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the highly subjective Colditz primer and picspam, part 3
So far, I've talked about four characters who between them make three pairings, two of which I envision living happily ever after. The next two characters and their relationship . . . not so much.
Simon Carter (played by David McCallum)
Simon is an RAF flight lieutenant, pilot of a Wellington bomber. (Incidentally, if you've noticed that the three main first-series Colditz characters, Pat Grant, Dick Player, and Simon Carter, just happen to come from three different services . . . yes, that was the BBC wanting to represent them all. The original Colditz publicity material says something about "three men from three different services, with different philosophies and goals." Luckily, very little of that silliness, which I associate with American war films where there's always got to be the farm boy, the rich boy, and the wisecracking boy from Brooklyn, actually makes it to the screen. A certain artifice does show up in the fact that almost all the Colditz POW regulars, except the Senior British Officer, hold equivalent ranks. Pat Grant and George Brent are army captains, which is an equivalent rank to an RAF flight lieutenant [Simon Carter and Phil Carrington, the latter badly acted by Robert Wagner, the sole American in the main cast, and so dull that I can't bear to talk about him], which is equivalent in rank to a naval lieutenant [Dick Player].)
Anyway, here is Simon and Simon's unfortunate ratty moustache.
He looks tense, doesn't he? He usually does. Simon is a tense sort of person. In the first ten minutes of his first episode, we see him tear a strip off his mechanic, quarrel with his commanding officer, and then get very snippy with his wife, Cathy. They've only been married for two months, and she's an upper-class young woman with a big house and a well-connected father, while Simon, who worked in a county surveyor's office before the war, is from a lower social class (the RAF was famously the service in which it was easiest for working class men to become officers); there's a lot of class-based friction as well as the unsurprising troubles of a young couple under enormous strain and without much time together. Simon's touchiness leads his father-in-law to make a point that will continue to be true of Simon throughout: "You're not easy to talk to." Simon is gloomy, easily frustrated and angered, impulsive, and has been known to throw things when he's in a temper. Here, starting at 7:18, Simon reacts to an escape plan gone wrong. This clip's audiovisual quality in particularly terrible, I'm afraid, but it's worth watching anyway.
Of all the POWs, Simon is possibly the most determined to escape. He badly wants to get back to Cathy (he talks about her constantly, to the point that Dick, at least, will sometimes change the subject when she's mentioned) and seems strangely indifferent to, perhaps even eager for, the high chance of being killed in action. There's something nearly self-punishing in Simon's need to escape. This leads him to take ridiculous risks and to persist far beyond the point of rationality, even hopping along on a broken ankle while being shot at. Doing so has unintended consequences; the damage to Simon's ankle is so bad that he's laid up for a long time, unable to escape, and the SBO appoints him Escape Officer to give him something to do.
Then, catastrophically, Simon meets another emotionally-damaged man.
Horst Mohn (played by Anthony Valentine)
Mohn, a Luftwaffe major and ex-paratrooper, joins the Colditz staff at the beginning of series 2 as the Kommandant's second-in-command. Here he is entering the POW compound for the first time.
See all those medals? "Highly decorated" is an understatement. Mohn has won both the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross With Oak Leaves (a rare medal for gallantry and leadership), he's got a Golden Wound badge that indicates he's been wounded five or more times in combat, there's a close combat badge indicating at least forty days' combat with the enemy without armor (e.g. without being in a tank), and there are additional medals and badges I can't identify. He served in the invasion of Crete and in the battle of Stalingrad, where he was bayoneted in the stomach but killed his attacker before being evacuated on one of the last flights out. This wound proved permanently disabling--he lost part of his stomach, and moves with the care of someone in constant pain--hence his posting to Colditz. Before coming to Colditz, he briefly served on Hitler's personal staff. He's extremely proud of this, because he admires Hitler very much.
Mohn is a convinced Nazi, although, because the show is well-written and even the villains get to be complex, far from a standard-issue Evil Cackling Nazi. He's a nasty piece of work in many ways, but he feels real and rounded as a character. And he's got issues. Lots of issues, especially about his disability. And then he meets Simon Carter, whose ankle, as you recall, has been badly broken. Things do not go well, as you can see here starting at 0:30.
