This story is a work of fiction by a fan for the enjoyment of fans. No money is being made.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MIDNIGHT COCOA

by

Candy Apple

"Achtung!"

The booming voice of Sergeant Schultz did little to mobilize the men of Barracks 2. Olson and Newkirk played cards at the table, while LeBeau labored over a pot of what he considered swill cooking on the small stove. No matter how he'd tried to dress it up with some stolen spices from the krauts' kitchen, it was still slop. He was fretting over the utter impossibility of getting any body to it when Schultz arrived.

"Achtung!" Schultz repeated, and this time, the men came to attention as an American officer entered the room. He was at least a major, dark hair peeking out beneath his hat. Upon closer scrutiny, the name on his jacket began with the title "Col." He carried a small, slightly sagging laundry bag that presumably contained his belongings. He was young for a colonel, and handsome, though a couple bright bruises marred his face at the moment.

"At ease, gentlemen," he said, smiling slightly. LeBeau couldn't help but return the smile. There was something remarkably warm in it, and in the devilish brown eyes that assessed each of the men present.

"This is Colonel Hogan. He is your new Senior POW Officer, and Kommandant Klink has assigned him to your barracks. You will see to it that he is settled in the officer's quarters."

"Okay, Schultz," LeBeau responded, waiting impatiently while Schultz sniffed at the pot on the stove, then sampled it from the stirring spoon.

"Mmm. Wunderbar! What is it?"

"Slop with pepper and garlic," LeBeau replied, deadpan. The remark obviously struck Hogan funny, because he was smiling broadly now, teeth visible, a little chuckle nearly audible.

"Save me some," Schultz responded, undaunted, and exited the barracks. Hogan approached the pot, sniffing.

"Smells better than it looks," he opined, and LeBeau nodded.

"Oui, Mon Colonel. Sometimes I can get spices from the krauts' cooking supplies, but I'm afraid that doesn't help the texture," he said, demonstrating the runny quality of the broth with the spoon.

"And you are?" Hogan asked him.

"Corporal Louis LeBeau, sir," he replied, standing at attention and saluting.

"At ease, LeBeau," Hogan responded, smiling, patting LeBeau's shoulder as if they'd been friends for years.

"The officer's quarters are right here, sir," Olson said, pushing open the door to the somewhat sterile room that held a set of bunks, a couple of stools, a locker and a small desk. "Sergeant David Olson, sir," he stated, saluting. Hogan returned it.

"Thanks, Olson. Well, it's not exactly the Hilton, is it?" Hogan said, tossing his bag on the bottom bunk.

"Can we get you anything, sir?"

"No, I'm fine, thanks. I think I'll just...get used to the place for a while."

"Would you like us to call you when dinner is ready, Colonel?" LeBeau asked, having approached the office doorway.

"Wouldn't want to miss dinner," Hogan responded, smiling slightly.

Hogan stayed in his quarters until dinner, when he emerged to eat at the table with the men. He asked each one how they'd been captured, but volunteered only a sparse summary of his own capture. He was nothing like the commanding officers any of them had served under before. There was a definite air of command in his presence, but his tone was friendly and his manner quite relaxed and casual. LeBeau had dreaded having an officer in their barracks when Schultz first arrived with Hogan in tow, but now it didn't look as if it would be so bad.

"Did you take out your target, sir? Before you were shot down?" Carter asked, a glint in his eye.

"Carter was a bombardier," Olson explained, nudging the man sitting next to him. "If you ever need anything bombed, he's your man, sir."

"I'll keep that in mind," Hogan replied. "We destroyed an anti-aircraft battery in Dusseldorf, but the krauts nailed a few of us first. At least the mission was accomplished." Hogan was quiet a moment. "Any good tunnels going?"

"Just one, from our barracks, but we haven't gotten very far," LeBeau said, and Carter shot him a look.

"You were going to check me out first before talking about it, right?" Hogan said, and Carter looked uneasy. "It's okay, Carter. It's a good idea to be cautious, but I'm definitely not a kraut." Hogan spared a glance and a little grin for LeBeau, who already trusted him despite knowing practically nothing about him.

The rest of the meal passed with some sparse conversation, and as soon as he'd finished the soup, Hogan got up from the table.

"I don't know how you did it, LeBeau. That was actually pretty good."

"Thank you, sir."

"Your English is really excellent. You studied it before ending up here, obviously."

"Oui, I did. In school," LeBeau replied, pleased.

"Well, goodnight, gentlemen," Hogan said, and with that, retreated into his quarters. Before the door was closed, Olson and Carter had claimed the bread Hogan didn't eat, soaking it in a bit of leftover broth before gobbling it down.

