- Sefton: There are two people in this barracks who know I didn't do it. Me and the guy that did do it.
- [after Sefton cuts through the barbed wire to let them escape]
- Sefton: Let's blow, Chauncey.
- Lt. James Skylar Dunbar: Let's.
- Triz' Trzcinski: [after reading letter from home] I believe it. My wife says, "Darling, you won't believe it, but I found the most adorable baby on our doorstep and I've decided to keep it for our very own. Now you won't believe it, but it's got exactly my eyes and nose." Why does she keep saying I won't believe it? I believe it! I believe it.
- Oberst Von Scherbach: I'm grateful for a little company. I suffer from insomia.
- Lt. James Skylar Dunbar: Did you ever try 40 sleeping pills?
- Sefton: I told you boys I'm no escape artist. For the first time, I like the odds, because now I got me a decoy.
- Hoffy: What's the decoy?
- Sefton: Price. When I go, I want you to give me five minutes - exactly five minutes - to get Dunbar out of that water tank. And then you throw Price out onto the compound, nice and loud. He'll draw every light from every goon tower. It's our only chance to cut through. Well, what do you say, barracks chief?
- Bagradian: He's right, Hoffy. It's either Price or Dunbar.
- Animal: He killed Johnson and Manfredi, didn't he?
- Hoffy: It's all yours.
- Hoffy: What's the matter with you, Security? You were always so calm. Especially when you let Manfredi and Johnson go out there.
- Sgt. Schulz: How do you expect to win the war with an army of clowns?
- Lt. James Skylar Dunbar: We sort of hope you'd laugh yourselves to death.
- Sefton: If I ever run into any of you bums on a street corner, just let's pretend we've never met before.
- [Duke wants to know who the German spy is]
- Sefton: It's no use, Schulz, you might as well come clean. Why don't you just tell them it's me, because I'm really the illegitimate son of Hitler, and after the Germans win the war, you're going to make me the Gauleiter of Zinzinnati!
- Sefton: [questioning Price] When was Pearl Harbor, Price, or don't you know that?
- Price: December 7th, '41.
- Sefton: What time?
- Price: [smugly] 6:00. I was having dinner.
- Sefton: [smirks] 6:00 in Berlin.
- [to the other barrack members]
- Sefton: They were having lunch in Cleveland. Am I boring you boys?
- Hoffy: Go on.
- Sefton: He's a Nazi, Price is. For all I know his name is Preissinger or Preishoffer. Oh, sure, he lived in Cleveland. But when the war broke out, he came back to the Fatherland like a good little Bundist. He spoke our lingo, so they sent him to spy school and fixed him up with phony dog tags.
- Sefton: What is this anyway, a kangaroo court? Why don't you get a rope and do it right?
- Duke: You make my mouth water.
- Sefton: You're all wire-happy, boys. You've been in this camp too long. You put two and two together and it comes out four - only it ain't four.
- Hoffy: What's it add up to you, Sefton?
- Sefton: It adds up that you got yourselves the wrong guy. Because, I'm telling you, the krauts wouldn't plant two stoolies in one barracks. And whatever you do to me, you're gonna have to do all over again when you find the right guy.
- Sgt. Schulz: [preparing POWs for an important inspection] The barracks should be schpic, and also schpan!
- [Opening narration]
- Cookie: I don't know about you, but it always makes me sore when I see those war pictures... all about flying leathernecks and submarine patrols and frogmen and guerillas in the Philippines. What gets me is that there never w-was a movie about POWs - about prisoners of war. Now, my name is Clarence Harvey Cook: they call me Cookie. I was shot down over Magdeburg, Germany, back in '43; that's why I stammer a little once in a while, 'specially when I get excited. I spent two and a half years in Stalag 17. "Stalag" is the German word for prison camp, and number 17 was somewhere on the Danube. There were about 40,000 POWs there, if you bothered to count the Russians, and the Poles, and the Czechs. In our compound there were about 630 of us, all American airmen: radio operators, gunners, and engineers. All sergeants. Now you put 630 sergeants together and, oh mother, you've got yourself a situation. There was more fireworks shooting off around that joint... take for instance the story about the spy we had in our barracks...