After this lovely first step, Mohn basically turns into Simon's stalker. He arranges, on pretext of censorship, to read Simon's letters to and from Cathy, and makes sure to let Simon know that he's doing so. In this scene (start at about 4:45), he taunts Simon with that knowledge during a search of the British quarters. If you only watch one clip I link to, watch this one. It's amazing.
Simon begins to be as obsessed with Mohn as Mohn is with him, and the two develop a weirdly but deeply intimate relationship, out of which bubble odd little moments of warmth that suggest they're drawn to each other in a way that is not just hatred. Here, from 3:00 to about 8:10 with an intervening scene of Dick sneaking around working on an escape, Mohn is delighted when Simon invites him to play chess, and athough Simon does so for tactical reasons (to distract Mohn so that he won't notice Dick's absence) he seems to come very close to enjoying Mohn's company. Even here, though, the focus is on outsmarting and defeating each other, and usually the urge takes even more hostile forms. Mohn at one point tries to have Simon executed.
This is all pretty much the textbook definition of Foe Yay (warning: TV Tropes!), so you won't be surprised to hear that my head-canon is that they have an almost overpowering but fiercely repressed mutual attraction. Each sees himself in the other (often seeing his most feared or despised qualities, including "failed" disabled bodies, lack of masculinity, cowardice, and so on), each wants to prove himself better than the other, each would be horrified at the suggestion that there's something erotic about all that. There's no happy ending for these two. But damn, the possibilities for baddarkdirtywrong are endless. They are kinky, in a neither safe, nor sane, nor consensual way, and I find something intriguing in that.
Still to come in the final installment: one unlikely pairing I rather love, and a brief look at the remaining characters.
Simon Carter (played by David McCallum)
Simon is an RAF flight lieutenant, pilot of a Wellington bomber. (Incidentally, if you've noticed that the three main first-series Colditz characters, Pat Grant, Dick Player, and Simon Carter, just happen to come from three different services . . . yes, that was the BBC wanting to represent them all. The original Colditz publicity material says something about "three men from three different services, with different philosophies and goals." Luckily, very little of that silliness, which I associate with American war films where there's always got to be the farm boy, the rich boy, and the wisecracking boy from Brooklyn, actually makes it to the screen. A certain artifice does show up in the fact that almost all the Colditz POW regulars, except the Senior British Officer, hold equivalent ranks. Pat Grant and George Brent are army captains, which is an equivalent rank to an RAF flight lieutenant [Simon Carter and Phil Carrington, the latter badly acted by Robert Wagner, the sole American in the main cast, and so dull that I can't bear to talk about him], which is equivalent in rank to a naval lieutenant [Dick Player].)
Anyway, here is Simon and Simon's unfortunate ratty moustache.
He looks tense, doesn't he? He usually does. Simon is a tense sort of person. In the first ten minutes of his first episode, we see him tear a strip off his mechanic, quarrel with his commanding officer, and then get very snippy with his wife, Cathy. They've only been married for two months, and she's an upper-class young woman with a big house and a well-connected father, while Simon, who worked in a county surveyor's office before the war, is from a lower social class (the RAF was famously the service in which it was easiest for working class men to become officers); there's a lot of class-based friction as well as the unsurprising troubles of a young couple under enormous strain and without much time together. Simon's touchiness leads his father-in-law to make a point that will continue to be true of Simon throughout: "You're not easy to talk to." Simon is gloomy, easily frustrated and angered, impulsive, and has been known to throw things when he's in a temper. Here, starting at 7:18, Simon reacts to an escape plan gone wrong. This clip's audiovisual quality in particularly terrible, I'm afraid, but it's worth watching anyway.
Of all the POWs, Simon is possibly the most determined to escape. He badly wants to get back to Cathy (he talks about her constantly, to the point that Dick, at least, will sometimes change the subject when she's mentioned) and seems strangely indifferent to, perhaps even eager for, the high chance of being killed in action. There's something nearly self-punishing in Simon's need to escape. This leads him to take ridiculous risks and to persist far beyond the point of rationality, even hopping along on a broken ankle while being shot at. Doing so has unintended consequences; the damage to Simon's ankle is so bad that he's laid up for a long time, unable to escape, and the SBO appoints him Escape Officer to give him something to do.
