family, and his pals on the base take him out for drinks to celebrate the assignment. He holds off on telling Mary about the assignment; he never tells his mates about his birthday.
For Newkirk, the war has just started. But he’s spent his whole adult life downplaying his childhood to men raised with their own opinions of the East End, and he’s just as accomplished at distracting attention from wallets as uncomfortable topics; he doesn’t even have to think about the lies anymore. He learned long ago to draw a line between private and public, and he doesn’t let the two mix.
So he doesn’t tell the men about his birthday, and he doesn’t tell his family the details of his assignment, because the two of them are not and never will be compatible. And if he gets a little drunker than usual, no one notices.
November 20th, 1940
Newkirk spends his second birthday of the war at home, on leave. Home, for an unmarried man with five siblings to support, is the same cramped apartment he grew up in. The only change is that now he has a bed of his own rather than having to share with Joe, and really all that means is that there’s less floor space in the bedroom.
It’s a good birthday, by the standards of the day. His sisters have saved up enough coupons for a roast with sugar cookies afterwards – even scrounging won’t put chocolate on the table with the rationing. After dinner, Hannah sews up the tears in his uniform and Mary darns his socks – he could do it himself, but it’s the closest to a present they can come. His brothers give him five packs of cigarettes. Wonder of wonders, there isn’t even an air raid.
They ask him what it’s like, of course. If he likes flying, how many German planes he’s seen shot down, how many raids he’s been on, what his captain’s like, if he gets scared up there running bombing missions over the sea.
He answers the easier questions – 5, 12, a decent bloke. He steers away from the others, and they don’t press. The conversation turns to everyday topics, to ribbing Joe about his girl and the possibility of fixing the leaking roof and Winnie’s latest speech, which Newkirk performs by popular request. They turn in early, because Paul and Sam have to get up early to commute across town, and the girls to cook for them. Newkirk goes to bed on his hard mattress, thinking that it’s still softer than those in the barracks, and listens to the quiet sounds of his family settling around nearby. Remembers the last time he slept here, when he didn’t have to keep his boots and coat by his bed, when there weren’t two light cases of clothes and food and what few valuables they’ve held on to by the door. When they didn’t all say their goodnights with a hidden meaning.
Newkirk wants to tell them what its like. Sitting in the belly of the huge bomber, her metal skin cold as ice all around, the engines rattling like hammers on tin drums beating a rhythm that stays in his head for hours after he lands. It’s unreal, bumping about up there in a jumping seat and catching, if he ever goes to look out, sight of nothing but solid black as they cross the channel. He feels like the only man in the world then, alone in some kind of frozen, deafening purgatory that he can’t escape. And then the lights below, pricking up from the blackness brighter than stars and, as they swerve around homeward bound, bright blazing red. Pride flows through his veins, a dark pride at hitting back at the enemy who attacks his home nightly, and it’s strong and fierce and bitter. It’s easy to be proud. It’s shattering to look at what lies underneath it.
He wants to tell them. That he’s scared, scared white, every time a fighter is reported on the horizon, and it’s all he can do to keep to his duty. That the bombing missions are the most alive he’s ever felt, and the most dead. That he doesn’t regret it, but that sometimes late at night it hurts, that they all hurt but none of them will ever, ever talk about it because if once they crack they’ll shatter.
He can’t tell them, because he’s their big brother, and he is the face of this war to them, and he cannot let them down. And he can’t lie, because he’s afraid in his heart of hearts, that one day he’ll be able to fool even them. And then he’ll be trapped all alone in that frozen blackness over the sea, forever.
Newkirk lies in his bed, and wishes he’d asked the boys for some whisky rather than the fags.
November 20th, 1941
His captain takes him out for a drink, takes the whole crew out, in celebration of their 100th successful mission.
Newkirk toasts the man, who really is a decent bloke, with sincerity. He’s seen enough captains to know that here, at least, he has been lucky. That, if he can manage to keep himself under the man for the rest of the war, he’ll have a good chance of making it out whole and maybe even with another stripe. He already knows that whatever he does after the war it won’t have anything to do with the RAF, but more rank means more pay and for now since he can’t get out anyway that’s what matters.
