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belphegor1982Fandom: Hogan's Heroes
Chapter: Boeuf Bourguignon (2/5)
Characters: Sergeant Schultz, Corporal LeBeau, Corporal Newkirk, Sergeant Kinchloe, Colonel Hogan
Rating: G
Genre: drama, humour
Pairing: none
Chapter Two: Bœuf Bourguignon
September 15th, 1942
It should have been such a beautiful morning, really, Schultz reflected in retrospect. The weather was quite mild, the trees around the camp were wearing their most lovely autumn colours, and, best of all, there hadn't been a single hint of Barracks 2 monkey business during the night.
Not like the night before. Schultz still was in a cold sweat about the night before.
The guard had been doubled and sent to patrol around the camp last night, to make sure nothing happened … And, surprisingly, nothing did, if you didn't count Corporal Langenscheidt getting bitten by a badger around three in the morning. Since the badger was evidently not an Allied spy, Schultz felt safe reporting to Kommandant Klink that nothing suspicious was noted during the night.
So, when the long, dark Gestapo car drove majestically into the camp at eleven o'clock, Schultz started to get nervous. What made him even more nervous was that Gestapo people never failed to make the Kommandant nervous, and whenever Klink was nervous was always hell on Schultz's nerves …
Anyway. What could have been the end of a beautiful morning was turning into the promise of a wretched afternoon. Gestapo officers were frighteningly good at ruining a previously-perfect day.
The car stopped in front of the Kommandantur, dragging a small cloud of dust behind each wheel – the summer had been very dry – and Sergeant Schultz stood to attention as rigidly as he could, gripping his unloaded gun and staring far into the space in front of him.
By unhappy chance, this meant that he stared right at Barracks 2 and the handful of men who appeared to be working on it. Colonel Hogan and Corporal Newkirk sat on the roof, fixing the tiles, Sergeants Kinchloe and Olsen were busy with the broken shutters, and Corporal LeBeau was peeling potatoes.
This last particular activity was probably the only one that did not qualify as 'suspicious'. Schultz knew where those potatoes came from – the more-or-less secret little patch behind Barracks 11 – and where they were going – the prisoners' stomachs, via some French recipe, courtesy of LeBeau.
Everything else was potential trouble. Especially in light of today's visitors.
The driver's door opened, and a plainclothes goon (man, Schultz corrected himself inwardly, hoping the word would not show on his face somehow – maybe he did talk with the prisoners too much, like the Kommandant sometimes said!) opened the door for his officer. The man, a stony-faced, crisp-looking man in a trench coat, introduced himself as Major Horst Krüger, sent by the Gestapo Bureau in Hammelburg to investigate on potentially suspect goings-on around Stalag XIII.
As he knocked on Klink's door to announce the Major's surprise arrival, Schultz had a feeling he was not going to be received well at all by the Kommandant. Sure enough, he was not disappointed.
"What?" Klink yelped, jumping from his chair and hurriedly shuffling the papers on his desk into a semblance of order. "Why wasn't I told that – oh, never mind, just send him in. As though we didn't have enough problems as it is … Ah, good morning, Major! Such a pleasure, really, I'm delighted to –"
He had shifted gears mid-sentence, as usual. Schultz didn't know anyone who could start a sentence one way then finish it in a completely different tone better than Colonel Klink.
Major Krüger lifted a hand wordlessly; Klink's mouth snapped shut.
"Major Hochstetter has instructed me to lead an investigation," he said in a low, even voice that somehow scared Schultz – and, apparently, Klink as well – more than Hochstetter's nasal, excited growls. "It seems that a few men were spotted running from a top-secret facility near Hammelburg the night before last, and he appeared to think they might have hidden among the prisoners of this camp."
"Oh, come now, Major," Klink almost pleaded, a terrible attempt at a smile plastered across his face, "surely attempting to break into a prisoner of war camp is even more foolish than trying to break out. No-one escapes Stalag XIII, as you may know, and –"
"Quiet, Klink."
"Yessir."
"Major Hochstetter's instructions were clear. I am to leave no stone unturned in the whole Stalag. One barrack in particular was mentioned …"
"Schultz!" Klink bellowed, startling the sergeant into a jump and a gasp. He had been trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible, and had obviously failed. "You will accompany the Major in his search for – what it is he's looking for. And I expect a report on the results afterwards!"
