"Klink and his monocle are still fighting World War I."—Colonel Hogan, "The Experts"

ooOoo

September 25, 1916

Leutnant Wilhelm Klink stared at the hospital ceiling, regretting the undeniable fact that his luck had not been worse.

The bullet that had pierced his chest just below his left shoulder had not permanently damaged him. Somehow, it had passed through his body without breaking bones or severing serious nerves.

How could a man be so unlucky?

The doctor who had just given him a cursory examination had absently assured him that he would regain full mobility fairly quickly—a few weeks at most. "You are fortunate. No signs of infection, so we need not worry about gangrene. Light duty first, then back to the front for you, Leutnant," he had said not five minutes ago, just before moving on to the neighboring cot without a backward glance.

Wilhelm certainly did not want infection, much less gangrene, and he was relieved there were no signs of either. To that extent, his definition of being fortunate overlapped the doctor's. But at this point in his military career, it also differed strongly.

Before the war, I would never have believed that being told that I would be fine after I had been shot would be bad news, he thought, all too aware of the despair settling within him now that he knew he would be all right.

When the bullet had struck his chest five days ago, spinning him around and slamming him down into the trench, he had thought it was all over for him. He remembered lying in the mud just afterwards, feeling a strange sense of euphoric relief despite the overwhelming pain. He no longer had to worry about being shot by the English; the worst had finally happened.

Well, no, not the worst. Even lying there in shock with his face half buried in the muck, Wilhelm had known he had been fortunate in many ways. The bullet's impact had knocked him backwards and he had fallen into the trench: a substantial fall downwards, but at least out of the line of fire. He had known he would be found and taken to a dressing station. He would be cared for, not left in Niemandsland—No Man's Land—where the stretcher bearers could not reach him for hours or days as Gefreiter Braun had been last week. The whole unit had suffered through his moaning and screaming in pain and thirst, out of reach, till death claimed the young soldier—though not soon enough for anyone, least of all for Braun himself. No one had been able to get a clear shot at him to end his suffering; distaste for the idea had gradually hardened to desperation among all of them to just get it done, but it had remained impossible without risking Braun's own fate.

And then a few days ago it had been Wilhelm's turn.

"Lucky dog. This'll be his Heimatschuß for sure." So Unteroffizier Roth had said to Krause, his fellow stretcher bearer, as they turned, gathered, and shifted Wilhelm with rough solicitude to carry him from the trench back to the Truppenverbandplatz, the regimental aid post.

It was what every soldier secretly hoped for, a "homeland shot" that would injure him enough to get him evacuated from the battlefield but without getting him killed or permanently mutilated. Losing an arm or a leg or getting gassed, though, could even get you a Heimatpaß, a "passport home," out of the war for good.

Was life without a limb worth it to get out of the trenches with their daily risk of death? Every soldier asked himself that at one point or another.

Wilhelm had lain there on the stretcher while its bearers squelched through the soaked trench, aware that something was very wrong with him yet somehow divorced from the chaotic world battling around him. As he had watched the spinning sky above him, he had thought his internal debate was over. He hadn't had to shoot himself to get out of the trenches: the British had finally taken the choice out of his hands.

At the time, he had felt almost grateful to them.

But now . . . it was just his rotten luck that he hadn't been hurt a little more, a little worse. His doctor had just sentenced him to return to the Somme.

I cannot desert, Wilhelm thought bleakly. They shoot deserters. But . . . I cannot go back.

He tried to push away the memories of his most recent posting and how unbearable life had been there. Early in June he had lost his comfortable post in the Supply section where he had served since the war's beginning. He had been efficient there, commended for it even, though of course it had not been a career-advancing post. But officers were needed at the front, and he had been abruptly assigned to a unit near Thiepval, in the Somme section of Germany's western front. The first days had been generally quiet, even boring as he had worked to get to know the complex layout of trenches and his new duties.

Two weeks later all hell had broken loose.

