Werner Klemperer is sitting in a brightly lit studio, years after the final “dismissed” was barked on the set of Stalag 13. He’s leaning back, his hands folded over his knee, looking every bit the sophisticated, soft-spoken musician he actually was in real life. The interviewer, a young man with a digital recorder, slides an old, glossy black-and-white photograph across the table. It’s a candid shot, worn at the edges.

In the photo, Werner is in his full Colonel Klink regalia, sitting at his desk. Next to him, John Banner—the lovable Sergeant Schultz—is doubled over, his hand gripping the edge of the desk for support. They aren’t just smiling; they are in the middle of a total comedic meltdown. Werner’s face is partially obscured by a cloud of white dust, and he’s wearing a look of utter, stunned disbelief.

Werner picks up the photo, his eyes instantly twinkling behind his glasses. He lets out a soft, melodic chuckle that sounds nothing like the shrill Commandant we grew up with. He tells the interviewer that this photo captured the single most chaotic thirty minutes in the history of the show.

He explains that they were filming on a particularly grueling Friday afternoon. Everyone was exhausted. The episode required a simple transition scene: Klink was supposed to be enjoying a gourmet apple strudel at his desk to taunt a hungry, overworked Schultz. The prop department had outdone themselves, sourcing a real, steaming, powdered-sugar-dusted pastry from a local German bakery in North Hollywood.

John Banner, who Werner affectionately describes as a man with a “magnificent appreciation for life’s flavors,” had been eyeing that strudel since the morning rehearsal. Bob Crane and Richard Dawson had noticed John’s fixation. They decided the set needed a little “adjustment” before the final take. Werner knew something was happening because he saw Dawson whispering to the prop master behind a stack of crates.

The director called for quiet. The cameras began to roll. Werner sat at the desk, fork in hand, ready to play the arrogant Klink. John Banner marched in, his nose twitching in character as he smelled the cinnamon and sugar. He was supposed to deliver a report about a missing prisoner, but his eyes were locked on that plate.

Werner took a deep breath, looked John right in the eye, and prepared to take the first bite of the prop.

Everything was perfectly silent.

Werner laughs so hard he has to take a moment to wipe a stray tear from his eye. He tells the interviewer that as soon as his fork touched the golden-brown crust, he felt a strange resistance. It wasn’t the resistance of a pastry. It felt like he had hit a brick wall.

He didn’t want to ruin the take, so he pushed harder. Suddenly, there was a sharp, mechanical twang. The center of the strudel exploded. A small, spring-loaded boxing glove—the kind you find in a joke shop—shot out of the pastry and hit Werner directly in the bridge of his nose. A massive cloud of powdered sugar erupted with it, coating his face, his uniform, and the entire surface of Klink’s desk in a fine, white mist.

The silence on the set lasted for exactly one heartbeat. Then, the soundstage erupted.

Werner describes the reaction of John Banner first. John didn’t just laugh; he collapsed. He was a large man, and the sight of him trying to maintain his military posture while his entire body vibrated with laughter was, as Werner puts it, a feat of physics. John tried to say his famous line, “I see nothing!” but because his lungs were empty from laughing, it came out as a tiny, high-pitched squeak.

He was pointing at the little red glove sticking out of the ruined cake, tears streaming down his face, leaving tracks through the powdered sugar that had drifted onto his own cheeks.

The director, Gene Reynolds, didn’t even yell “cut.” He simply leaned his forehead against the camera crane and let out a long, defeated sigh that eventually turned into a wheeze. Bob Crane and Richard Dawson were already in the shadows, leaning against the wooden walls of the barracks set, clutching their stomachs. They had spent the last hour meticulously hollowing out the bakery strudel and wiring the spring mechanism into the plate.

Werner recalls sitting there in total shock. He was Klink, the man of order and discipline, now looking like he had been caught in a flour mill explosion. He looked down at the tiny boxing glove, which was still wobbling back and forth on its spring.

But the real humor, Werner explains, came from John Banner’s reaction to the loss of the food. Amidst his laughter, John realized the strudel was now inedible. He looked at the mess of sugar and spring-wire with genuine, comedic heartbreak.

“Werner!” John had shouted, his voice cracking. “Look what they did! It was a beautiful strudel! It’s a tragedy! A crime against the culinary arts!”

John actually reached out and tried to brush the sugar off Werner’s sleeve, but because his hands were sweaty from the heat of the lights, he only succeeded in turning the sugar into a thick, white paste. He was essentially breading the Commandant’s arm like a piece of schnitzel.

The crew was in shambles. The lighting technicians were laughing so hard they were shaking the rafters. The script supervisor was doubled over her clipboard. Werner says they tried to reset the scene three different times, but every time John Banner looked at a new, clean plate, he would start to whimper about the one that got away.

He tells the interviewer that the makeup team spent forty-five minutes trying to get the sugar out of his eyebrows. The powdered sugar had settled into the cracks of the desk and the crevices of his uniform. For the rest of the day, every time Werner moved his arms to bark an order, a little puff of white dust would float into the air, causing the entire cast to break character all over again.

The prank became a permanent part of their history. For the next three seasons, the prop department made it a game. John Banner would open a heavy iron safe during a scene, expecting to find top-secret documents, and find a single, tiny red boxing glove sitting on the shelf. Or he would open a lunch tin in the background, and there it would be.

Werner looks back at the photo with a look of pure nostalgia. He explains that the show was a success not just because of the scripts, but because they truly loved being in that room together. He says that John Banner was the heart of that joy. John knew that the world could be a dark place, and he felt it was his personal mission to make sure no one on that set stayed serious for too long.

The powdered sugar incident cost the production about two hours of filming time, which was a lot of money in those days. But Werner tells the interviewer that the producers didn’t even mind. They knew that a happy cast was a productive one, and after that Friday, the energy on the set was electric.

He leans back, his voice softening. He says that even now, whenever he goes to a bakery and sees a strudel, he checks the center for springs. He says he can still hear John’s voice lamenting the waste of a good dessert.

It was a moment of pure, unscripted idiocy that reminded them all they were just grown men playing dress-up. And sometimes, dress-up involves getting hit in the face by a pastry.

It’s a beautiful thing to look back and realize that your best memories of a job are the ones where everything went completely wrong.

Don’t you wish every workday ended with a laugh like that?