Of course after that the toasts degrade into the usual, peoples’ birds, peoples’ mates’ birds, Winnie and the Cabinet, the captain’s bird – a particularly good-looking dame – victory, and birds in general. The captain keeps his eye on him for a while, and Newkirk wonders whether the man’s had enough of a squint at his files, or just his tags, to know what today is, but he doesn’t say anything and neither does Newkirk. The event goes untoasted, unmarked entirely in fact as he receives no card from his family – the Post isn’t what it was.
He’s in a bit of a melancholy mood with that, and doesn’t drink as much of the rest which lands him the unenviable task of helping to carry them back to the barracks. The captain, rolling his eyes at Newkirk, gives him a hand in carting them to bed. Newkirk salutes as he leaves, and gives him a thankful grin.
The next night, on their 101st bombing mission, their plane is shot down over Dusseldorf. Newkirk, after days of interrogation, is assigned to Luft Stalag 13, the toughest POW camp in Germany.
The captain doesn’t make it.
November 20th, 1942
It’s been three months since Colonel Hogan came into the camp with orders to set up a link to the local Underground and provide aid to downed airmen. Three months of the most complex, methodical tunnel-digging Stalag 13’s ever seen. Three months, and the man already has the guards, and the Kommandant, eating out of his hand. It’s the most order the camp has ever known, and despite the fact that they are embarked on a task far more dangerous than any they would ever have considered, they have so far been treated better by far than they were in those first 9 months. Klink’s soft in a lot of ways, and Hogan seems to know just how to bend him into rings.
Under Hogan’s leadership, they’ve also discovered they have a range of hidden talents among them that passed unnoticed; they have mechanics, athletes, radio-men, even a high-class cook. Now they have the capacity to radio London with parts smuggled into camp by Hogan and his XO Kinchloe, they have proper shoring and beaming in the tunnels, and more importantly they have real food three times a week. There’s not a lot of it, but some of the time he’s eating better than he did even back in England.
And he’s working harder every day than he did in the entire previous nine months. The colonel’s not a man to be content with doing anything halfway; his tunnel plans are closer to impossible than ambitious. After seeing the way he’s taken command of the camp, though, complainants are few and far between. Even Newkirk, not keen on heavy work for minimally apparent profit in the short run, finds himself blindly following orders and pitching in his best efforts.
The man’s a bloody snake charmer, has them all dancing to his tune.
Newkirk sits with the rest of the men, muscles aching, at the table in their barracks – heated now with extra rations of wood – eating one of LeBeau’s unpronounceable stews with real white bread to dip in it. No one speaks; no one has energy for anything to spare outside eating. When they’re finished, they’ll turn out for evening roll call and then into bed without prompting for the 9:30 lights out. Newkirk knows he’ll be asleep before Shultz comes in to check on them.
He only realises two days later that he completely forgot his birthday.
November 20th, 1943
The cell is tiny. No windows in the walls, no cracks in the floors. Only a slot in the metal door, and the scratches on the walls; at all heights and angles, they still boil down to five parallel lines an inch apart.
He knows Carter is in the cell on his left, saw them throw the American in before they put him in, just as he knows LeBeau is on his right.
The floor is dirty with dark stains; he avoids looking at them, avoids thinking about them, avoids touching them. It makes it less real, somehow. It’s already much, much too real.
Newkirk sits down on the floor beside the left wall and, taking hold of his uniform jacket, begins tapping on the wall with the edge of a button.
C-A-R-T-E-R O-K?
There’s a long pause, and then a muffled reply. Newkirk frowns, trying to make sense of the very short message, and then places it with a roll of his eyes. Shave-and-a-hair-cut.
Two-cents he taps back.
“Bloody well learn Morse Code already, Carter,” he hisses under his breath, and shuffles over to the other side. LeBeau, at least, is familiar with it, and responds.
LeBeau – OK?