He and his unit had held out, holed up in a deep Stollen, throughout the days and nights of constant bombardment by the British that had started off the Battle of the Somme near the end of June. His dugout, like most of the ones that the Germans had constructed in the high ground along the Somme front, was deep—nearly six meters for this one. It had proved impermeable to destruction from the mortars, but the shaking and noise as literally thousands of shells had screamed overhead and exploded nearby, hour after hour and day after day, had nearly driven him mad. Nor was he alone in his reaction: the men who served under him suffered just as much … as did other creatures that haunted their safe haven. Wilhelm was sure he would never forget how one night the endless, relentless bombardment had goaded even the rats that infested the trenches and dugouts into hysteria—the only time Klink had ever felt anything approaching fellow feeling for the revolting creatures that fed on the dead and tried their luck with the living in the trenches.

At 0720 on the morning of the first day of July came a horrendous explosion: a mine, and a big one, Klink was certain, to the north, near Beaumont Hamel. Eight minutes later came another, far worse—from the south by La Boiselle. Though clearly still some distance away, it was the nonetheless loudest percussion Klink had ever heard or felt, and the tremendous shock knocked him and his whole unit off their feet if they were standing, off their seats if they were sitting. At that moment Klink knew with a sinking heart that the mines must have been powerful beyond previous measure.

How many of his fellow officers and their men had just died?

And then—a sudden pause in the bombardment. They all knew what that meant: the enemy was attacking, going over the top of their own trenches and coming hell-bent for the German trenches.

Klink's captain had ordered the men out of the dugout. Shaking from the days of bombing, they came blinking into the smoky morning daylight, moving as fast as they could to get their machine guns set up and at the ready, knowing their lives depended on it. Setting the legs of the guns slightly in front of the trench gave the soldiers manning them a full view of the battlefield in front of them. Klink had been proud of the men of his unit: the gunners had worked efficiently, getting the machine guns set up just in time to watch as hundreds of enemy soldiers—British, not French, here on the Somme—raced towards them across the putrid bone-littered wasteland of mud and shell holes and blasted tree stumps that separated the opposing sets of trenches by 200-odd meters.

Smoke had obscured visibility in places, but glints of watery sunlight on tin helmets gave cues until the wind cleared the view, not to mention the shouts of men urging themselves and their fellow soldiers onward. Klink had relayed the expected orders, and as a result his gunners had mowed the British down in an ongoing hail of bullets:

First by the dozen.

Then in scores.

Finally in hundreds.

Wave after wave of men came rushing up the slope towards them. Almost none survived to make it all the way across No Man's Land.

At the time he had wondered, why don't they stop? They see what we have done to their comrades. This is suicide. Why don't they stop? Please, Mein Gott, make them stop!

But of course he knew why they did not. Their senior officers had ordered them to keep going, their lieutenants, men like himself, had led the way into the slaughter, even as they were being massacred. All those men knew that to stay in the trenches was to brand themselves as cowards and risk execution by court martial. They were dead either way, but going over the top of the trenches at least allowed them to fool themselves into believing they were in control of their fate, made them feel soldierly, powerful, honorable, patriotic.

Even if it was all a waste.

And now, two months later, Klink finally had gotten his Heimatschuß, courtesy of the British. But, unfortunately, only for a brief time.

Hauptmann Kühn, in the cot on his left, shifted restlessly. Wilhelm turned to look at him covertly. He usually tried not to look: the blank space under the blanket, where Kühn's leg was supposed to be, made him uncomfortable. Kühn caught the look this time.

"So, a Heimatpaß for me, but back to the front for you, eh Leutnant? And which of us is the more fortunate?" he asked drily.

Wilhelm shook his head, unsure of the answer. He thought of Ella, his fiancée. He considered her so at any rate, even if her parents had forbidden an official engagement between them until the war was over. She had privately promised herself to him, though. She was his—she would be his. But he couldn't help wondering, if he were in Kühn's shoes—well, shoe—would she still want him, if he were not whole?

"At least I don't need a right leg to be an accountant," Kühn continued. "And I was never keen on dancing, even with my wife. What about you? What will you do after the war, Klink?"