- Sgt. Schulz: We will grab some shovels and we will undig that tunnel which you digged.
- Animal: Shulz, why don't we just plug up the tunnel with the Commandant in one end, and you in the other?
- Marko the Mailman: Are the doors covered?
- [the men cover the doors]
- Hoffy: Yeah, they're covered.
- Marko the Mailman: Okay, Steve, give them the radio.
- [Blondie pulls a radio and earphones from under Steve's pant leg]
- Marko the Mailman: You can keep it for two days.
- Hoffy: Two days? We're supposed to have it for a week.
- Marko the Mailman: You're lucky to get it at all! The boys are afraid the Jerries will find it in here. This barracks is jinxed!
- Hoffy: They ought to be under the barbed wire soon.
- Shapiro: Looks good outside.
- Animal: I hope they hit the Danube before dawn.
- Price: They've got a good chance. The longest night of the year.
- Duke: I'll bet they make it to Friedrichshaven.
- Animal: I bet they make it all the way to Switzerland.
- Sefton: And I bet they don't get out of the forest.
- Duke: Now what kind of crack is that?
- Sefton: No crack. Two packs of cigarettes say they don't get out of the forest.
- Hoffy: That's enough, Sefton. Crawl back in your sack.
- Shapiro: He'd make book on his own mother getting hit by a truck.
- Sefton: Anybody call?
- [Shapiro received 7 letters at mail call]
- Animal: What do all those broads say?
- Shapiro: What do they always say?
- Animal: Lemme read one.
- Shapiro: It's not good for you, Animal.
- Animal: Hey, this is with a typewriter... it's from a finance company.
- Shapiro: So it's from the finance company. So, it's better than no letter at all. So they want the third payment on the Plymouth.
- [dropping each letter on the floor in turn]
- Shapiro: So they want the fourth... the fifth... the sixth... the seventh... So they want the Plymouth.
- Animal: Sugar Lips Shapiro. Amazing, ain't it?
- Oberst Von Scherbach: All right then, gentlemen, we are all friends again. And with Christmas coming on I have a special treat for you. I'll have you all deloused for the holidays and I'll have a little Christmas tree for every barrack. You will like that.
- Shapiro: Tea is being served on the veranda. Animal, where are the napkins?
- [Animal puts down some napkins as Dunbar and Bagradian approach the table]
- Bagradian: [Imitating Ronald Colman talking to his real-life wife, Benita Hume] Do be seated, Benita. Hwah, hwah, what a perfectly charming table arrangement. They must have copied the pattern from "House Beautiful."
- Animal: [watching Sefton cook an egg] Are you gonna eat it all by yourself?
- Sefton: Mm-hmm. The yellow and the white.
- Animal: Is it all right if we smell it?
- Sefton: Just don't drool on it.
- Shapiro: You're not gonna eat the shells?
- Sefton: Help yourself.
- Animal: [Harry gives him half the shell] Hey, thanks. What are we gonna do with it?
- Shapiro: We're gonna plant it, Animal. We're gonna grow us a chicken for Christmas.
- Duke: Come on, Trader Horn, let's hear it. What'd you give the krauts for that egg?
- Sefton: 45 cigarettes. Price has gone up.
- Duke: They wouldn't be the cigarettes you took us for last night?
- Sefton: What was I gonna do with them? I only smoke cigars.
- Duke: Niiice guy. The krauts shoot Manfredi and Johnson last night, and today he's out trading with them.
- Sefton: Look. This may be my last hot breakfast on account of they're going to take that stove out of here, so would you let me eat it in peace?
- Animal: Now ain't that too bad? Tomorrow you'll have to suck a raw egg.
- Shapiro: Oh, he don't have to worry. He can always trade the krauts for a six-burner gas range. Maybe a deep freeze, too.