Then, catastrophically, Simon meets another emotionally-damaged man.
Horst Mohn (played by Anthony Valentine)
Mohn, a Luftwaffe major and ex-paratrooper, joins the Colditz staff at the beginning of series 2 as the Kommandant's second-in-command. Here he is entering the POW compound for the first time.
See all those medals? "Highly decorated" is an understatement. Mohn has won both the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross With Oak Leaves (a rare medal for gallantry and leadership), he's got a Golden Wound badge that indicates he's been wounded five or more times in combat, there's a close combat badge indicating at least forty days' combat with the enemy without armor (e.g. without being in a tank), and there are additional medals and badges I can't identify. He served in the invasion of Crete and in the battle of Stalingrad, where he was bayoneted in the stomach but killed his attacker before being evacuated on one of the last flights out. This wound proved permanently disabling--he lost part of his stomach, and moves with the care of someone in constant pain--hence his posting to Colditz. Before coming to Colditz, he briefly served on Hitler's personal staff. He's extremely proud of this, because he admires Hitler very much.
Mohn is a convinced Nazi, although, because the show is well-written and even the villains get to be complex, far from a standard-issue Evil Cackling Nazi. He's a nasty piece of work in many ways, but he feels real and rounded as a character. And he's got issues. Lots of issues, especially about his disability. And then he meets Simon Carter, whose ankle, as you recall, has been badly broken. Things do not go well, as you can see here starting at 0:30.
After this lovely first step, Mohn basically turns into Simon's stalker. He arranges, on pretext of censorship, to read Simon's letters to and from Cathy, and makes sure to let Simon know that he's doing so. In this scene (start at about 4:45), he taunts Simon with that knowledge during a search of the British quarters. If you only watch one clip I link to, watch this one. It's amazing.
Simon begins to be as obsessed with Mohn as Mohn is with him, and the two develop a weirdly but deeply intimate relationship, out of which bubble odd little moments of warmth that suggest they're drawn to each other in a way that is not just hatred. Here, from 3:00 to about 8:10 with an intervening scene of Dick sneaking around working on an escape, Mohn is delighted when Simon invites him to play chess, and athough Simon does so for tactical reasons (to distract Mohn so that he won't notice Dick's absence) he seems to come very close to enjoying Mohn's company. Even here, though, the focus is on outsmarting and defeating each other, and usually the urge takes even more hostile forms. Mohn at one point tries to have Simon executed.
This is all pretty much the textbook definition of Foe Yay (warning: TV Tropes!), so you won't be surprised to hear that my head-canon is that they have an almost overpowering but fiercely repressed mutual attraction. Each sees himself in the other (often seeing his most feared or despised qualities, including "failed" disabled bodies, lack of masculinity, cowardice, and so on), each wants to prove himself better than the other, each would be horrified at the suggestion that there's something erotic about all that. There's no happy ending for these two. But damn, the possibilities for baddarkdirtywrong are endless. They are kinky, in a neither safe, nor sane, nor consensual way, and I find something intriguing in that.
Still to come in the final installment: one unlikely pairing I rather love, and a brief look at the remaining characters.
Mohn's medals
* The medal on the right breast-pocket is a Gold German Cross, awarded for 'repeated acts of bravery or achievement in combat', and is a higher award than the Iron Cross First Class (and you have to have won the Iron Cross 2nd Class before they give you the 1st class).
* The other badge on the left breast-pocket (next to the Gold Wound Badge), is the Army version of the Parachutist Badge {'Army Paratrooper Badge'}, which differs somewhat in design to the earlier Luftwaffe Paratrooper Badge (this choice of medal is odd, as Mohn is a Luftwaffe Paratrooper - so he seems to be wearing the wrong badge?!).