"Jawohl, Herr Kommandant," Schultz replied automatically. As he opened the door for the Major, Krüger gave him the once-over, and smirked.
Schultz had been on the receiving end of a lot of smirking in his time – particularly since he had been first stationed there as a guard – and he decided he didn't like this one. Not one bit.
Barracks 1 was easy enough to search; the men muttered and complained, but they reluctantly complied. As Schultz thought, they didn't even need to bother. All Krüger could unearth was eleven packs of cigarettes, a few risqué magazines and some dog-eared novel by a certain Raymond Chandler.
Still, Schultz let the Major conduct his thorough search, secretly glad of the time they took. After all, Hogan and his men were bound to be involved in something, somehow; but if they had enough time to hide whatever it was they had to hide, nothing would look suspicious and nobody would be in trouble …
And speaking of trouble …
"Morning, Schultz!" said a voice too cheerful not to hide a cocky grin as they got out of Barracks 1. "You didn't tell us you'd bring a friend today."
Sure enough, Colonel Hogan was still sitting on the roof – alone, this time – and smiling that trickster's smile of his. The sight reminded the German sergeant of an English saying. Something about a canary and a cat …
"Oh, please don't joke, Colonel Hogan," Schultz pleaded. "This here is Major Krüger, from the Gestapo." Perhaps a little insistence would make him realise the gravity of the situation –
Oh, who am I fooling. Colonel Hogan would probably joke no matter the gravity of any situation.
Hogan deftly slid along the ladder to the ground, and gave the Major a long, hard look that bordered on insolence. Schultz did not like the gleam in his eyes at all.
"Major … Krüger, right?"
The Major nodded slightly, and Hogan's smile widened.
"Colonel Robert Hogan, Senior POW officer. Welcome to Barracks 2. We certainly have nothing here to hide from the Gestapo," he added with apparent conviction.
"This is for me to decide, Colonel," said the Major tersely, following him into the barrack while Schultz brought up the rear in fearful anticipation, seriously contemplating putting his hands over his eyes.
Everything inside appeared as normal as it ever did, however: the men either sat on their bunks or around the tables, smoking, reading or chatting. Newkirk was deep in conversation with Kinchloe – something about baseball and cricket, if the few words Schultz caught were right – and LeBeau was standing near the stove with a pan and a wooden spoon. The potatoes from earlier were frying gently with some mushrooms and a handful of herbs Schultz didn't recognise.
Nothing cooked on an old stove should have ever smelled so delicious.
"Tell me, Cockroach," he whispered while Krüger opened ever locker and looked in every nook and cranny, "do you think you could save some of this for me? What's it called?"
"Quoi, les pommes de terre aux champignons? It's hardly haute cuisine, but it'll have to do." He stirred the contents of the pan a bit and added with a quick smile, "Not today, sorry, Schultz. There's barely enough for everyone as it is."
"Oh, that's a shame." Schultz meant it. He had tasted some of the miracles LeBeau was able to work with just a base of the usual potatoes and a little seasoning.
In comparison, what was done to the unfortunate vegetables he and the other guards had sometimes made him regret the Geneva Convention didn't apply to guards as well as prisoners of war.
"You know what?" LeBeau continued confidentially with a twinkle in his eye, "if you can sneak in some real butter by Thursday, I should be able to make apple strudel. Ça vous intéresse?"
"Ja, ja, of course, I am very interested," Schultz replied, already licking his lips in anticipation.
"And of course, it comes entirely free of any quid pro quo or compensation," said Colonel Hogan's voice in his ear. He started and turned on his heels to find the American grinning at him.
"This is just as well, Colonel Hogan," he said severely, pointing a finger for extra effect – which, regrettably, seemed completely lost on Hogan. As usual. "Because you know you will get nothing out of me. Not unless you try to torture me." He paused. "Please don't try to torture me."
"I know quite a few people back home who'd consider some of LeBeau's cooking as a particularly creative form of torture," came a Cockney drawl from the table from which Newkirk and Kinchloe were watching the Gestapo officer's search.
The Engländer smirked as he dodged the empty tin can that came flying his way.
"Oi, your aim was a bit off the left this time, Louis."
"Un de ces quatre je ne te raterai pas, espèce de …"
"Boys, boys!" Schultz pleaded, "stop! Really," he added as the two corporals threw occasional glares at each other, "sometimes I wonder if you don't keep doing this on purpose."