OK. Carter?
OK. Escape?
No idea. Rescue?
No idea.
“Ruddy marvellous,” says Newkirk, and slumps down.
They’re locked up in a Gestapo prison, and as soon as their captors get bored with whoever’s nails they’re pulling out right now, they’ll be next on the rack. For all they know, the colonel doesn’t even know they’re in trouble yet. Their fake dogtags will buy them some time, but not that much.
Newkirk would like to believe he could stand up to torture, that he could protect the vital secrets he’s carrying, but they all know what the Gestapo are capable of. Even with 200 lives depending on him, he doubts he could hold out long. He closes his eyes, and tries not to think about all the previous occupants of this cell. All the men who doubtless ran through exactly the same thoughts as him. All the men who he is sure they didn’t help one bit.
With his head resting on his arms he doesn’t hear the footsteps through the thick walls, so when the key turns in the lock his heart skips painfully as he shoots to his feet. His skin prickles as he breaks out in a sweat, gut cold and twisting.
There are three men on the other side, a Gestapo lieutenant and two grunts. The lieutenant is holding a clipboard.
“Corporal Skordeno,” says the man in a heavy accent. The grunts hurry in and grab him, dragging him out into the long corridor beyond. “We begin with you; a sort of birthday present.”
Newkirk nearly faints, heart slamming nails into his chest with each blow, because they know, they know, they’ve found him they know who he is the operation is blown they are all dead dead dead. And then remembers, as he slumps in the guards’ grasp, that he gave out his proper birth date on the fake tags. It was a slip, carelessness, he had just filled out the form with his own birthday rather than bothering to make up a new one. It had been months ago, down in the heady warmth of the tunnels. Seemed like years, now.
“Yes, it may be not quite what you wanted,” says the lieutenant, as they begin to drag him down the hallway.
He’s staring at the stones, dark and rounded from wear and stained with what Newkirk would like to think is treacle but knows better. He can’t seem to stop noting detail, can’t turn his brain off, can’t unhook himself.
“Just a moment, lieutenant.”
Newkirk starts, tripping on the stones and causing the guard on his right to slam his rifle butt into Newkirk’s ribs. They stop all the same and he carefully does not look up because he can’t trust himself right now.
Colonel bloody Hogan.
“I have papers here for the transfer of this prisoner, and two others – a sergeant Smithers and a corporal Corneaux. They are to come with me, immediately.”
“I heard nothing of this, Herr Captain.”
“I don’t care whether you have heard or not. Here are my orders, signed by Colonel Kirkheim. Release them into my custody. Now.”
“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant sounds grudging, and Newkirk wishes he could rub it in the man’s face, but he’d much rather get out of here alive and so remains staring at the ground pretending he understood none of the German conversation. One of the guards leaves him to let Carter and LeBeau out, while the other shoves him forwards with the point of his rifle this time.
Newkirk hurries forward, and gladly lets the colonel take custody of him with his Luger and escort them out of the building.
It may be the best birthday gift he’s ever had.
November 20th 1944
In the last few months, everything has changed for them. They are no longer a kite fluttering loose in the breeze; every day they are being pulled in closer as the front lines shift, every day they are nearer to the end of this war. Now victories are coming fast and furious from some quarters while from others setbacks gnaw at them. And with either comes a high cost in lives. Every man in camp with a brother, cousin, or nephew in the army opens his mail with tense fingers. Newkirk thanks the Heavens that his brothers were able to keep their jobs, that one sibling in the Forces was enough for the family.
Still, they have a lot to toast, even if it is only with LeBeau’s coffee. Freedom is arriving one of these days at the heels of a Sherman tank; not tomorrow, not next week, but in a future which although distant is definitely visible now.
Newkirk’s been living in Stalag 13 for three years now. More than long enough to know that they none of them have many secrets left. More than long enough to consider these men closer to family than friends, and that some habits are worth breaking. That some lines aren’t as uncrossable as he’d thought.