"Strange he didn't eat that," LeBeau said, picking up the dirty dishes. "He had to be hungry," he added, glancing at the colonel's closed door. He frowned as he picked up Hogan's bowl. "He didn't finish the soup, either."

"The food here takes a little getting used to, even with a chef's touch, Louis," Carter said, leaning his chin on the heel of his hand.

"I'll finish it," Olson volunteered. "I could still eat a horse."

"I think that's what the meat was anyway," LeBeau said, referring to the few shreds of it he'd spread over the whole batch.

********

Something disturbed LeBeau's sleep, and he raised up on one elbow. Olson's hushed voice startled him.

"Sounds like the colonel's having a rough night in there," he said. A louder groan and then a disoriented shout followed. Then there was silence.

"Should we...?" LeBeau gestured toward the door.

"I'd leave him be," Carter said. "I mean, he might be embarrassed if we all go barreling in there, and we don't really know him very well."

"And if he's embarrassed, he could get mad," Olson agreed, flopping back on his bunk. The others who had come to during the disturbance obviously agreed, as they all rolled over and seemed to doze back off to sleep. LeBeau, on the other hand, remained awake, listening for any further sounds from their new commander.

The rest of the night was silent except for the usual sounds of the camp.

********

With the exception of roll call, Hogan kept to himself the following day, strolling around the camp, sometimes stopping to assess one of the buildings, or the distance between them, with a critical eye. LeBeau watched him with interest, wondering what was going on in his mind. Hogan didn't look like a man who was ever completely at rest, and whatever he was doing wandering around the compound, LeBeau would have bet the Eiffel Tower he was up to something.

Hogan's gait was slow, and seemed a bit labored at times, and LeBeau thought he'd caught sight of a raw, reddened area around Hogan's wrist when he'd reached for his coffee the night before. He couldn't be sure, as the officer kept his sleeves solicitously in place to cover any damage that might have been inflicted by ropes. It was a good bet the krauts spent some time on Hogan, since colonels were hardly a common capture. He watched Hogan fidget with the sleeve of his jacket, then look under his shirt sleeve. Then he surreptitiously glanced around to be sure no one was watching.

Whatever he'd been through, it was apparent he didn't want to talk about it, and didn't want any special fuss made over it. But there was one thing LeBeau could do for him.

********

Hogan made his way back to the barracks, his body protesting so much walking. He wanted to get the lay of the land, to see what kind of facilities the camp had, and also to assess the chances of tunneling between the buildings. He'd been part of an elite intelligence session prior to being shot down in which members of the Generals' Staff and a few select colonels and lieutenant colonels had met to discuss the possibility of establishing an intelligence and sabotage outpost in Germany, preferably in a spot conducive to assisting Allied prisoners of war in escaping. What better place than a POW camp? Now he just needed a way to radio Allied headquarters, and a whole lot of strong backs to do a whole lot of digging.

All that thinking had helped push some of the memories aside, and kept his mind off the raw, but thankfully superficial, contact burns on his body from the shock sessions, the bruises from the blows, and the welts on his back from the strap he'd been beaten with the final day of his captivity. His wrists burned as the cuffs of his shirt and his jacket rubbed over the abused flesh. He felt weak from hunger, but his stomach turned at the prospect of food. The last meal he'd been given in the Gestapo cell was threaded with worms.

LeBeau was sitting on his bunk, mending a sock, when Hogan entered the barracks.

"Everybody else is outside, taking advantage of the five minutes of sunshine we'll get this week," Hogan quipped. LeBeau smiled and set the sock aside.

"I thought perhaps you would like someone to bandage your wrists. I borrowed some supplies from the infirmary."

"How did you know...?"

"I thought I noticed something last night, and then today, you seemed uncomfortable with your sleeves. I hope you don't think I'm out of line."

"No, I was just...surprised, that's all. Yeah, that would be great. Let's do it in my office." Hogan led the way back to his quarters, and closed the door behind LeBeau, who set a small cloth bundle on the desk and opened it to reveal a tube of antiseptic ointment a roll of gauze and some medical tape. Hogan eased out of his jacket and then rolled up his sleeves, sitting on the stool. It wasn't until then he realized there were bruises and a couple of small burns on his forearms.

"Filthy pigs," LeBeau muttered, carefully applying the ointment to the raw skin around Hogan's wrists. He didn't ask Hogan about the other marks, but he did apply ointment to the burns he could see. "You must be hungry. You didn't eat much last night."

"It was the noodles in the soup."

"You don't like noodles? I won't put them in your food anymore." LeBeau found that odd, since the long, thin noodles he'd pilfered along with the spices were something of a delicacy and had more food value than what was usually in their soup. He finished one wrist and moved to the other.

