Epilogue:

The next afternoon, General Aloysius Barton stood staring down the heavily fortified lane that formed the passage from Nazi Germany to neutral Switzerland. He could see several American Army officers on the other side, and a man in German uniform. His escort, Hauptmann Kellner, gestured to the other side. "Both of you are to walk across at the same time." He thinned his lips. "We do not want any trouble."

"You won't get any from me," Barton promised. He just wanted to get back to England, back to his command. Even though he had been treated very well, due to his rank, his last few days as a prisoner of the Nazis had made him burn that much hotter to defeat the Third Reich and finish this war. Most other officers, and certainly the enlisted men, did not get the exceptionally good treatment he had gotten. His mind wandered briefly, as it so often had today and the day before, to Colonel Robert Hogan, as he watched the other side closely. It occurred to him that Hogan had no chance for an exchange such as this.

The German on the other side of the border strode forward, and Barton did so as well. As they approached each other, Barton looked his counterpart over. A field marshal! How on earth had the Allies gotten their hands on a field marshal to trade for him?

Both men paused as they met in the center. As a lower-ranking brigadier general, Barton offered a salute, which the field marshal returned. Dropping their arms to their sides, the two men gazed briefly at each other. Barton saw a tall man, perhaps five or so years younger than himself, with a proud, aristocratic, and military bearing. The Nazi stared down at him.

"Gerade ein anderer Pilot," the field marshal said contemptuously, after looking him up and down.*

Barton bristled: though he didn't understand what the field marshal had said, he could tell it wasn't complimentary. "I'll see you after the war," he promised, glaring back.

The field marshal shrugged his shoulders, then walked on. Unsure if the German had understood him or not, but not really caring, Barton strode forward himself. As he got closer, he could see that the men in USAAC uniforms were ones he knew, Colonel Nichols and Captain Ross, both watching nervously. He was momentarily stopped by the heavily armed Swiss sentries, one of whom asked, in heavily accented English, "Your name?"

"General Aloysius Barton," he confirmed, hearing Nichols and Ross both verify his identity to the Swiss officials standing by, then he was allowed to pass the border guards.

As he came up to his fellow American officers, they both saluted then asked anxiously, almost in unison, "General Barton! Are you all right, sir?"

"I'm fine," he assured them. "What's the plan now?"

"This way, sir," they steered him toward a waiting car. Barton looked over his shoulder, back across the border, seeing the field marshal being escorted away by Hauptmann Kellner. He settled himself inside the car and looked at them. "Now what?"

"We drive to the airport and take a plane to London. The Swiss authorities weren't thrilled about hosting the exchange, in case it was seen as violating their neutrality. So we're leaving straight away. We should be back in England by this evening," Nichols promised him.

"How the devil did you arrange a swap? And Ross, I'm very glad to see you, but shouldn't you be in a POW camp in Germany? How the hell did you get away?"

The two officers looked at each other. "General, as soon as we're back in London, I promise to tell you the whole tale," Ross answered. "It's just not secure enough here. But it's a pretty wild story; I think you'll find it amazing."

*This is my best guess at the German for Von Heinke's "Just another pilot" line in the original episode. Hoping for an accurate and idiomatic version, I've listened to this particular line on the German-language version of the series, Ein Käfig voller Helden, on YouTube. Sadly, my short instruction in German during high school decades ago is not up to deciphering anything in that line beyond "Pilot," no matter how many times I listen to it. My apologies to any German speakers among the readers of this story if I've mangled the phrase, and I will happily make a correction if anyone can suggest a better translation for it.

ooOoo

Barton entered his own quarters, turned on the light, and looked around with a sigh. It had been almost a week since he had been here, and he had at several points wondered if he would ever get back. The irony of how he came to be standing here was not lost on him at this point. Right now it was very late in the evening, and he'd had only the beginnings of the debriefing on his experiences being shot down and held captive. He crossed over to the small cabinet he kept a bottle of bourbon in and poured himself a shot. He needed to sleep. But he needed to think first, and this was the first chance he had gotten to think through all that had happened. He took a sip of the bourbon, feeling the heat burrow down to his belly.

He had made some colossal mistakes. First, his decision to fly and see conditions for himself looked imprudent, in hindsight, given all the trouble it had caused. He had learned a great deal, but certainly not what he had intended to. No cost/benefit analysis could say that the knowledge gained had outweighed the price paid.