They’re sitting around the stove, the winter nights just beginning, eating some of LeBeau’s boeuf stroganoff out of tin bowls. LeBeau’s got the last ladle-full ready to go to Carter, sitting next to the cook. Newkirk reaches across to dip his bowl in above Carter’s and snag the last drippings.
“Hey!” complains Carter, staring as Newkirk pulls his bowl back.
“It’s not every day a man has a birthday, Andrew,” replies Newkirk with nearly complete carelessness.
“It’s not your birthday,” accuses Carter, pointing with his dirty fork. Newkirk drops his own utensil into his bowl to fish his dogtags out from beneath his shirt, pulling them out so Carter can read the date imprinted on them, 20-11-1908.
“Well?” asks LeBeau.
“Huh.” Carter’s eyebrows furrow. “It really is.”
“Bonne fête,” says LeBeau, grinning. “There may be enough apples left from Shultz’ strudel for some crepes,” he adds in a distracted tone, and bustles off to check.
“Happy birthday, Newkirk,” puts in the colonel from across the table, Kinch echoing the sentiment; Newkirk nods his thanks, then jerks away from Carter, who’s still examining his tags.
“Carter, d’you mind?”
“Huh? Oh, sorry. Yeah, happy birthday. You should’a told us earlier, maybe we could’ve had sparklers or something.”
Newkirk, considering the kinds of sparklers likely to come out of Carter’s lab, is even gladder he didn’t. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, meaning it.
“Yeah, well. Next year, boy, we’ll have a real show,” says Carter with a glint in his eye. In the background, LeBeau is already mixing up batter by the stove, and Newkirk considers from Hogan’s attitude that he might have a good chance of getting an evening out of camp later in the week.
He’s stepped across the line, and the world hasn’t ended. The bomb that, in the back of his mind, he was expecting to explode has turned out to be a dud. He sits, basking in the warm rush of amazement, surrounded by friends – family.
Now all he has to do is make sure they win this war before next year.
November 20th 1945
Newkirk has never considered himself lucky. For a long time, the war seemed like just another prick in the chart of his life proving as much; assigned to a fighting squadron, shot down two years in, trapped in the only POW camp in Germany under orders not to let its detainees escape.
Now he’s back in his family’s flat – it’s still here, after all his years overseas – sitting in a loose circle joking with all four of his siblings. With the post-war rationing, they don’t even have a roast this year, and the sugar cookies are more flour than anything else. The roof’s still leaking, and his siblings are still getting up hours before sunrise to get to their jobs. But there aren’t any suitcases by the door, and Newkirk can pray that, in a small part thanks to his actions, there never will be again.
Propped open on the crooked mantelpiece over the ancient fireplace are four cards written in four different hands, the entirety of the white space inside the folded paper as well as the backs filled with dark ink. In the wastepaper bin are four envelopes, three with American stamps and one showing the French blue. A second family, a rather different kind of hands across the sea. Men under no blood-tie obligation to accept him, but who did regardless.
Newkirk looks around him, and thinks that he may have to reconsider his idea of luck.
Series: Hogan's Heroes
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Summary: Newkirk has never considered himself lucky.
November 20th, 1939
Newkirk has never considered himself lucky. He has talent, but it’s not at all the same thing. For one thing, while talent can put food on the table, luck will see that you’re assigned to one of the few squadrons likely to see action in the middle of a phony war.
The whole world is waiting, and everywhere the tension is palpable as everyone wonders when the next real offensive will begin. Whether, when it does, they’ll be any position to respond with ol’ Neville at the helm.
Newkirk isn’t thinking about that, not about the tension or Chamberlain or even luck, good or bad. Not today, for two reasons. First, it’s his birthday, and as the only day in the year his mother ever saved for a rich chocolate desert solely for him for nearly sixteen years, the date still holds an imbedded weight in his mind. Second, he’s just been assigned to the 601st Squadron, patrolling the skies over Britain to beat back the still only occasional Luftwaffe raids. One of the only squadrons to have actually engaged the enemy and shot a plane down on British soil.