- Sefton: What's the beef, boys? So I'm trading. Everybody here is trading. So maybe I trade a little sharper. That make me a collaborator?
- Duke: A lot sharper, Sefton. I'd like to have some of that loot you got in those footlockers.
- Sefton: Oh you would, would you? Listen, stupe. The first week I was in this joint, somebody stole my Red Cross package, my blanket, and my left shoe. Well, since then I've wised up. This ain't no Salvation Army - this is everybody for himself, dog eat dog.
- Sefton: Okay, Herr Preisshoffer, let's have the mailbox.
- Price: The what?
- Sefton: The one you took out of the corner of your bunk and put in this pocket!
- [pulls a black queen out of Price's jacket]
- Sefton: Let me show you how they did it. They did it by mail.
- Harry Shapiro: Mail?
- Sefton: That's right. Little love notes between our Security officer and Von Scherbach, with Schulz the mailman.
- [gestures to a lightbulb hanging above a table]
- Sefton: Here's the flag. They used to put a loop in the cord.
- [does so]
- Sefton: Did you ever notice? And here's the mailbox. Hollow black queens.
- [pops the two queens open]
- Sefton: Cute, huh? They delivered the mail or picked it up whenever we were out of the barracks, like for appell. And when there was a special delivery, they'd pull a phony air raid to get us out of here, like last night for instance. There wasn't a plane in the sky. Or was there, Price?
- Geneva man: [a Red Cross official is inspecting the camp just after Sefton was beaten on suspicion being an enemy informant. The official sees his injuries] What happened to you? Were you beaten?
- [Sefton doesn't answer]
- Geneva man: Why don't you answer?
- [to the German officer escorting him]
- Geneva man: What did you do to this man?
- Sefton: They didn't do nothing.
- Geneva man: Who beat you?
- Sefton: Nobody beat me. We were playing pinochle. It's a rough game.
- Price: Anybody asks for your papers, you're French laborers. And here's your map, Kraut money, Swiss francs.
- Sgt. Manfredi: Roger.
- Price: All right, now let's hear it one more time, boys.
- Sgt. Johnson: We've been over it a hundred times.
- Hoffy: Let's hear it again.
- Sgt. Manfredi: We stick to the forest going west until we hit the Danube.
- Price: Check.
- Sgt. Johnson: Then we follow the Danube up to Linz.
- Price: Check.
- Sgt. Johnson: In Linz, we hop a barge and go all the way to Ulm.
- Price: Check.
- Duke: [Joey begins playing his ocarina] Stop it, Joey. Joey!
- [he stops]
- Duke: Go back to sleep.
- Price: Go on. You're in Ulm.
- Sgt. Johnson: Once in Ulm, we lie low until night. Then we take a train to Friedrichshafen.
- Sgt. Manfredi: Once in Friedrichshafen, we steal a rowboat, get some fishing tackle, and start drifting across the lake, always south, 'til we hit the other side. Switzerland.
- Sefton: Once in Switzerland, just give out with a big yodel, boys, so we'll know you're there. It's a breeze.
- Hoffy: Stay out of this, Sefton.
- Sefton: Just one question. Did you calculate the risk?
- Cookie: [narrating] Every morning at 6:00 on the dot, they'd have the appell. That's "roll call" to you. Every barracks had its own alarm clock. Our alarm clock was Feldwebel Schulz. Johann Sebastian Schulz. I understand the Krauts had a composer way back with a "Johann Sebastian" in it. But I can tell you one thing, Schulz was no composer. He was a schweinehund. Was he ever a lousy schweinehund.
- Marko the Mailman: Today's camp news. Father Murray announces that due to local regulations, the Christmas midnight mass will be held at 7:00 in the morning. He also says, quote, "All you sack rats better show up for services, and no bull from anybody." Unquote.
- [muttering]
- Marko the Mailman: At ease.
- Animal: At ease!
- Marko the Mailman: Next. Monday afternoon, a sailboat race will be held at the cesspool. See Oscar Rudolph of barracks 7 if you wish to enter a yacht.
