I wrote this between my freshman and senior year of high school. I believe I finished it early in 1990, during my junior year; the first part was written probably in 1987.
My favorite TV show at the time was Hogan’s Heroes; not only did it inspire me to take German, but I liked to imagine myself at the POW camp with Hogan’s group. I wanted to write a story which explained how I would end up in a POW camp in the 1940s.
I wrote the first part while listening to the album Reconstructions by AD, a Christian band from the mid-80s which included two members of Kansas: Kenny Livgren and Dave Hope. So now my story and this album are forever linked in my mind.
While researching the third part, I sat in front of my open bedroom window on an unseasonably warm night, listening to the local pop station, and looking through beautiful pictures of the Alps in an encyclopedia. “Hippy Chick” by Soho came on.
Though I didn’t hear the song again until sometime in 1991 or 1992, I remembered it, and connected it with a warm evening and pictures of the Alps.
My BFF (senior year of high school) and my boyfriend (freshman year of college) loved this story. Though they weren’t too happy with the ending of Part II (I won’t spoil it). My boyfriend, a ninja who was really into the occult and science fiction, even pondered making an actual time card.
Since this is science fiction written by a teenager in the days before the Internet, when what I could learn about POW camps was mostly limited to television, it probably isn’t in the least plausible.
Also, both in college and now as I review it again, I can see that it desperately needs editing and lengthening: more scenes, more showing, less telling. But that’s why I stuck this with my “juvenilia.”
I revised the story in college for a writing class. Since there are three different versions, I’ll give you the best for each passage.
I do make changes here and there, where the original versions are egregiously bad, or an improvement screams at me. But for the most part, this is as written. Though after typing it up and reviewing it for this website, I start wanting to finally write that longer version, 28 years since I wrote Part I…..
Part I–Sink den Bismarck!–Madge becomes the time-traveler’s assistant
Part II–Madge’s forbidden romance with a Stalag guard
Part III–Hiding in the Bavarian Alps
Part IV–Back in the Camp