To say that a whirlwind of activity had followed the end of the war would be an understatement. Maybe calling it a tornado would be more apt, but everything was so busy that no one really cared.

The amount of paperwork was staggering; the amount of paper cuts even more so. There were enough reports, files, and briefings for two World War Twos. But like so many other unpleasant things, it was all over eventually.

Everyone knew that Hogan, along with the rest of the Americans, would be returning to the states as soon as they could, and it seemed as though everyone else would simply return to their own countries and pick up their lives where they left off.

But things are never easy like that.

Schultz's toy factory had been bombed into oblivion about a month before the war ended, taking with it any chance for him at leading his old life again, and also the job there that Klink would have most likely tried to weasel out of him at some point.

"Aw, there's lot's of other options out there for you, Schultzie," Newkirk had tried to tell him.

"Like what?"

"...Male model?"

Hogan had already decided that he would decline the offer to become General that he knew he was bound to receive. He'd had enough to do with the military to last him several lifetimes, and he kind of already had his eye on a nice old house in the town just outside Cleveland that he hoped was still vacant as he remembered.

When he met with his superiors in London, they inevitably offered him a promotion.

He turned it down.

When they'd asked if there was anything they could do for him, he asked that Klink and Schultz be allowed passage out of Germany to start their lives over in America.

"This is a highly irregular request, Colonel, and there are laws about such things...but I suppose that just this once, for you…."

Of course, Hochstetter and the rest of the Germans that had proven themselves to Hogan and his men were given this offer as well, but the former Gestapo major stated that he was going to remain in Germany.

"Some of us have to stay here, and get Germany back on her feet again," he'd avowed with a smile and a handshake.

When Newkirk was in London, he had returned to his old neighborhood, only to find out that it had been levelled in an air raid. His sister and her husband had made it out alright, but his old flat was gone and the people he had known were now scattered all over the city.

"You fancy takin' me in as a tenant in your house in the colonies, sir?" he'd asked Hogan that night.

LeBeau, whose plans to open a restaurant in Paris were almost completed, decided at the last minute that life was just not worth living if he couldn't be with his friends. Of course, he'd told them the reason was something manlier than that when they'd asked.

It was a flurry of activity (and, yes, more paperwork) that met everyone as they arrived. The house that Hogan had in mind was still up for sale and the neighborhood of Huntingburg was as peaceful as ever. The deed of sale was one paper that Hogan didn't mind signing.

Just like LeBeau didn't mind all the paperwork that came with opening a gourmet restaurant in what was once a greasy spoon diner, which, by some coincidence, happened to be situated right in the heart of downtown Huntingburg. The pretty little waitress that had worked there also probably didn't have anything to do with his choice, either.

Kinch had returned to Detroit, and Campbell had gone back to Chicago, but only after they had visited their friends and their new homes.

It was while Campbell was visiting with Hogan that the older man received a frantic wire from Lucy. She had just found out that her husband had been killed in action in Russia a week before the war had ended. She was now a widow. She was also facing homelessness as well, as Frau Schneider had passed away and the bank was repossessing the house.

"Can't she just come back to the states?" asked Carter, who was also there visiting.

"She lost her citizenship when she got married, and they aren't in the habit of giving green cards to the widows of Nazi soldiers, I'm afraid," Campbell had said.

"Can't you do something, sir?" Carter had asked Hogan.

He couldn't. He'd tried, but he couldn't. His superiors had pulled the strings for him once, but they wouldn't do it again.

When Carter had left, and no one heard from him for a few weeks, they had just thought that he had gone back to Indiana, or possible South Dakota. It was only when he sent a wire telling them to meet him at the Huntingburg train station and stepped off with Lucy did they realize that he had been up to something.

"Well, they couldn't keep her in Germany if she was married to an American, right?" he'd said with a large grin.

His aversion to pregnant women seemed to have all but vanished, if the house with a nursery they bought in Huntingburg was anything to go by.

It was a bright, warm day when Hogan went to Cleveland to see how the Schultz-Klink Toy Factory was doing. (It was doing excellently, by the way.) He'd met Schultzs' children for the first time, and found them to be all equally as sweet and kind as their father.

It kind of made him want kids of his own.