After the war. A fairy tale time. A happily ever after—if one survived to see it. In her last letter to him, Ella had likened herself to Briar Rose from the Grimms' tale: waiting, fenced in her tower, for Wilhelm to come claim her with a kiss on the day the war ended. Given his experiences on the Western Front, Wilhelm feared he was more likely to be like the princes who stuck fast and died in the thicket surrounding the castle, never to reach the immured princess.

Not that he would ever say so to Ella, of course. A man had to play the prince, after all.

"What will you be as a civilian?" Kühn asked, unknowingly poking at the sore spot in Wilhelm's psyche.

"Nothing," Wilhelm answered, recalling bitterly how, after Gymnasium, he had failed the exams for university to study law or medicine. His family's disappointment had been deep. Wilhelm himself had been left wondering if he would have to join his father in his store—until his Uncle Klaus the barber had persuaded his best customer, the mayor of the city of Potsdam, to find a place for his nephew at the military academy in that town.

But there was no need to tell Kühn any of that, though of course it was nothing to be ashamed of. After all, to get ahead everyone used whatever connections they had. But no need to advertise it either.

"I was a cadet at Potsdam. My family intends for me to have a military career." Wilhelm made his voice prideful, however much he might cower inwardly now at the prospect of such a life.

Granted, he had been proud to put on his cadet uniform, swaggering in it for his mother, sister, and Ella. Once at the military academy, though, he had struggled with the course of study, especially weak in the courses on strategy and tactics. Statistics and accounting he could manage well, but the more complicated mathematics required in other courses defeated him. His ability to get his work in on time had counted in his favor, even if its quality had not always matched his classmates'. But though he had finished 95th in his class (a fact he kept hidden from his family), he had at least graduated. Not all the men in his class had, a fact he reminded himself of when the sting of that placement needed soothing. He had at least completed his coursework, passed his exams, and earned his commission.

His mother and sister and Ella had cooed even more over his officer's uniform, much to his pleasure, when he returned home on leave afterwards.

He had spent a long time making sure that it fit him just so, his tie straight, his buttons polished, hair combed, his pickelhaube set at just the right angle: everything completely correct to make a good impression. He knew himself to be a fastidious man: that was a virtue in a German officer whose outward polish should mirror his inward efficiency.

That was one reason the front at the Somme was so awful: finding water to wash and shave with was often nearly impossible. He detested being dirty and unkempt for days on end until his unit was rotated to the rear lines for rest, hated the days when combing the mud out of his hair was the best he could do in terms of personal grooming, loathed living in filth until it was hard to tell where the muck stopped and he started.

Wilhelm had liked the order and discipline of the academy: he had liked knowing where he was expected to be and what he was expected to do each hour of each day. Life as an officer had looked good to him back then: a clean and ordered life.

Even when war broke out, shortly after his graduation from Potsdam, he had not worried. He could even remember being pleased at the prospect. War was a boon for his career. It would provide opportunities for military advancement; his mediocre academic record at the academy would be forgotten as he led the men under his command to glorious victory over the Entente powers of Britain, France, and Russia that surrounded and threatened his Fatherland and its Austro-Hungarian ally. And besides, everyone knew the British, French, and Russians would quickly retreat and the war would be short and soon finished.

Well, two grinding years of trench warfare had disillusioned everyone with that. Over a dozen of his classmates from his year at the academy were dead, including two close friends, Ernst and Otto. Ernst had been killed at Ypres when shrapnel tore through his boiled leather pickelhaube. The new standard steel helmet, the Stahlhelm, gradually replacing the traditional but ineffective pickelhaube, had not protected Otto from being shot in the chest in hand-to-hand combat by French soldiers who had gotten into the trench he was defending at Verdun. Walter at least was alive, but badly lung-damaged from gas. Fortunately Rudy, Hans, and Hansy were still alive—at least he hoped they were. All Western Front soldiers from either side knew that such hopes might last only until the next set of letters arrived.

