Every jackrabbit he could spot. Every jackrabbit for miles around.

He envisioned himself shooting dozens, hundreds, thousands, a great slaughter of rabbits. Killing jackrabbits until he fell to the earth exhausted, ammunition expended, the barrel of the rifle seared red hot.

Surrounded by enough dead jackrabbits to last his captain an eternity.

He knew he would not be able to fall back to sleep.

So, he lay back, listening to the rain striking the metal roof and resounding like gunshots. And mixed in that sound came a low and distant thud. And moments later, shrill whistles and frantic shouts, all in the unmistakable angry German of the prison camp guards. He swung his feet out of the bunk and was pulling on his boots when he heard a pounding on the barracks door and "Raus! Raus! Schnell!" It would be cold on the parade ground, and Tommy Hart reached for his old leather flight jacket. The men around him were hurrying to dress, pulling on their woolen underwear and cracked and worn flight boots as the first insinuations of dawn light came filtering through the grimy barracks windows. In his hurry to get dressed, he lost sight of the Lovely Lydia and its crew, letting them fade into the near part of his memory as he quickly joined the flow of men heading out into the damp early morning chill of Stalag Luft Thirteen.

Second Lieutenant Tommy Hart shuffled his feet in the light brown mud of the parade compound. The grumbling had started within a few minutes of the assembly-an Appell in German-and now, whenever a guard walked by, the men would begin to catcall, and complain.