Author's note: In 2012, after the Papa Bear Awards, 80sarcades wrote DON'T SAY THE NAME!, in which the Heroes (and Hochstetter) react with horror to the results of the PBAs. He wrote a sequel in 2013, in which Hochstetter having mentioned me by name, he was immediately whisked away into a WIP I was working on with the promising title of The Many Merry Majorly Mangled Demises of Major Wolfgang Hochstetter. Woodchippers were involved. This is an attempt to rise to the challenge :o)

Disclaimer: Albert Ruddy owns the characters, and 80sarcades owns the title. I guess I own the execution (and executions ;o)

The Many Merry Majorly Mangled Demises

of Major Wolfgang Hochstetter

Chapter One: Murders against Monotony

Saying that the prisoners of Luft Stalag XIII were bored to tears would barely qualify as a hyperbole.

There was, quite literally, nothing to do. There had been nothing to do for twelve days. Flyers were sent through different routes, different outfits handled the sabotage parts (which had dwindled dramatically lately anyway), and the Underground had not contacted them for almost a month.

All this because Major Wolfgang Hochstetter had finally got his second dearest wish: surround the camp with a ring of steel and use it as a means to entrap whoever got out first.

To avoid making Hochstetter's actual dearest wish come true – the capture of Papa Bear and his outfit by the Gestapo, if possible by the major in person – Hogan and his team were forced to lie low for an undetermined amount of time… At least until Hochstetter's superiors decided they needed the manpower (not to mention the radio-detection truck) he was currently using for his 'ring of steel'. In the meantime, the prisoners of Stalag XIII were living the life of ordinary prisoners of war.

And damn if that wasn't deadly boring.

It was bad enough for the old hands, who had been in camp before its first months of activity; but for the relative newcomers, who had always known Stalag XIII as a clandestine base of operations, it was utter misery. For the first time since they got there, they were helpless, useless, soldiers with no means to fight, men of action unable to do anything. Spirits were at their lowest, even threatening to top the infamous February 1941, a month plagued by food shortage, cold, and various bouts of sickness that could have resulted in absolute disaster.

According to rumour, that is.

The weather outside was dreadful, alternating snow and tiny ice pellets, with a cold wind that left one's face raw and stinging all over after five minutes of exposure. The only distractions were roll calls, where the men could confuse Schultz so much he didn't known his left from his right, watching Fräulein Hilda arrive in the morning and leave in the evening, and the recreation hall.

And now the recreation hall was closed. Kommandant's orders after a ball had flown in from the window and broken Private Pietsch's nose. Even Hogan hadn't been able to make Klink budge.

At the moment, all the residents of Barracks 2 huddled around the stove, pressing their mugs of ersatz coffee close, too cold to sit on their bunks (too far from the only heat source), and too depressed to go through their letters from home.

The only exception was Carter, hunched over a letter he was writing. Presently he looked up, with an uncharacteristically dark frown.

"I know you shouldn't go around wishing for somebody to drop dead," he muttered, "but if Major Hochstetter got lost in the woods and froze to death right now, well, I wouldn't be very sad."

"A cousin of mine almost froze to death a few years back," said Olsen, looking up from his coffee. "He said it wasn't that painful – kinda like falling asleep. Hochstetter deserves a lot more than that."

"I agree, that's too bloody nice for him." Newkirk finished his game of solitaire and shuffled his cards back into a pack. "I say we tie his hands and feet together with a rock and drop him into the nearest river. No, wait, we drive all the way to the sea, steal a boat, sail ten miles from the coast and then drop him."

"Fire is much more nasty than water," LeBeau pointed out. "What if we locked him in a box, a really small one, and lit a fire under it? We could roast chestnuts."

Hogan had only been half-listening, increasingly amused. Then an idea popped into existence, and he grinned.

"Wait a second. You might be onto something there."

Every pair of eyes turned to him. Kinch frowned slightly, but there was the hint of a smile behind his moustache.

"Are you planning to assassinate Hochstetter, Colonel? There has to be a waiting line somewhere, and a long one."

"Sure, Kinch," Hogan answered with aplomb. "And we're all going to come up with some kind of way to kill him."

Newkirk looked at Carter and LeBeau in front of him, and said flatly, "He's gone 'round the bend. Bound to happen someday, really."

"How d'you figure we'll do that, Colonel?" Carter asked, so perplexed his eyebrows were practically horizontal.

Hogan rose from his chair and picked up the pen Carter had been writing with a minute earlier. He twiddled it effortlessly between his fingers, aware that everyone was watching, the men's faces showing varying amounts of puzzlement.

"With the greatest weapon we have at our disposition right now, Carter."

Carter's face lit up. "You mean dynamite? You know, I still have a few –"

"I mean words."

As he had expected it, his sergeant's expression fell, and a lot of his men's postures sagged.

"We're not killing him for real, then." It was hard to tell whether LeBeau meant it as a question or a sullen statement.