And Colonel Robert E. Hogan had gotten the some of the worst of it. He shook his head in regret. Ross had been right: the story was amazing, and Hogan a remarkable man. He had to admire Hogan's daring and unorthodox thinking. Looking back, he could see how he had made the colonel's job much more complicated by his own obtuseness when they first met. He could not excuse himself for his initial distrust of a fellow officer. Hogan's line that had so infuriated him kept ringing through his head: "Nice try, pal, but the colonel here knows you're not Barton. He's going to take you out of this maximum security cell and put you in with the rest of us." It was obvious to him now that Hogan had been trying to get him out of the cooler so he could use his operation to get him back to England. Assessing himself, Barton could see that he'd been so blinded by anger over being shot down, and so shaken up over how fast and easily he had been captured, that he had seen the gambit only as an attack on his rank, not as a chance to join the men of his side. As a prisoner for two years who had never escaped, and reputedly had not even tried, Hogan had represented everything that Barton had not wanted to be. Unfortunately, that was all he kept seeing the whole time he had been at the camp. But Hogan had remained completely professional, even when unjustly and severely bawled out simply on the word of an enemy officer, without being allowed to say a word in self-defense. Not that he could have said anything with the camp Kommandant standing there at his elbow.

Barton shook his head again, furious with himself. What had he been thinking? It was inexcusable for a senior officer such as himself to attack a subordinate in such a way, without giving him a chance to explain himself – particularly in the presence of the enemy. He understood now that as long Klink was around, Hogan had to maintain the façade of cooperation. Barton had never had a moment alone with Hogan to give him such a chance to explain. Klink would never have allowed such privacy, of course: it was much more to his advantage to use Barton as a weapon against Hogan. And unforgivably, he had played right into Klink's hands.

He sighed again at the thought of how he had let himself be used against a fellow officer who had been trying to help him. In one sense Hogan was simply doing his duty, yes, but he was also a true hero in this war, having spent two years in captivity, facing the enemy daily at close quarters. Barton remembered the terror of having his own plane shot down from under him, diving out into the flack-filled sky, the desperation he had felt when captured so quickly and easily after landing. But he had been treated well throughout his imprisonment: guarded closely, but kept comfortably. He had never faced any real interrogation at all, whereas he was sure from what the politely irrepressible Corporal Newkirk had said that Hogan must have been through hell. He didn't like to think of what the man's experience must have been after being shot down in the summer of '42, when discovering Allied bombing strategies would have been critical to the Nazis. And Hogan had been in a position to know. He was high enough in the command chain to have had much of the information the Nazis would have wanted. Seven weeks with the Gestapo . . . and he had once never broken, not even giving the number of the bomber squadron he had commanded, which Barton himself had handed over to Klink without even thinking about it. He winced again at the thought. Newkirk had been right – insubordinate, but right – to tick him off for so carelessly revealing information on another soldier, and another officer, no less.

Barton downed the rest of his drink and poured himself another. And even now Hogan was the only officer in that camp, living in that crowded hut, cheek by jowl with the men of his command. The small unheated office he had seen on his tour of the camp rose in his mind's eye, the one small concession to Hogan's rank as a colonel. No real privileges. Barton had seen only a single blanket on the bunks in it. It had to be very uncomfortable in the winter, unless the colonel sacrificed the modicum of privacy that he had in his quarters for the warmth of the stove in the main room. But a good commanding officer knew that his men needed time apart from him, to relax and let loose free while from his eye, as much as he needed distance from them. Barton was sure that Hogan spent a lot of chilly hours in that spartan office.

The rest of the camp had been in surprisingly good order, now that he thought about it: the portions managed by the prisoners clean and well maintained despite the shabby materials and construction, with surprisingly few men in the infirmary given the camp's size. That all spoke well for Hogan's abilities to manage, especially given the short supplies he had. And Barton knew that conditions in that camp were likely to get worse before the war ended, that Hogan's negotiations with the Kommandant would get harder and at the same time more crucial to protect his men's well-being. The small bare office rose in his mind again: the rough bench converted to use as a desk with only a three-legged stool as a chair sitting in front of it; on top of it only an old lamp, a cracked mug with some chewed-up pencils, and the schedule of camp duties. From that primitive desk Hogan administered his entire command – above ground and below.

Barton paced restlessly around his living room – his warm, spacious living room.

So Hogan lived very much as a prisoner, but at the same time having to carry out rescue, espionage, and sabotage duties on the sly, in daily danger of being found out and shot. Yet from what Barton had been told, the man succeeded in an astounding percentage of difficult (if not impossible) missions, time and again, when the price of failure could be execution. Impossible missions such as kidnapping a Nazi field marshal to exchange for a pig-headed American general. He gulped some more of his bourbon. It tasted bitter tonight, not smooth. Thinking about it, the brilliance and sheer effrontery of the plan astonished him – not to mention its success, given all they were up against. It amazed him that they had pulled it off. But here he was, standing in his own quarters on base in England rather than the cell he was sleeping in just 48 hours ago – right after he had practically called Hogan a traitor in front of all his men . . . and the enemy.