The German losses at Verdun since February and in the Somme since July had been terrible. General Erich von Falkenhayn, the Chief of the German General Staff, demanded that German soldiers must retake any lost ground "by immediate counter-attack, even to the use of the last man." General Fritz von Below, in command at the Somme, similarly required that "the enemy should have to carve his way over heaps of corpses."

Klink's classmates were forming that pile of bodies.

He had very nearly become part of it. And now he was going to have to go back to the battle.

Back to the tormented riven earth, split by trenches and ripped by shells, to muck that stank from the putrefying remnants of dead men mixed into it, to uniforms contaminated beyond cleaning by it, to filth and lice and the constant ear-splitting roar of guns. To watching men torn apart by metal, dying—or not dying when they should. Back to wondering minute by minute if each moment would be his last; to being torn between fear and almost hope that it would be. Back to the weird mirrorworld of the trenches, where the dead rotted unburied in the light on the world's surface and the living crouched rotting in dark grave-deep holes below it.

Back to the front meant for Wilhelm meant going back to worrying over how to command men, being terrified daily that his Hauptmann would be killed and that he himself would have to step into his place. Giving orders on the parade ground was all very well, but in the midst of battle when men died because of what he ordered. . . .

Wilhelm shrank from the idea of returning to chaos, leaving behind the daily order and cleanliness of military life behind the lines.

It also meant going back to wondering daily if he still had any courage—or if he had ever had any.

But of course, he still wondered that here in the safety of the hospital.

He sighed deeply.

"Not keen on returning to the front, eh, Herr Career Officer?" Kühn eyed him speculatively.

The question was a trap, Klink knew. No sane man wanted to return to the Somme. But one could hardly say so to a fellow officer who outranked him, even one with only one leg.

"I will of course do my duty to the Fatherland," he answered conventionally, staring at the ceiling.

It wasn't like he had any choice.

"Well," Kühn drawled, "if I still had my leg, I'd volunteer for duty that would get me out of the trenches."

Klink turned his head quickly to the left. "What sort of duty would that be?" He tried to sound casual, to tamp down the eagerness in his voice. He was fairly sure he had not succeeded, however.

"You could volunteer for the Luftstreitkräfte."

Klink twisted his head back straight to stare at the ceiling once more. The air forces? They were so new: airplanes had only existed for just over a dozen years. His vision of military service had never encompassed such a thing.

Yet he knew that both sides of the conflict had used airplanes to gather intelligence since the early days of the war—and now they were even used as weapons. Klink had seen both German and French planes in the air over the trenches and one time had authorized his men to shoot at a British plane, though they had missed. He had heard of Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke, Germany's aces, the great pilots of the Fokker Scourge the previous summer and winners of the Pour le Mérite, Germany's highest military honor. And they were gentlemen: the story went that Immelmann had shot down a British airman behind German lines, landed his own craft safely, shook hands with the enemy, informed him that he was a prisoner, then helped him out of the wreckage of his plane and rendered first aid.

It all seemed very civilized, particularly in contrast with the barbarity of the trenches.

Yes, he thought. I would far rather do that. I may still die, but I can do so in a clean uniform.

"How do I get such a transfer?" he asked Kühn.

"Lots of fellows volunteer. It helps to have a friend in the right places."

Wilhelm felt his fledgling hopes sink. "I know no one in the Luftstreitkräfte."

"Ah, but I do. I could speak to him." Kühn's voice held a sly note of self-satisfaction.

Klink turned and raised himself on his left arm, ignoring the pain of his wound. "You would do that for me? Why?"

"I have cheated death in the trenches. Why shouldn't you?" Kühn fell silent for a moment. "I could not save my leutnant from his fate at Verdun. He asphyxiated in the mud." He paused again and Wilhelm looked down at the floor. That must have been a terrible death.

Kühn continued, "But I would do what I could to save another from his fate." He hesitated, then added, "It's not necessarily saving your life, Leutnant Klink. Casualties among pilots and even observers are high."