"Ouais, c'est ça …"
"Yeah, right …"
"Can't say it doesn't make for entertainment on those long, cold, boring Sunday afternoons," Hogan piped up, something flashing in his eyes too quickly for Schultz to really understand it. "But there's a time and a place. Right now may not be the best time."
The Englishman and the Frenchman gave strangely similar non-committal shrugs and respectively went back to their previous occupations. Schultz shook his head and was about to go back to watching the cooking process when a quiet voice made him turn to the centre of the room again.
"I wouldn't touch that if I were you, Major."
Sergeant James Kinchloe was not a man of many words, but he always had great presence. When he spoke, people listened.
Silence fell over the barrack as everyone stared at Krüger, who was holding a pot that had previously been tucked under a bunk in the corner. He had one hand on the lid, and turned to face them with a quizzical expression.
"Why is that?" he asked, an unsettling smile dancing across his face.
"Because it's my marinade," snapped an angry voice just behind Schultz. "Bas les pattes!"
"You know, foreign languages have never been my thing much," Hogan said, stepping up and placing a placating hand on LeBeau's shoulder, "but I think this means something along the lines of 'back the hell off', sir, pardon my French. In a manner of speaking."
Something plummeted in the area of Schultz's stomach. The boys were up to something all right, and he prayed fervently that whatever it was could wait till Krüger was gone. It was never a good idea to come under the radar of a Gestapo officer. Not if you wanted to keep living.
Why couldn't Hogan obey at least this simple unspoken rule of caution?
Krüger lifted the lid and inspected the contents.
"It looks … funny, but it smells good," he said, still quite calm – a calm that sent shivers down Schultz's spine. "What is it?"
"Beats me, mate, it's been lying 'round there since yesterday," Newkirk said lazily, not even sparing a glance at Krüger. "Thought 'e forgot about it."
"It's bœuf bourguignon, it's supposed to be marinating for twelve hours," LeBeau retorted with dignity.
"The things the French do to their food, it's terrible."
"It's still less cruel than British cooking. You can't ever eat meat unless it resembles sole leather."
"Well, at least we don't torture it in red wine and God knows what else for twelve hours!"
"Non, you just drown everything in mint sauce!"
Both were getting worked up again, and Schultz's eyes were jumping from one to the other as though following a tennis ball, when Krüger snapped the lid shut and said, "Quiet!" in cold, metallic tones.
Surprisingly – or not, he was Gestapo after all, and an officer to boot – it worked; the argument ceased immediately.
"Sergeant?" Krüger called; Schultz sprang to attention. "Is cooking permitted here in Stalag XIII? I seem to recall it was forbidden for prisoners of war to cook in the barracks."
Fortunately, Hogan stepped up before Schultz could scrape together a suitable answer.
"Oh, I'm not sure LeBeau would call this cooking, sir. More like putting scraps together and hope for the best. Right, Louis?"
LeBeau, meantime, had gone back to tend to his potatoes on the stove. He perked up at the question.
"Absolutely, mon Colonel. This isn't cooking, it's surviving. Real cooking, now … It's more about living, if you see what I mean."
"Very poetic," Krüger said dryly. "Well, I believe we're done for this barrack. I've seen nothing that warrants Gestapo interest. Sergeant?"
"Ja, Herr Major?"
"We'll continue with Barracks 3."
"Jawohl, Herr Major."
Getting out of the barrack was almost physical relief for Schultz; the rest of the inspection was bound to be more peaceful than that. If this was the worst the boys of Barracks 2 could dish out, he was safe.
Wait a minute …
There had to have done something. Things had gone much too smoothly. Schultz patted his pockets with mounting panic, but could not find anything missing. Everything was in place.
A horrible thought sneaked into his mind like a cold draft. What if they had taken something from Krüger?
"Entschuldigung, Herr Major," he stammered as they reached the door of Barracks 3. "I think I forgot my helmet in Barracks 2."
"You mean the helmet that's currently on your head?" asked the Major curtly, one eyebrow raised.
Oh.
"My … other helmet. Bitte, Herr Major, I will be back in a second. You can start without me, ja?"
He didn't even wait for the officer's answer and scrambled back to Barracks 2, opening the door just in time to hear loudly laughing voices suddenly quieted.
"Hey, Schultz," said Colonel Hogan, his eyes dancing with what Schultz regarded as unholy and unrepentant glee, "forgot something?"