Thank God for Corporal Newkirk's final intervention. He had seen the close attention that the men scattered around the compound had been paying to them while they were speaking – those that weren't involved with the diversion that had taken Klink away. Afterwards, he had watched carefully while Klink had been spouting on and on – and just how on earth did Hogan stand listening to that drivel all the time? – and he had seen that Newkirk had been questioned eagerly by all his companions when he returned to them, obviously about what success he'd had. There was no doubt the Englishman had been a true spokesman for his comrades.

Even if he'd had any doubts about Newkirk's veracity, the joyful reactions of the men across the compound after his salute to their commanding officer would have removed them. He had also noticed that the enthusiasm was shared among the men of all nationalities. Clearly, Hogan had earned the widespread admiration and loyalty of all the men under his command, which also explained their sullen resistance to his own attempted questioning of them during the inspection. He had been so intent on gathering evidence for the court martial he'd intended to see Hogan got that he had mistaken the cause of their surliness. And of course they couldn't correct him, not with the Kommandant of the camp standing right there beside him. Why that hadn't occurred to him at the time he couldn't understand now. Newkirk had commendably not broken security about their operation, but he had carefully set straight the public record – which was impressive enough on its own merits. At least, Barton thought, he had made one right decision at the end. Perhaps by saluting the colonel in front of Klink he had perhaps made up for some small part of the humiliation he had dealt out to Hogan in front of the enemy.

Finally, there was the issue of the black sergeant, Kinchloe. Barton remained puzzled over how the man had wound up in Stalag 13. He thought he remembered the Major Friedman that Kinchloe had mentioned as a part of the command structure from quite a while back, but he was unsure about why the man would have taken Kinchloe up on a bombing mission over Germany when there were plenty of white navigators, especially when the Negro sergeant couldn't have had the proper training. It was a curious matter, and if he could find the time he would try to investigate it – if he could find any survivors from Friedman's command to ask. The unfortunate reality was that casualties had been so heavy in the past two years that there might not be any. And of course the answer might only be known by those who had been on that shot-down plane.

Still, there was another man to talk with about this issue whom he had not yet met, a Lieutenant Stevens, who had actually piloted the plane that they had stolen from the Germans to fly the kidnapped field marshal to England. Ross had said that Stevens had spent over a week living in Hogan's barrack after being shot down, before being smuggled out by Hogan's crew. So surely Stevens would have some insights. Barton had noticed that Kinchloe had been close to Hogan repeatedly, sitting next to him at dinner and coming out of the barracks to stand with him in the compound just before Barton had left. He wasn't certain, but looking back he thought Kinchloe might have been the man that he had seen Hogan talking with when Klink brought him out of the cooler compound for his inspection tour. Hogan's tolerance and protection of a man that the Nazis would regard as inferior, and even perhaps as subhuman, spoke well for the colonel's character. A man who put principle into practice. Yes, overall Hogan was a remarkable man.

He had requested that his thanks personally be sent to Hogan and his team, and an apology for having inadvertently made their job difficult. He wished he could apologize more clearly to the colonel for what he had said to him in that cell when they met, for calling him a traitor on the word of an enemy officer and threatening him with a court martial. But it wouldn't do Hogan much good to broadcast that episode over the radio to Allied High Command here in London. The fact remained, however, that he owed Robert Hogan a greater debt than he had ever owed anyone in his life. The carefully worded apology he had composed seemed too little, too late to him, but it was all he could do.

. . . Or was it?

There would be no prisoner exchange for Colonel Robert Hogan. But the man was clever and resourceful; given orders to come home, he could easily escape. A replacement commander for the unit could be found: two years was certainly long enough for an officer to serve in such a hardship position, and Hogan had talents and knowledge that could be used to great effect elsewhere in the war. Hogan should come home to a hero's welcome, much deserved, and some time off first. Wait . . . hadn't there been a call recently for war heroes to sell war bonds back at home? Yes, that job would be just perfect as a reward. . . .

ooOoo

Author's Notes: As I said at the beginning, I am grateful to R.S. Allen and Harvey Bullock, the original writers of "The General Swap." While I edited and substantially altered their story to produce this one, they originated the ideas, characters, and situations, and without them I would have had no source to play against.

Also my thanks go to all of you who have read and commented on this story. While I'd finished a full draft before beginning to post it, the generous comments and questions from all of you helped me in thinking through some issues and revising a number of areas I was still unsatisfied with. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!