“You have to understand the atmosphere of that set,” Werner says, leaning back and adjusting his glasses.

He is sitting on a stage in North Hollywood for a career retrospective in the early 1990s. The late afternoon sun catches the silver in his hair, and he looks every bit the distinguished musician and intellectual he was in real life.

“We were a group of men who, by all accounts, should have been the last people on earth wearing those uniforms,” he continues. “Leon Askin, John Banner, Robert Clary, myself… we were all Jewish. We had all seen the darkest parts of the century. So, for us, making those characters look like fools was a very serious business.”

The interviewer nods, glancing at the audience. “A fan in the third row actually asked about this earlier. They wanted to know if that ‘bumbling’ energy was always scripted, or if you and John Banner ever truly lost your professional composure on camera.”

Werner laughs, a deep, resonant sound that carries none of Klink’s nervous nasality.

“Oh, we lost it. Frequently. But there is one moment that sticks in my mind like a burr. It was a Tuesday morning on the 40 Acres lot in Culver City. Very early, very cold. We were filming a scene in Klink’s office.”

“I was supposed to be delivering a stern, high-volume reprimand to Schultz because a prisoner had—surprise, surprise—escaped under his watch while he was distracted.”

“John Banner was a wonderful man,” Werner says, his voice softening. “But John also had a very healthy appetite. The studio catering that morning had produced these wonderful, large bratwursts. John, thinking he could save one for a mid-morning snack, had tucked a particularly greasy one into the inside pocket of his heavy guard’s overcoat.”

“He thought the thick wool was enough to hide the bulge. He thought he was being clever.”

“The director, Gene Reynolds, wanted this to be a very tense, very ‘Prussian’ moment. He told me, ‘Werner, I want you to be ice cold. I want Schultz to be terrified.’ So, we started the take. I was pacing. I was shouting. I was clicking my heels so hard I thought my boots would crack.”

“I marched right up to John. I was inches from his nose, screaming about the disgrace he had brought to the Luftwaffe. John was standing there, stiff as a board, eyes wide, doing that wonderful ‘Schultz’ tremble.”

“But then I noticed something. The heat of the studio lights was doing something to the grease on that bratwurst.”

“The pocket was starting to darken. A small, wet spot was appearing right on his chest. John realized it, too. He was trying to suck in his stomach to keep the sausage from sliding, but the more he moved, the more it lubricated its way toward the opening of the pocket.”

“I saw his eyes dart down. I saw his lip quiver. I was right in the middle of a sentence about sending him to the Russian Front, and I could see the tip of the sausage peeking out like a little intruder.”

The bratwurst didn’t just fall; it made a slow, cinematic escape, sliding out of the wool and landing with a wet, heavy ‘thud’ directly on the toe of my highly polished boot.

For a second, the entire stage went silent. You could have heard a pin drop in Stalag 13.

I looked down at my boot. I looked up at John.

John, without missing a beat, looked at the sausage, looked at me, and then slowly—ever so slowly—looked back at the sausage. His eyes were like dinner plates. He didn’t break character for a second. He just did that little whimper in the back of his throat, the one that usually signaled he was about to get into trouble.

Then, he whispered the line. “I… I see nothing.”

The delivery was so perfect, so pathetic, and so poorly timed that I felt my entire chest cave in from the effort of not laughing. I tried to maintain the Klink scowl. I tried to keep my monocle from popping out, which was my usual tell when I was about to break, but the sheer absurdity of the moment was too much.

I managed to choke out, “Schultz… is that a secret weapon of war or your breakfast?”

That was it. The dam broke.

John started shaking, not with fear this time, but with that silent, belly-rolling laughter that he was so famous for. He doubled over, clutching his stomach, while the ‘weapon of war’ remained perched on the toe of my boot.

From behind the camera, I heard a snort. Then another. Then the director, Gene, just put his face in his hands and started howling. The lighting crew, the grips, the script supervisor—everyone was gone. It was total anarchy.

We couldn’t stop. Every time I looked at John, he would just point at my boot and make a little squeaking noise. We had to shut down the set for twenty minutes just to get the floor cleaned and the grease off my leather.

But the best part was the costume department. The head of wardrobe came running out, absolutely horrified. She was clutching her shears and screaming, “Do you know what bratwurst grease does to 1940s-period wool? It’s a disaster!”

John just looked at her, still wiping tears from his eyes, and said, “It doesn’t ruin it, darling. It makes it smell like home!”

It became a legendary story on the lot. For months afterward, if I was getting too serious or if a scene was getting too tense, one of the crew members would sneak a little rubber sausage onto the set. I’d open my desk drawer to pull out a ‘top secret’ map, and there it would be.

It reminded us of why we were there. We were making a comedy about a terrible time in history, and the only way to do that effectively was to never take the ‘villains’ seriously.

If a formidable sergeant like Schultz could be undone by a piece of deli meat, then Klink could be undone by his own vanity. We never let each other get too puffed up or too precious about the work.

I often think about that day when I see the reruns now. I can still feel the phantom weight of that bratwurst on my toe. It was a small moment, completely accidental, but it captured the spirit of that cast perfectly. We were a family, and like any family, we were usually one snack away from total chaos.

John never did manage to eat that sausage. I believe the wardrobe lady confiscated it as evidence of his ‘crimes against fashion.’

But every time I hear him say ‘I see nothing’ on the television now, I know exactly what he’s thinking about. He’s thinking about a greasy boot and a room full of friends who couldn’t stop laughing.

Isn’t it funny how the simplest mistakes are the ones that stay with you the longest?

What’s a small mistake from your past that you still laugh about today?