"Forgot something … Colonel Hogan, I did not forget anything," he almost whined, taking in the barely repressed laughs and the grins nobody was bothering to hide. "But perhaps Major Krüger forgot something, ja? Please, give it back, whatever it was!"
"Blimey, Schultz, you wound us!" Newkirk exclaimed, blue eyes widened in would-be innocence. "Nobody took a single thing from that man."
There was something with the way he said it – and with the grin he exchanged with Kinchloe – that made Schultz's hair stand on end. More than it already did.
"But if you didn't take anything from me … And if you did not take anything from him, either …" His brows knitted in thought; then his second most horrible idea of the day struck him and he turned to Hogan in desperation.
"Colonel Hogan … He is a real Major from the Gestapo, isn't he?"
Hogan seemed to give the question some thought; then he planted his thumbs in the pockets of his jacket, looked him in the eye and said, "Do you really want me to answer that, Schultz?"
Schultz closed his eyes.
"Ach du lieber …"
"Oh, by the way, Kinch," Hogan continued as if nothing happened, sauntering to the table, "are you sure the container was completely watertight? Wouldn't want the microfilm to be ruined."
"Shouldn't be a problem, Colonel. Whatever Louis used for the marinade, I don't think it's strong enough to eat through metal."
"I used the rest of the wine from Klink's table yesterday – I can't believe he was going to throw away half a bottle of Corsican red."
"Yeh're right, the nerve of that man …"
"Stop!" yelled Schultz, realising that putting his hands on his ears completely failed to block the treacherous words. "Whatever you boys are up to, I want to know nothing, I see nothing and I hear nothing!" He paused to wipe the sweat off his brow. "I'd better get back to the Major. The … not-Major. Gott im Himmel …"
"I think his brother-in-law's uncle's wife's cousin twice removed actually is a Major," said Newkirk, sounding much too serious not to be making fun of him. "So it practically makes him one too, right?"
The lightning-quick but large grin he shared with LeBeau did not go unnoticed by Schultz, who moaned.
"Colonel Hogan, one day you and your men will be the death of me."
"I sure hope not, Schultz," Hogan said, opening the door and showing him out with a friendly pat on the back. "Things would be a lot less fun without you around."
Less fun …
Schultz found himself standing outside the barrack, slightly stunned – as he already had many times before. How was it that they got themselves into shenanigans like that? Things had seemed much simpler before Colonel Hogan was captured and sent to Stalag XIII. All he'd had to do then was keeping the men from escaping and recovering them as peacefully as possible when they did escape, and if some things disappeared from the kitchen in times of serious food shortage in the barracks, well, he knew nothing about it …
… And he knew nothing about this, either, he decided, as he rushed to Barracks 3 as fast as he could. After all, it was only a handful of men up to a little monkey business in the middle of Bavaria.
Whatever it was about, it couldn't be that important.
Right?
Notes:
Quoi, les pommes de terre aux champignons?: 'What, potatoes and mushrooms?'
Ça vous intéresse?: literally, 'does this interest you' – 'are you interested?' In the dubbed French version, the men use the informal 'tu' to address each other, even Hogan, who outranks them (IRL they'd more likely say 'vous' to him); but they use the more formal (less intimate) 'vous' in dialogue with Schultz and vice versa. Took my cue from there 
Un de ces quatre je ne te raterai pas, espèce de –: One of these (days) I won't miss, you (insert unsaid derogatory word) 'Quatre' means 'four', so literally it's 'one of these four (days)'.
Ouais, c'est ça: Yeah, (that's) right.
Bas les pattes: hands (paws, really) off. Hogan's translation is a little bit exaggerated, but he certainly got the gist.
Jawohl: certainly/yes sir.
Entschuldigung: excuse me (as in 'Excuse me, you dropped this').
Bitte: please.
Ach du lieber: oh my God/goodness. Originally I wanted to put "Ach du liebe Zeit" but apparently it wasn't exactly what I meant.
I loved writing Barracks 2 monkey business from Schultz' point of view :D Hope you like(d) :o]
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Another Gem
Date: 2015-09-09 03:08 am (UTC)"...a terrible attempt at a smile plastered across his face"
"Not unless you try to torture me." He paused. "Please don't try to torture me."
And the whole argument between Newkirk and LeBeau!
Love it.
Re: Another Gem
Date: 2015-09-09 09:59 am (UTC)Re: Another Gem
Date: 2015-09-09 03:29 pm (UTC)