"There were...there were worms in the food after I was captured. I...I can't eat noodles." Hogan looked at LeBeau, and their eyes met for a moment. LeBeau seemed unable to formulate an answer to such a horrible statement, but his eyes told Hogan he felt for the indignities and the horrors he had suffered.

"Are you hurt anywhere else?" LeBeau asked, finishing up the second wrist with a neat wrap of gauze.

"Nothing I want bandaged," Hogan responded. Though the ointment was quenching a bit of the fire of the raw skin where it had been applied, he wasn't quite comfortable having more intimate parts of his body examined and tended.

"Is there anything else I can do for you?" LeBeau asked, wanting desperately to do more. He suspected Hogan was in a lot of pain, and not willing to get help for it.

"No, I'm fine, LeBeau. Thanks for the wrists. That's much better," Hogan said honestly, rolling his sleeves back down again.

"I'll fix you something to eat. I have a bit of bread and a few things from the Red Cross packages. It won't be much, but it might help."

"That'd be great."

LeBeau prepared a small, somewhat strange meal of coffee, chocolate bars, a piece of white bread, some cheese, and an apple. He took the food to Hogan's office, spreading it out on the desk.

"It's not much, but it's all the odds and ends I can find."

"Is this all yours, or did you take some from the others? I don't want to take food away–"

"Colonel, what we have here isn't much, but it's better than what you've been fed the last few days. Besides, some of it Newkirk steals out of Schultz's lunch box."

"Have a candy bar," Hogan handed one to LeBeau. "I hate eating alone and I won't eat two of them."

"Merci," LeBeau said, accepting the candy bar.

"There's only one tunnel, and it's not very long, right?"

"Oui, that's right. There are a few loose boards in the floor in the main room, and we have a tunnel going under it. It doesn't go more than fifty feet right now, and you can't stand up in it. Even I can't stand up in it."

"Swell," Hogan responded. After taking a couple bites of the apple, he frowned. "How did you manage fresh fruit?"

"Schultz's lunch box. The fruit is the last thing he's interested in."

********

LeBeau awoke with a start, and then he identified what it was he was hearing. Hogan was having another nightmare, and the final anguished shout before the silence tore at his heart. Getting out of bed, he went to the stove and began puttering around in the darkness.

"What on earth are you doing, LeBeau? It's two in the ruddy morning!" Newkirk groused.

"Go back to sleep. I'm making something for Colonel Hogan."

"He's not gonna want to see you," Newkirk stated decisively.

"Then he can throw me out."

"Hey, is that the last of the chocolate?" Olson asked, watching in horror as LeBeau sentenced a large candy bar to a fiery death in his pan.

"Red Cross packages are due soon. You'll live."

"That's just swell. We give up our candy bars so you can make points with the new commanding officer."

"You just got done saying he wouldn't want to see me, so how could I make points with him?" LeBeau countered, and Newkirk gave up, rolling onto his back and fighting vainly to go back to sleep.

LeBeau found the largest of the coffee mugs and filled it with the hot cocoa. He approached Hogan's door and tapped on it lightly. He poked his head inside, and found Hogan sitting up on his bunk, still fully dressed, pushing his hair back into place.

"I thought this might help you relax and go back to sleep," LeBeau said, closing the door behind him and handing Hogan the mug. "It's probably not the best in the world, but it's an attempt at cocoa."

"Smells great," Hogan said, smiling tiredly. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot, and his hand shook slightly when he took the mug.

"You know, Kommandant Klink is a bit annoying, and he likes to toss people into the cooler sometimes, but he's not violent. Schultz is just a big pussycat in a kraut uniform. We can get just about anything by him."

"What are you trying to tell me, LeBeau?" Hogan pinned him with an intent gaze.

"I guess I was trying to tell you that it's pretty safe here, Colonel. I hate the krauts as much as the next guy, and the food here stinks–literally, most of the time–but it's...there isn't...torture going on."

The word hung heavy in the air, and Hogan was quiet for a long time, sipping at his cocoa, before addressing it.

"That's good to hear. But I'll have to have a little talk with Klink about the food. It's horrible."

LeBeau accepted Hogan's change of subjects and disinclination to talk about his experiences or his nightmares. He'd said nothing to the others about bandaging Hogan's wrists, nor about the other marks he saw on the officer's arms. Hogan deserved as much of his dignity as could survive such an ordeal.

"I'm sure we'd all be grateful." LeBeau backed toward the door. "Well, goodnight, Mon Colonel."

"Louis?" The use of LeBeau's first name stopped him in his tracks. When he looked back, Hogan was smiling. "Merci," he said, and LeBeau returned the smile before slipping out the door.

********