In many ways, he’s proud. Proud, and excited, to serve. He has five siblings, and now apart from supporting them with his pay, he’ll be protecting them as well. Making sure they can live safely in their own city, can sleep safe in their beds. Fighting’s not what he signed up for – there aren’t too many employers around now with the economy the way it is who are willing to take kids with little education a small-time record for pick-pocketing, and money’s scarce even with five wages being pooled – but he loves his family, and for all the kicks it’s given to a boy who grew up in the East End slums, he loves London and even England. Most of the time, he’s strong enough to know that he’s not going to lose them.
The rest of it, he’s scared out of his pants. Fortunately, that’s not hard for someone with even his limited stage experience to hide. And anyway, he can see it behind the eyes of most of the rest of the men. He’s not alone. He knows he won’t be in a fighter, so he’s safe for now, but if they start taking loses they’ll be training up new captains and he’ll be right there when the time comes.
The only reconciliation possible is the decision that he won’t train for pilot, but he won’t avoid it either.
His sister Mary – always the organizer – sends him a card signed by the family, and his pals on the base take him out for drinks to celebrate the assignment. He holds off on telling Mary about the assignment; he never tells his mates about his birthday.
For Newkirk, the war has just started. But he’s spent his whole adult life downplaying his childhood to men raised with their own opinions of the East End, and he’s just as accomplished at distracting attention from wallets as uncomfortable topics; he doesn’t even have to think about the lies anymore. He learned long ago to draw a line between private and public, and he doesn’t let the two mix.
So he doesn’t tell the men about his birthday, and he doesn’t tell his family the details of his assignment, because the two of them are not and never will be compatible. And if he gets a little drunker than usual, no one notices.
November 20th, 1940
Newkirk spends his second birthday of the war at home, on leave. Home, for an unmarried man with five siblings to support, is the same cramped apartment he grew up in. The only change is that now he has a bed of his own rather than having to share with Joe, and really all that means is that there’s less floor space in the bedroom.
It’s a good birthday, by the standards of the day. His sisters have saved up enough coupons for a roast with sugar cookies afterwards – even scrounging won’t put chocolate on the table with the rationing. After dinner, Hannah sews up the tears in his uniform and Mary darns his socks – he could do it himself, but it’s the closest to a present they can come. His brothers give him five packs of cigarettes. Wonder of wonders, there isn’t even an air raid.
They ask him what it’s like, of course. If he likes flying, how many German planes he’s seen shot down, how many raids he’s been on, what his captain’s like, if he gets scared up there running bombing missions over the sea.
He answers the easier questions – 5, 12, a decent bloke. He steers away from the others, and they don’t press. The conversation turns to everyday topics, to ribbing Joe about his girl and the possibility of fixing the leaking roof and Winnie’s latest speech, which Newkirk performs by popular request. They turn in early, because Paul and Sam have to get up early to commute across town, and the girls to cook for them. Newkirk goes to bed on his hard mattress, thinking that it’s still softer than those in the barracks, and listens to the quiet sounds of his family settling around nearby. Remembers the last time he slept here, when he didn’t have to keep his boots and coat by his bed, when there weren’t two light cases of clothes and food and what few valuables they’ve held on to by the door. When they didn’t all say their goodnights with a hidden meaning.
Newkirk wants to tell them what its like. Sitting in the belly of the huge bomber, her metal skin cold as ice all around, the engines rattling like hammers on tin drums beating a rhythm that stays in his head for hours after he lands. It’s unreal, bumping about up there in a jumping seat and catching, if he ever goes to look out, sight of nothing but solid black as they cross the channel. He feels like the only man in the world then, alone in some kind of frozen, deafening purgatory that he can’t escape. And then the lights below, pricking up from the blackness brighter than stars and, as they swerve around homeward bound, bright blazing red. Pride flows through his veins, a dark pride at hitting back at the enemy who attacks his home nightly, and it’s strong and fierce and bitter. It’s easy to be proud. It’s shattering to look at what lies underneath it.
