More than 11 years ago, a fanfic writer named AnotherJounin started a forum thread called "Which of Our Heroes…?" The idea was to pose and answer random questions about Hogan's Heroes characters. This game is still active in the Forum, and the thread now runs to 30 pages. Before I started writing stories, I was answering the questions on this thread, often with little story nuggets that I always meant to develop. So I decided to start collecting them. Some will be expanded, but mostly I just wanted to organize them all a bit better in one place.

Question by: Atarah Derek

"Which of our heroes would join an expedition to live among and study Inuit people?"

Chapter 1: LeBeau the Legend

In the postwar years, Louis LeBeau's feats of culinary derring-do became the stuff of legend.

At a time of privation and austerity, the former POW's extraordinary ability to stretch a meal made him a cause célèbre. Naturally, the activities of Hogan's Heroes remained secret, as they must. But the emergence of a small group of well-fed POWs from the Luft Stalag XIII could not possibly go unnoticed. How did it happen? Who was responsible? One thing led to another, and soon LeBeau's achievement had arrested the imaginations of attention of a news-hungry press corps.

In time, the world stood in awe of a man who—armed only with a rusty pot, a cracked wooden spoon, a dull knife, a wood stove, and the contents of occasional Red Cross packages – had not only managed to feed a busy crew, but actually fattened them up. There could be no mention of the black market delicacies, of course. But one glimpse at what French cooking did to his fellow prisoners—especially that unwary Englishman Newkirk, who fattened up dramatically over the course of just a few years in Stalag 13—was convincing evidence of the LeBeau magic.

Thus it was that in the years after the war, LeBeau built a worldwide reputation for brilliant but simple recipes that would bring cheer to any postwar dining room. He was even tapped to write the foreword to the French edition of MLK Fisher's brilliant "How to Cook a Wolf." Julia Child secretly took lessons from him. James Beard's interest in game meats was sparked by firsthand accounts of LeBeau's Luft-Stalag 13 rabbit stews.

Hob-nobbing with the world's finest chefs soon took up most of LeBeau's time, but one day the phone rang and on the other end was the renowned French scientist Henri Emil DuBois, who was heading to the Canadian Arctic to lead an expedition to the most remote Inuit village on earth. Would Monsieur LeBeau kindly consider coming along as the chef? After all, who but he could make blubber fricassee not merely palatable, but delectable? How could 20 French men and women manage the excursion without him?

Never one to decline a challenge, especially in service to his country, LeBeau donned his signature scarf and torn sweater and joined the expedition. Perhaps his most successful dish was Pot-au-Feu à la Papa Bear. He never let on that it contained polar bear. Along the way, he picked up the uncanny ability to converse in perfectly unaccented Inukitut, and taught up-and-coming Inuit chefs how to brighten up any meal with spices.

NOTES:

Henri Emil DuBois appeared in "The Scientist," Series 1, Episode 2. This question was asked an answered in the "Which of Our Heroes" thread on March 5, 2015.