"Not this time," Hogan admitted. "But I don't know how much longer we'll have to stay under the radar, and you guys obviously need something to do besides hanging around with faces a mile long."

"And you believe thinking up ways to murder Hochstetter is going to do it?" asked Kinch, sounding somewhat doubtful.

"Not just 'ways'. The trick is to come up with the most outlandish, fun way to kill him off you can think of. There's only one rule: be as inventive as you want, but there'll be no including any of us. Whatever happens to the guy, it has nothing to do with us. Got it?"

"Because you don't want us taking the fall if it gets out, sir?" Olsen asked.

Hogan refrained from grinning and nodded. "Yeah. But mostly because then you'll have to use your heads. I gotta say, I'll be curious to see what you'll come up with."

They pondered this new difficulty in silence for a couple of minutes. Then Newkirk pocketed his cards with a smirk.

"Well, why not. Sounds as good and healthy an activity as any. We're not Agatha Christie, but since it's Hochstetter, we might as well try to be creative. Just one question, Colonel."

"Go ahead."

"You don't think you're getting off that easy, do you?"

A murmur of assent went around the table, and there were quite a few smirks. Hogan crossed his arms, a grin still pulling at the corner of his lips.

"Are you that eager to see what kind of demise I have in store for the good major, Newkirk?"

"To be honest, sir, yeah, a little. But mostly because it means we won't be the only ones who'll have to rack our brains over this." Many officers, in Hogan's experience, probably would have interpreted the gleam in Newkirk's eyes and the cheeky glee in his voice as outright (and thus unacceptable) insolence, but Hogan knew better – and what's more, knew his English corporal better. "Plus, I'm all for seeing old Hochstetter die in as many ways as possible."

From the looks on the men's faces, Newkirk was more or less voicing the general opinion. He and LeBeau were grinning like a couple of foxes in a hen house; Carter, Davies and a few others looked more doubtful; Kinch, Hogan noticed, gazed at his CO with a small smile, apparently on the same wavelength.

The close Gestapo scrutiny meant they couldn't go on with their usual activities again for some time; but it did not mean they were entirely powerless.

Sometimes, fighting back was not about blowing up trains.

Hogan gave them a week to write their stories, after which everybody would read everything that had been written. A couple of rolls of paper tied up with string made it into the box after only three days, and each got labelled with a number according to the order they came in. Hogan's own contribution joined the others' just before the week was out.

For the moment he had played his cards right. His men were still fuming over the forced inactivity, the weather (much more than Klink's closing the rec hall) still essentially confined them to the barracks, but at least he had given them something constructive to think about. And it was fun, watching Kinch smile as he wrote when he thought nobody was watching; or Carter's lips moving while he looked for a more appropriate word, found it, and started scribbling again at a fast pace; or Mills chewing on his pen and staring into space, Olsen trying to sneak a glance at LeBeau's story for a laugh and getting a fierce glare in reply…

After those depressing two weeks, the atmosphere had greatly improved. Not to mention that they had the actual reading to look forward to.

Floyd had suggested they each vote for one story, like at the Academy Awards, then read the winner out loud as a prize. Saunders had gone further and said they should read out the three most popular stories, as gold, silver, and bronze prizes, Olympics-style. Both ideas had been received with more enthusiasm than they would have been in the absence of the radio-detection truck just outside the compound, much too close to the tree tunnel entrance.

The week passed in a flurry of literary activity, which both amused and baffled Schultz when he came for roll calls and bed checks. It was almost enough to forget the pervasive cold.

"Right," said Hogan after morning roll call the eighth day. "Let the Barracks 2 'Major Hochstetter's Many Demises' contest begin. Now everyone's written their—"

"Sorry to interrupt, Colonel," said Newkirk cheerfully, "but I think the name should be 'Major Hochstetter's Many Mangled Demises'. Can't go wrong with a little alliteration."

"If you want alliteration," Baker cut in with a quiet laugh in his voice, "how about 'Major Hochstetter's Many Merry Mangled Demises'?"

LeBeau nodded fiercely. "Good idea. The more he dies, the more fun we have."

Hogan laughed. "Okay, 'Major Hochstetter's Many Merry Mangled Demises' it is. Now, when you've read everything, you can vote for your favourite on this paper here. Just put a cross after the story's number. The three stories with the greatest number of crosses win. Simple as that. And no cheating," he added as the men each picked a roll of paper. "If everybody votes for his own story nobody's gonna win."

The one Hogan ended up with, when he unfolded it, turned out to be a limerick.

There once was a man named Hochstetter
Who followed Hitler to the letter
He frothed at the mouth
His reason went south
He drowned in spit now the world's better

Hogan grinned. Not very detailed, maybe, and surprisingly clean for a limerick, but it did have form and creativity going for it.

He looked forward to reading the rest of what Barracks Two Editions had produced.

The second and final part is finished and will be up in a few days :o) Meanwhile, if you have particularly creative ideas for offing the dear major, I'm curious to hear them!