The studio lights were always a bit too bright, even for a documentary crew. I sat there in that high-backed leather chair, decades removed from the gates of Stalag 13, feeling the weight of a different kind of history. The interviewer was young, bright-eyed, and clearly a fan of the reruns. He leaned forward and pulled something out of a small velvet box—a simple, circular piece of glass. It was my monocle. Well, not the original, but a replica a fan had sent in for the occasion.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. Just looking at that little lens brought back the phantom itch in my right eye. People forget that Colonel Klink wasn’t just a character for me; he was a technical challenge. I told the interviewer that when I first signed on, I had two non-negotiable rules: Klink could never, ever succeed in his schemes, and I would never use a string to hold that monocle in place. I wanted the vanity of the man to be his undoing.

We were talking about the chemistry on set, specifically with the late, great Leon Askin, who played General Burkhalter. Leon was a force of nature. When he walked onto a set, the air pressure seemed to change. We were filming a late-season episode where Klink was trying to impress the General with a very refined, very “Prussian” tea service. I had spent hours practicing the art of looking through that glass while maintaining a look of absolute, terrified subservience.

The scene was simple enough. I had to pour the tea, offer a biscuit, and endure Burkhalter’s usual insults about my incompetence. But the studio was sweltering that day. Sweat is the enemy of a monocle. It creates a sort of lubricant that turns a dignified eyepiece into a projectile. I could feel it sliding. I was stiffening my cheek, trying to lock it into my orbit while Leon was leaning in, his face inches from mine, screaming about a missing shipment of bratwurst.

I was determined not to break. I was a classically trained actor, after all. I had performed in the great halls of Europe. I wasn’t going to let a piece of glass defeat me. I took a deep breath, lifted the teapot with a trembling hand, and prepared to deliver my line about the efficiency of the camp.

That’s when it happened.

The monocle didn’t just fall. It launched.

It was as if the glass had finally had enough of being squeezed by my face for six years. Just as I opened my mouth to say, “But Herr General, the security of Stalag 13 is—” the lens popped out with the velocity of a grape shot. It didn’t hit the floor. It didn’t hit my lap. It performed a perfect, high-arcing trajectory and landed with a crystalline plink directly into General Burkhalter’s half-full cup of tea.

For a second, the entire set went dead silent. You could have heard a pin drop in the barracks. Leon Askin, ever the professional, didn’t move a muscle. He just stared down into his tea cup, where my eye was now effectively staring back up at him through the amber liquid.

I should have called for a cut. Any sane actor would have stopped the take. But there was something about the sheer absurdity of the moment that triggered a survival instinct. I didn’t stop. I simply reached over with two fingers, fished the dripping wet monocle out of his tea, wiped it haphazardly on my sleeve, and jammed it back into my eye socket.

The lens was covered in tea and lint. I was effectively blind in my right eye, staring at a blurry, brownish smudge of a General. I cleared my throat and finished the sentence: “—as I was saying, the security is quite airtight.”

Leon’s face turned a shade of purple I didn’t know the human body could produce. His chest began to heave. I saw his shoulders start to shake. He tried to maintain the Burkhalter scowl, but a high-pitched wheeze escaped his throat.

Then, from the shadows behind the camera, we heard it—the unmistakable, booming belly laugh of John Banner. Schultz had been standing off-camera, waiting for his cue, and he just lost it. Once Banner started, the dam broke.

The director, Gene Reynolds, yelled “Cut!” but he was already doubled over his script supervisor’s shoulder. The camera operators were literally shaking the equipment because they were laughing so hard. Leon finally let out a roar of laughter, pointing at my tea-stained face. He kept shouting, “Klink! You are trying to poison the General with your own eye!”

We couldn’t finish the scene for at least forty minutes. Every time I looked at Leon, I would see the image of that monocle sinking into his tea like a tiny submarine. Every time he looked at me, he’d start miming the “plink” sound.

The wardrobe department had to come out and dry my sleeve because I’d wiped so much tea on it. The prop master was worried the tea would damage the lens coating, but I told him it was the first time that monocle had ever been properly baptized.

What made it legendary on the set, though, was what happened the next day. I walked into the commissary for lunch, and the entire crew—the lighting guys, the grips, the makeup artists—everyone had a small circular piece of paper taped over one eye. As I walked past the tables, they all simultaneously “popped” their paper monocles into their soup bowls.

It became a bit of a ritual after that. Whenever a guest star got too arrogant or a scene got too tense, someone would inevitably make a “plink” sound, and the tension would vanish. It reminded us that no matter how serious the uniforms looked or how high the stakes were in the script, we were ultimately just a bunch of people making each other laugh in a parking lot in Hollywood.

Looking back at that replica in the documentary interview, I realized that Klink’s greatest weapon wasn’t his authority; it was his ability to be the butt of the joke. That monocle falling into the tea was the perfect metaphor for the show. No matter how hard the “villains” tried to keep their dignity, gravity—and a bit of tea—would always bring them down to earth.

I think that’s why we all stayed so close for all those years. You can’t maintain an ego when you’ve fished your own eye out of your boss’s beverage.

Sometimes, the best way to handle a mistake is to just keep pouring the tea and hope for a laugh.

Do you have a favorite “Hogan’s Heroes” moment that still makes you laugh today?