He wants to tell them. That he’s scared, scared white, every time a fighter is reported on the horizon, and it’s all he can do to keep to his duty. That the bombing missions are the most alive he’s ever felt, and the most dead. That he doesn’t regret it, but that sometimes late at night it hurts, that they all hurt but none of them will ever, ever talk about it because if once they crack they’ll shatter.
He can’t tell them, because he’s their big brother, and he is the face of this war to them, and he cannot let them down. And he can’t lie, because he’s afraid in his heart of hearts, that one day he’ll be able to fool even them. And then he’ll be trapped all alone in that frozen blackness over the sea, forever.
Newkirk lies in his bed, and wishes he’d asked the boys for some whisky rather than the fags.
November 20th, 1941
His captain takes him out for a drink, takes the whole crew out, in celebration of their 100th successful mission.
Newkirk toasts the man, who really is a decent bloke, with sincerity. He’s seen enough captains to know that here, at least, he has been lucky. That, if he can manage to keep himself under the man for the rest of the war, he’ll have a good chance of making it out whole and maybe even with another stripe. He already knows that whatever he does after the war it won’t have anything to do with the RAF, but more rank means more pay and for now since he can’t get out anyway that’s what matters.
Of course after that the toasts degrade into the usual, peoples’ birds, peoples’ mates’ birds, Winnie and the Cabinet, the captain’s bird – a particularly good-looking dame – victory, and birds in general. The captain keeps his eye on him for a while, and Newkirk wonders whether the man’s had enough of a squint at his files, or just his tags, to know what today is, but he doesn’t say anything and neither does Newkirk. The event goes untoasted, unmarked entirely in fact as he receives no card from his family – the Post isn’t what it was.
He’s in a bit of a melancholy mood with that, and doesn’t drink as much of the rest which lands him the unenviable task of helping to carry them back to the barracks. The captain, rolling his eyes at Newkirk, gives him a hand in carting them to bed. Newkirk salutes as he leaves, and gives him a thankful grin.
The next night, on their 101st bombing mission, their plane is shot down over Dusseldorf. Newkirk, after days of interrogation, is assigned to Luft Stalag 13, the toughest POW camp in Germany.
The captain doesn’t make it.
November 20th, 1942
It’s been three months since Colonel Hogan came into the camp with orders to set up a link to the local Underground and provide aid to downed airmen. Three months of the most complex, methodical tunnel-digging Stalag 13’s ever seen. Three months, and the man already has the guards, and the Kommandant, eating out of his hand. It’s the most order the camp has ever known, and despite the fact that they are embarked on a task far more dangerous than any they would ever have considered, they have so far been treated better by far than they were in those first 9 months. Klink’s soft in a lot of ways, and Hogan seems to know just how to bend him into rings.
Under Hogan’s leadership, they’ve also discovered they have a range of hidden talents among them that passed unnoticed; they have mechanics, athletes, radio-men, even a high-class cook. Now they have the capacity to radio London with parts smuggled into camp by Hogan and his XO Kinchloe, they have proper shoring and beaming in the tunnels, and more importantly they have real food three times a week. There’s not a lot of it, but some of the time he’s eating better than he did even back in England.
And he’s working harder every day than he did in the entire previous nine months. The colonel’s not a man to be content with doing anything halfway; his tunnel plans are closer to impossible than ambitious. After seeing the way he’s taken command of the camp, though, complainants are few and far between. Even Newkirk, not keen on heavy work for minimally apparent profit in the short run, finds himself blindly following orders and pitching in his best efforts.
The man’s a bloody snake charmer, has them all dancing to his tune.
Newkirk sits with the rest of the men, muscles aching, at the table in their barracks – heated now with extra rations of wood – eating one of LeBeau’s unpronounceable stews with real white bread to dip in it. No one speaks; no one has energy for anything to spare outside eating. When they’re finished, they’ll turn out for evening roll call and then into bed without prompting for the 9:30 lights out. Newkirk knows he’ll be asleep before Shultz comes in to check on them.
He only realises two days later that he completely forgot his birthday.