* The Close Combat Clasp only came into being in 1942, so this must have been awarded retrospectively, as Mohn tells Player he got it for Belgium 1940. It seems to be the Gold Clasp, which is awarded for 50+ close combat battles, but it may be the Bronze award, which only required 15 battles {but, if a soldier was wounded too severely to return to active combat, 40 battles would earn the Gold Clasp}.
If it is the Gold, I wonder if it actually covers all of his service, from Belgium to Stalingrad...?
* We know he wears the Crete Cuffband.
* The shield on his left sleeve appears to be the Crimea Shield, which was issued for soldiers who fought there from September 1941 - July 1942.
Herr Major has been a busy boy!
Also, despite what it says in the programme, Mohn's Knight's Cross is actually 'with Oak Leaves AND Swords', which is a slightly higher award than just 'with Oak Leaves'.
On a side-note, I have to say I feel Mohn's very best scene took place in the library, with Squadron Leader Shaw - we got a real insight to his emotions, and it may go some way to explaining his nastiness, given that what he really wants is to be fighting again but will never be able to, and all these horrid prisoners can still fight if they escape. He's jealous!
Bitterness is not usually becoming in anyone, but with Mohn, it works - makes me want to go and soothe his bruised ego!
{anyone know a good reason for a woman to be held prisoner in Colditz...?}
Re: Mohn's medals
On the other hand, well, he is a Nazi. Not just a military man doing what he perceives as his duty, like the Kommandant and Ulmann, but a true-believing ideological Nazi who hates Jews and other "inferior races." He worships Hitler, in fact loves him more than he seems to love any other human being. He's also got a significant element of sadism in his personality, which we see most clearly in the way he torments Simon Carter.
I don't mean he's the worst of the worst--he doesn't seem to be more complicit in the Holocaust than anyone else with his rank and connections (which is to say, highly complicit but not actively involved), and he's not a war criminal. I was actually quite annoyed by his last episode's implication that he was a war criminal and responsible for the commandos' deaths--the show wanted to talk about the issues of war crimes and the escape of (primarily SS) Nazi criminals, so they clumsily retconned Mohn to serve their purposes. It's of a piece with a inferior writing in the last half of series 2.
Nevertheless, I can't see Mohn as redeemable. He's not just damaged, he's an oppressor, an eager cog in the Nazi death machine, and for reasons that I suspect well preceded his war experiences, his mind and personality are messed up in ways that I don't think will heal. Love's not going to save him.
Re: Mohn's medals
* On a side-note, "Colditz" could so easily have been a 3 series show, giving us more details across the 5/6 years it was set. Oh, and I think the reason for some of the timeline confusion is that some events in different episodes cross-over.
Back to Mohn - I suspect he had issues with his father, due to that need to prove he was the best at everything, and I'm quite sure his competitiveness at chess came from his childhood. When he and Tony Shaw were talking: "... prove yourself worthy of the thing you believe in.", "Thing, or person?", from Mohn's reaction, I think it was more than just Hitler he needed to feel worthy of. Also, he was only in his early 30s, and had grown-up under the influence of a lot of propaganda, and probably followed parental views.
And being given the chance to work on Hitler's personal staff for a few months would have brought him into contact with all sorts of information {it can only have been a short time, given that he was evacuated from Stalingrad in January 1943 [Mohn said he left on one of the last planes, which was in January. - * though we have another timeline confusion: the real 'big' escape was in October 1942 [Pat Reid and co], and Mohn is supposed to have arrived at the camp 3 weeks later. So did the series change the date to mid-1943?}.
Though he was a believer in Nazi ideology {as I said above, I put that down to 'influences'}, I think he was a soldier, not a killer - otherwise, for someone with a sadistic streak, why did he not join the SS?
I also think the sadistic moments came about from his bitterness and anger, deep emotional damage, and the physical pain {which he refused to let get the better of him}, because, as we saw in his final episode and others, he had a good sense of humour {as when talking to Ulmann about Squadron Leader Shaw}, and could be quite nice when he wanted to be.
I think he could have been redeemable when he first arrived at Colditz, but the constant frustrations against Simon Carter, and being unable to do the job he was assigned unhindered, just made things worse for him.
What the man really needed was a good therapist!