An important theme of the Bridge to Tomorrow Series is the scars of war and how they affect us for the rest of our lives. No one embodies this more completely than David Goldman -- one of Dr McIndoe's "guinea pigs," who lost his face after his Hurricane engine caught fire in 1940.
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David Goldman is the son of a German-Jewish banker, who got his family out of Nazi Germany in early 1934. David's rich father can finance private flying lessons, and David obtains private and commercial flying licenses in Canada, where his family has settled. In the summer of 1940, David volunteers for the RAF and comes to Britain. He joins a Hurricane squadron and is shot down in flames during the Battle of Britain. It takes years of plastic surgery to recreate a face and hands. In the latter years of the war, David serves as a flying instructor rather than in combat.
After his father leaves him a fortune in 1947, David establishes a private air ambulance company operating a single modified Wellington-bomber. His partners are his wartime friends Kiwi Murray and Emily Priestman. The company is based in RAF Gatow, and when the Russians lay siege to the city, the ground crew refuse to remain in the beleaguered city. David, however, is not prepared to pull out. He not only recognizes that the ambulance is needed more than ever before, he also admires the courage of the Berliners -- and has fallen in love with a German woman, Charlotte Graefin Walmsdorf. He is determined to stay and make the company viable.
Here an excerpt featuring David:
David got to his feet and left the library with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and rich Persian carpets. He wandered into the cheerful winter garden. Until a week ago, the view from here had been of a wide, well-kept lawn stretching to the banks of the Havel River. It had been as lush, green and gracious as his childhood home above the Aussen Alster in Hamburg. With the start of this blockade, however, the Priestman’s Polish cook Jasha had, with the help of the gardener, turned most of it into a massive kitchen garden.
Much as he loved the understated luxury that had characterised the house before this conversion, he found the spirit of endeavour exemplified by the cook and gardener significant. Rather than moaning to the Western Allies about dried eggs, dried milk and dried potatoes — much less rioting as the Soviets had expected — all across the city the Berliners were defiantly digging in and declaring their determination to fight for their freedom. That impressed him. It even inspired him a little. It was part of the inchoate spirit that slumbered under the ruins of this city and made him warm to it despite its hideous face.
After all, his own face had once been hideous too. When he was first delivered to Dr McIndoe’s care after being shot down in September 1940, it had been so repulsive it had made one nurse vomit. As the famous plastic surgeon reconstructed his face one operation at a time, it went through phases when it resembled a Chinese rice paddy, Frankenstein and a Greek theatre mask. Only gradually had it fused and formed itself into something more human. Eventually, it had become supple and marked by wrinkles. Few people nowadays suspected that his eyebrows had been cut from the skin under his arms or that his lips and eyelids were taken from the inside of his thighs. Yet even when his face had been at its most alien, the flame of his being had burned beneath the ugly surface.
Berlin, he thought, might be like that. Disfigured not only by the occupation and the bombing but by the Nazis before that. The Nazis — loud, violent, and aggressive — had obscured and drowned out the others, but they had never represented all of Germany.
Living here had brought back memories of two childhood friends who stood by him after the Nazis came to power. Their memory had been buried under the corpses of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and all the rest. What were two teenage boys distressed by what was happening to their Jewish friend compared to the horrors of Nazi genocide? Yet they had been good to the core, and they were not alone.
People like Ernst Reuter, Berlin’s Social Democratic Mayor, and the city councillor Jakob Liebherr had spent years in a concentration camp because of their opposition to the regime. Christian Freiherr von Feldburg, despite having flown Messerschmitts for the Luftwaffe, hated the Nazis with every bone of his body because they had dishonoured his country. Indeed, Feldburg was bitterly committed to bringing the worst criminals to justice, while proudly reminding the Allies — and the Germans themselves — that not all Germans had been blinded by Nazi propaganda and victories. David had discovered that he wanted to work with men like these who were determined to rebuild a better Germany.
And it wasn’t just the opponents of the Nazis who had won him over. David had also come to sympathize with men like Dr Schlaer, the optometrist who had taken over his uncle’s shop on the Kurfurstendam. Yes, Dr Schlaer had done nothing to stop the SA from breaking the windows. Yes, he’d served as a medic in the Wehrmacht. Yet he remembered David’s uncle with respect and affection and was ashamed of what had been done in the name of Germany. That, David had discovered, was enough. Men like Schlaer would also contribute to a new Germany and David was comfortable helping them.
He knew that the vast majority of Germans had cheered and preened and lapped up Nazi racial ideology. They had loved being “the master race,” predestined to conquer, rule and prosper. He understood that their selfish egotism had enabled the slaughter of millions. He despised the Germans who had swelled with pride when they oppressed others and now wallowed in self-pity because they were themselves oppressed. For such men and women, however, the humiliation of complete defeat and occupation represented sufficient retribution. Their presence no longer deterred David from wanting to remain in Berlin.
Yet the most compelling reason for staying here was Charlotte. David had never felt the same way about any other woman in his life. She was so vulnerable, so fragile despite her height and almost masculine features. From the moment he set eyes on her, he’d felt a protectiveness for her. He wanted to be her knight in shining armour. In the best tradition of chivalry, he wanted to be her servant, obedient to her wishes. Yet she was skittish and shy, and he didn’t know how to approach her. Instead, they danced around what he sensed was a mutual attraction and hid behind their official roles as employer and employee.
Which brought him back to his accounts and the serious situation he found himself in. He turned his back on the re-purposed lawn and returned to the library to face facts. The company had already run up substantial debts before the blockade started, but no sooner had the Soviets made their move than his British ground crew had mutinied and refused to remain in the beleaguered city. His partner Kiwi had flown them back to the UK in their modified Wellington to give them a week to think things over. Aviation jobs, after all, didn’t grow on trees. But David had heard nothing from them since.
Meanwhile, the Berlin City Council was pressing him to resume flights. Jakob Liebherr had called him just this morning to impress on him how urgently the city needed the services of his company — while admitting that they were still unable to pay him. They had again suggested that the company approach the Western military governors with a request for the Allies to cover the cost of evacuating patients.
David was not optimistic about that proposition. The Allies were spending astronomical sums on the Airlift already. He could not imagine them being receptive to a request to compensate a private company.
David is a character in both of the First two volumes of the Bridge to Tomorrow Trilogy
The first battle of the Cold War is about to begin....
Berlin 1948. In the ruins of
Hitler’s capital, former RAF officers, a woman pilot, and the victim of Russian
brutality form an air ambulance company. But the West is on a collision course
with Stalin’s aggression and Berlin is about to become a flashpoint. World War
Three is only a misstep away. Buy Now
Berlin is under siege. More than two million civilians must be supplied by air -- or surrender to Stalin's oppression.
USAF Captain J.B. Baronowsky and RAF Flight
Lieutenant Kit Moran once risked their lives to drop high explosives on Berlin.
They are about to deliver milk, flour and children’s shoes instead. Meanwhile,
two women pilots are flying an air ambulance that carries malnourished and
abandoned children to freedom in the West. Until General Winter deploys on the
side of Russia. Buy now!
Based on historical events, award-winning and best-selling novelist Helena P. Schrader delivers an insightful, exciting and moving tale about how former enemies became friends in the face of Russian aggression — and how close the Berlin Airlift came to failing.
Winning a war with milk, coal and candy!
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