Klink laid back down, nodding. Oberleutnant Immelmann, famous among even the best pilots, had died less than three months ago, shot down by a British pilot. He had been given a state funeral.

Wilhelm knew that he could not guarantee his own survival in this war. No soldier on the Western front could do that.

But he might buy himself time.

And if worst came to worst, he could at least die as a hero flaming out quickly in clean air instead of drowning in the unholy muck of the trenches of the Somme.

ooOoo

Author's Notes:

This story is inspired by the hundredth anniversary of the Battle of the Somme this year: 1916 – 2016. I started it on July 1, 2016, the anniversary of when the battle officially started (though one might argue it began a few days earlier). Klink's memory of that day is written in memory and honor of the British casualties, almost twenty thousand of whom that died that day and nearly forty thousand of whom were wounded, as well as the estimated ten to twelve thousand German casualties. The anniversary of the Somme is ongoing, as the battle did not end until November 18. Over a million men died between the two sides in those five months.

The two German main characters of Hogan's Heroes were both of the generation that suffered through World War I and its horrific attrition, so exploring how their experiences in that war might have made them the men they became by the second war seemed like an interesting idea.

Erich Maria Remarque's foreword to his novel All Quiet on the Western Front seems apt here: "This book is to be neither an accusation, nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will simply try to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war."

Parts of my story, including Klink's desire to get out of the trenches and method for doing so, were inspired by the play Billy Bishop Goes to War, about the famous World War I Canadian ace. I saw it many years ago, and parts of it have always stuck with me.

Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke were indeed famous aces; the story about Immelman's downing Lieutenant William Reid of the R.A.F. in July 1915, taking him captive and shaking hands with him, is a true one. On June 18, 1916, after achieving his 16th and 17th "victory claims" (shooting down enemy aircraft) in two separate dogfights that day, Oberleutnant Immelman was shot down and killed by an R.A.F. plane piloted by Second Lieutenant G.R. McCubbin with Corporal J. H. Waller as gunner/observer.

Klink's fiancée, Ella, is an OC from Chapter 12 of my story "Daily Life at Stalag 13." His failure at university exams comes from "Kommandant of the Year" (Season 1, Episode 3); his position as cadet at Potsdam, graduating 95th in his class, is from the episode "Hogan's Double Life" (Season 6, Episode 22). Klink's dead and maimed classmates are my invention, though they would have had plenty of real-life parallels. Rudy, Hans, and Hans, the survivors, derive from various episodes of the television series. Rudy is General Rudolf von Lintzer from "Klink's Rocket." Hans is Major Hans Kronman, who tries to enlist Klink to assassinate Hitler and gets shot by the Gestapo in "The Safecracker Suite." "Hansy" is General Hans Stofle, from the episode "Hello, Zollie": Klink refers to him by the nickname "Hansy" in it.

German vocabulary: I have very little background in German, but sprinkling it through seemed a useful technique as a reminder of the perspective of the protagonist. All are based on research; any mistakes are my own.

Heimatschuß: "Homeland shot: a wound sufficiently disabling that a soldier would have to recuperate off the battlefield. The equivalent of the British "Blighty wound."

Heimatpaß: "Passport home." A would so bad that the soldier would be removed from active service—at least at the front. This is the term that Erich Maria Remarque uses in All Quiet on the Western Front. I'm not sure, from the research I've done, if there was a true distinction in meaning in the way I've used these two terms, though the meanings suggest a varying degree of seriousness to me. From what I can tell, Heimatschuß is more used; I'm not sure if that's because it was just a more common word or if there was a distinction and more men got it. The German Army of World War I was famous for its efficiency: physically damaged men might still be used in other capacities in the army so that those unhurt could take their places.

Gefreiter: Private

Hauptmann: Captain

Leutnant: Second Lieutenant

Oberleutnant: First Lieutenant

Luftstreitkräfte: German Air Force of World War I

Mein Gott: My God

Niemandsland: No Man's Land

Stollen: Dugout

Truppenverbandplatz: the regimental aid post, first stop in getting medical attention if wounded.