- [laughter and boos]
- Marko the Mailman: All right, at ease.
- Animal: At ease!
- Marko the Mailman: Next. Jack Cushingham and Larry Blake will play Frank de Notta and Mike Cohen for the pinochle championship of the camp.
- Shapiro: That's a fix.
- Marko the Mailman: [mutters of agreement] All right, at ease.
- Animal: At ease!
- Marko the Mailman: Next. Tuesday afternoon at 2:00, all men from Texas will meet behind the north latrine.
- [laughter and boos]
- Marko the Mailman: All right, at ease.
- Animal: At ease!
- Marko the Mailman: Next. A warning from the kommandant.
- [boos]
- Marko the Mailman: Anybody found throwing rocks at low-flying German aircraft will be thrown in the boob.
- Animal: [just missing chow time] Do you have to put your socks in my breakfast?
- Triz' Trzcinski: Tough luck.
- Animal: I hate this life!
- Sgt. Schulz: Well, well, gentlemen, am I interrupting something?
- Hoffy: Yeah, Schulz, we were just passin' out guns.
- Sgt. Schulz: Guns?
- [realizing he's kidding]
- Sgt. Schulz: Ah, you're joking. Always with the visecrackers.
- Shapiro: Visecrackers. Where did he pick up his English, in a pretzel factory?
- Sgt. Schulz: You always think I'm a square. I've been to America. I've been wrestling there. I wrestled in Milwaukee and St. Louis, in Cincinnati, and I will go back. The way the war is going, I will be there before you.
- Shapiro: You should live so long.
- Sgt. Schulz: [sharing a laugh, then stopping] Here. That's me in Cincinnati.
- Animal: [taking a picture] Who's the other wrestler? The one with the mustache?
- Sgt. Schulz: That's my wife.
- Animal: Hey, look at all that meat. Ain't she the bitter end?
- Sgt. Schulz: [taking the picture back] Oh, give it back. You must not arouse yourself.
- Animal: It ain't fair, Harry. I'm telling you, it ain't fair. My Betty. Ain't she beautiful? She married an orchestra leader.
- Shapiro: So what? There's other women.
- Animal: Not for me.
- [kissing the picture]
- Animal: Betty. Betty.
- Shapiro: Forget Betty, Animal. I'll get you a date with some of those Russian women.
- Animal: You'll get me a date?
- Shapiro: Sure. I'll get you into the Russian compound.
- Animal: How? Pinky Miller from barracks 8 tried getting over there and they shot him in the leg.
- Shapiro: It... it takes a gimmick, Animal. I figured us a little gimmick.
- Animal: You did?
- Shapiro: [pointing to his temple, indicating his brain] Sharp. Sometimes I'm so sharp, it's frightening.
- German Lieutenant: Here we have a typical barrack. It houses 75 men. Every one of them has his own bunk, naturally.
- Geneva man: Naturally. It would be rather awkward to have three men in one bunk.
- German Lieutenant: As for the blankets, you will notice they're very warm. 50% wool.
- Geneva man: They also smell of mothballs. When were they issued? This morning? What do you do for heat in this barrack? No stove.
- German Lieutenant: The men here used it as a trap door, so we had to remove it temporarily.
- Geneva man: How long is temporarily? I trust not until July.
- Sgt. Schulz: [after confiscating the POWs' radio] Hoffy, I'm very sorry about the mousetrap, but the war news are very depressing anyway, huh?
- [speaking German to another guard]
- Sgt. Schulz: I might as well also confiscate the antenna.
- Hoffy: I called a meeting of the barracks chiefs this morning, Sefton. I thought maybe I could get you transferred to another barracks. But it turns out that nobody likes you any more than we do.
- Sefton: So you're stuck with me, huh?
- Animal: Maybe the Russian broads would take him.
- Shapiro: Not with that kisser. Not anymore.
- Duke: You got off lucky last night, Sefton. One more move, and you'll wake up with your throat cut!
- Price: You listening, Sefton?
- Sefton: Yeah, I still got one good ear.