November 20th, 1943
The cell is tiny. No windows in the walls, no cracks in the floors. Only a slot in the metal door, and the scratches on the walls; at all heights and angles, they still boil down to five parallel lines an inch apart.
He knows Carter is in the cell on his left, saw them throw the American in before they put him in, just as he knows LeBeau is on his right.
The floor is dirty with dark stains; he avoids looking at them, avoids thinking about them, avoids touching them. It makes it less real, somehow. It’s already much, much too real.
Newkirk sits down on the floor beside the left wall and, taking hold of his uniform jacket, begins tapping on the wall with the edge of a button.
C-A-R-T-E-R O-K?
There’s a long pause, and then a muffled reply. Newkirk frowns, trying to make sense of the very short message, and then places it with a roll of his eyes. Shave-and-a-hair-cut.
Two-cents he taps back.
“Bloody well learn Morse Code already, Carter,” he hisses under his breath, and shuffles over to the other side. LeBeau, at least, is familiar with it, and responds.
LeBeau – OK?
OK. Carter?
OK. Escape?
No idea. Rescue?
No idea.
“Ruddy marvellous,” says Newkirk, and slumps down.
They’re locked up in a Gestapo prison, and as soon as their captors get bored with whoever’s nails they’re pulling out right now, they’ll be next on the rack. For all they know, the colonel doesn’t even know they’re in trouble yet. Their fake dogtags will buy them some time, but not that much.
Newkirk would like to believe he could stand up to torture, that he could protect the vital secrets he’s carrying, but they all know what the Gestapo are capable of. Even with 200 lives depending on him, he doubts he could hold out long. He closes his eyes, and tries not to think about all the previous occupants of this cell. All the men who doubtless ran through exactly the same thoughts as him. All the men who he is sure they didn’t help one bit.
With his head resting on his arms he doesn’t hear the footsteps through the thick walls, so when the key turns in the lock his heart skips painfully as he shoots to his feet. His skin prickles as he breaks out in a sweat, gut cold and twisting.
There are three men on the other side, a Gestapo lieutenant and two grunts. The lieutenant is holding a clipboard.
“Corporal Skordeno,” says the man in a heavy accent. The grunts hurry in and grab him, dragging him out into the long corridor beyond. “We begin with you; a sort of birthday present.”
Newkirk nearly faints, heart slamming nails into his chest with each blow, because they know, they know, they’ve found him they know who he is the operation is blown they are all dead dead dead. And then remembers, as he slumps in the guards’ grasp, that he gave out his proper birth date on the fake tags. It was a slip, carelessness, he had just filled out the form with his own birthday rather than bothering to make up a new one. It had been months ago, down in the heady warmth of the tunnels. Seemed like years, now.
“Yes, it may be not quite what you wanted,” says the lieutenant, as they begin to drag him down the hallway.
He’s staring at the stones, dark and rounded from wear and stained with what Newkirk would like to think is treacle but knows better. He can’t seem to stop noting detail, can’t turn his brain off, can’t unhook himself.
“Just a moment, lieutenant.”
Newkirk starts, tripping on the stones and causing the guard on his right to slam his rifle butt into Newkirk’s ribs. They stop all the same and he carefully does not look up because he can’t trust himself right now.
Colonel bloody Hogan.
“I have papers here for the transfer of this prisoner, and two others – a sergeant Smithers and a corporal Corneaux. They are to come with me, immediately.”
“I heard nothing of this, Herr Captain.”
“I don’t care whether you have heard or not. Here are my orders, signed by Colonel Kirkheim. Release them into my custody. Now.”
“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant sounds grudging, and Newkirk wishes he could rub it in the man’s face, but he’d much rather get out of here alive and so remains staring at the ground pretending he understood none of the German conversation. One of the guards leaves him to let Carter and LeBeau out, while the other shoves him forwards with the point of his rifle this time.
Newkirk hurries forward, and gladly lets the colonel take custody of him with his Luger and escort them out of the building.
It may be the best birthday gift he’s ever had.