Kind of, but not really.

That was the missing piece though, wasn't it? Find a girl, get married, have a kid.

He could do it; he had a good, steady job already. The Huntingburg Police Department had hired him almost immediately once they had seen his service record, and he really felt that the job was a good fit. He'd even managed to get a job for Newkirk there.

"Forgery detection? Bit ironic, don't you think, sir?"

But family certainly wasn't on his mind when he'd looked out his kitchen window to see a little girl petting and playing with his German shepherd. (It turns out that former prison camp guard dogs also make wonderful police dogs, too.)

"You have a nice doggie," the little redheaded girl had told him.

"Thanks. Uh...say, where did you come from?" he'd asked, squatting down to be at her level.

The little girl pointed at the shabby house a little bit further down the road, never taking her attention off petting the dog.

That was funny. He'd thought that that house was vacant. It seemed that way from all outward appearances, but apparently someone must live there.

"Well, let me...take you back, alright? Uh...what's your name?" he'd asked awkwardly, scooping the toddler up off the soft grassy lawn.

"Lizzy," the little girl lisped, waving goodbye to Bruno as Hogan began walking towards her house. Tail wagging, Bruno followed them.

"Hmm...is that short for Elizabeth?" he'd asked her.

"Nuh-uh. Is long for Liz," she'd replied seriously.

He'd laughed at that.

It was not amusement that he had felt when he opened the door to Lizzy's house, though. It hadn't looked as though anyone was home.

He had asked her where her mommy was, but the little girl had just shrugged and said, "Mommy went for drive."

He knew something was wrong when he confirmed that there was no one in the house. He'd waited until midnight, waiting for someone to come home, but no one did. He'd left the sleepy girl with Newkirk, and headed over to the station. Whenever his thoughts strayed back to this night, he never really liked to think about the details of what had happened, mainly because there were so many happier memories to focus on that would come later.

So far, his favorite had been Lizzy running up to him after her first violin concert, a huge smile on her face.

"I did pretty good, huh, Dad?"

Even Lizzy's old house no longer held any bad memories; there were just too many good ones crowding them out.

The quaint little old place had been the perfect blank canvas for Angela Kinchloe to redecorate when she and her husband (who had just accepted Sheriff Hogan's offer to be deputy) moved from Detroit to Huntingburg.

With everything that had happened to him since coming back to the states, with so many things falling into place, it was easy and tempting to just forget about the war; forget about the stress he'd been under at Stalag 13, and the terror of the forced march, the agony of watching his friends suffer. It was so far away that it seemed like nothing more than a bad dream at times.

But it hadn't been. For all the men who didn't come back, it was still a nightmare that their families and friends would never get out of. For the men, and even the women and children that had suffered much more than they ever did. During the war, he'd been able to witness the entire spectrum of human behavior, from unwaveringly loyal to downright evil.

Every day that passed made the war seem farther and farther away.

They had been having a family barbeque one day, and he'd overheard Newkirk telling Lizzy and the other men's kids about how they once built a snowman over a tunnel and helped an entire crew escape a prison camp.

Yeah, they'd all had a lot of great adventures together, and they still were.

That's when it occurred to him that maybe he should write some of them down. Preserving a legacy and all that jazz sounded pretty sappy, but he didn't do all of that heroic stuff just to not tell anyone about it sometime, right?

Right.

x

The end!

Oh my gosh, I put more effort and research into this story than I do for most of my term papers.

For each of the major events that happened to the characters in this last chapter, I have a sequel planned that will be a series of vignettes detailing each one. For example, I will explain how I based Lucy's experience on what happened to my neighbor's sister during the war. She was an American married to a German soldier also, and was also widowed and not allowed repatriation. Let me know who's story you want to hear first, and I'll make that the first chapter of the new story.

If this chapter was a little disjointed and all over the place, it was mainly because I had to say something about what ends up happening to each one of the characters and how it interacts with the others, even though some of the things happen years apart from the others. So I had to jump around a little.

Also, if you can't picture Hogan and Kinch in an awesome 1970s buddy cop movie together, I don't know what to say. ;)

Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed, followed, and added this to their favorite list. You guys were so much help, and you have no idea how much I appreciate your help and encouragement. :)