November 20th 1944
In the last few months, everything has changed for them. They are no longer a kite fluttering loose in the breeze; every day they are being pulled in closer as the front lines shift, every day they are nearer to the end of this war. Now victories are coming fast and furious from some quarters while from others setbacks gnaw at them. And with either comes a high cost in lives. Every man in camp with a brother, cousin, or nephew in the army opens his mail with tense fingers. Newkirk thanks the Heavens that his brothers were able to keep their jobs, that one sibling in the Forces was enough for the family.
Still, they have a lot to toast, even if it is only with LeBeau’s coffee. Freedom is arriving one of these days at the heels of a Sherman tank; not tomorrow, not next week, but in a future which although distant is definitely visible now.
Newkirk’s been living in Stalag 13 for three years now. More than long enough to know that they none of them have many secrets left. More than long enough to consider these men closer to family than friends, and that some habits are worth breaking. That some lines aren’t as uncrossable as he’d thought.
They’re sitting around the stove, the winter nights just beginning, eating some of LeBeau’s boeuf stroganoff out of tin bowls. LeBeau’s got the last ladle-full ready to go to Carter, sitting next to the cook. Newkirk reaches across to dip his bowl in above Carter’s and snag the last drippings.
“Hey!” complains Carter, staring as Newkirk pulls his bowl back.
“It’s not every day a man has a birthday, Andrew,” replies Newkirk with nearly complete carelessness.
“It’s not your birthday,” accuses Carter, pointing with his dirty fork. Newkirk drops his own utensil into his bowl to fish his dogtags out from beneath his shirt, pulling them out so Carter can read the date imprinted on them, 20-11-1908.
“Well?” asks LeBeau.
“Huh.” Carter’s eyebrows furrow. “It really is.”
“Bonne fête,” says LeBeau, grinning. “There may be enough apples left from Shultz’ strudel for some crepes,” he adds in a distracted tone, and bustles off to check.
“Happy birthday, Newkirk,” puts in the colonel from across the table, Kinch echoing the sentiment; Newkirk nods his thanks, then jerks away from Carter, who’s still examining his tags.
“Carter, d’you mind?”
“Huh? Oh, sorry. Yeah, happy birthday. You should’a told us earlier, maybe we could’ve had sparklers or something.”
Newkirk, considering the kinds of sparklers likely to come out of Carter’s lab, is even gladder he didn’t. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, meaning it.
“Yeah, well. Next year, boy, we’ll have a real show,” says Carter with a glint in his eye. In the background, LeBeau is already mixing up batter by the stove, and Newkirk considers from Hogan’s attitude that he might have a good chance of getting an evening out of camp later in the week.
He’s stepped across the line, and the world hasn’t ended. The bomb that, in the back of his mind, he was expecting to explode has turned out to be a dud. He sits, basking in the warm rush of amazement, surrounded by friends – family.
Now all he has to do is make sure they win this war before next year.
November 20th 1945
Newkirk has never considered himself lucky. For a long time, the war seemed like just another prick in the chart of his life proving as much; assigned to a fighting squadron, shot down two years in, trapped in the only POW camp in Germany under orders not to let its detainees escape.
Now he’s back in his family’s flat – it’s still here, after all his years overseas – sitting in a loose circle joking with all four of his siblings. With the post-war rationing, they don’t even have a roast this year, and the sugar cookies are more flour than anything else. The roof’s still leaking, and his siblings are still getting up hours before sunrise to get to their jobs. But there aren’t any suitcases by the door, and Newkirk can pray that, in a small part thanks to his actions, there never will be again.
Propped open on the crooked mantelpiece over the ancient fireplace are four cards written in four different hands, the entirety of the white space inside the folded paper as well as the backs filled with dark ink. In the wastepaper bin are four envelopes, three with American stamps and one showing the French blue. A second family, a rather different kind of hands across the sea. Men under no blood-tie obligation to accept him, but who did regardless.
Newkirk looks around him, and thinks that he may have to reconsider his idea of luck.