Characters of "Cold Victory" : Jasha

 Jasha is another character who reminds us of the unspeakable horrors the women of Eastern Europe endured at the hands of two dictators. Her husband and son were murdered by Stalin. She was enslaved by Hitler, and then raped by Soviet soldiers. Yet she is not broken and has found a rare soulmate in an aging British Lt. Colonel of Engineers. 

In this excerpt, Jasha prepares for her wedding and reflects on her life.

Jasha looked at herself in the mirror critically. She did not look like a bride. She wore a sleek, three-quarter length gown with matching jacket and hat that while elegant and sophisticated was not bridal. For her first wedding, she’d worn a traditional gown with puffy, white sleeves, and elaborate embroidery on the skirt and bodice that suited her plump and rosy body. But she was not sixteen any more and years as a slave labourer had left her gaunt. Nor was she marrying in a peasant village in White Russia with aunts, uncles and cousins galore. She wasn’t wearing white in the English tradition, either. How could she? She was neither pure nor innocent. She’d chosen instead a dress in a dusty rose colour, ashes-of-roses they called it. That seemed appropriate for a forty-five-year-old widow attempting to start over on the rubble of the past.

The only problem with the dress was that she owned no shoes to go with it; she had borrowed a pair of low, grey heels from Emily. Together they had stuffed handkerchiefs into the toes so she could walk in them without falling out. Hopefully, she reflected, she wasn’t trying to step into shoes too large for her on an abstract as well as a physical level. A quarter of a century ago, the villagers had whispered and fretted because she was marrying the young schoolteacher Jurek. He was a “stranger” and had gone to university, whereas her parents could hardly read or write. The consensus among her neighbours had been that she was getting “above herself” and no good would come of it.

They had been right, Jasha reflected, but not for the reasons they had imagined. Besides, there had been almost twenty good years before calamity struck. Jurek had taken her away from the hidebound village. He’d found jobs in larger towns and bigger schools until he got his wish of living and working in Minsk. Long before they reached Minsk, she had accepted that she would have no additional children after Alojzy was born. She had started working as a cook outside the home to make extra money. With Alojzy to dote on and worry about, it was easy to ignore that she and Jurek spent little time together anymore. The passion between them had definitely cooled, she admitted, and yet, there was nothing fundamentally wrong between them. If — She slammed a door on her thoughts.

Today she was marrying Graham and starting a new life. She was not going to let the ghosts interfere. She was not going to think about what she had lost. She was not going to ask herself whether Jurek or Alojzy would have approved. Nor did she want to think about what happened to her after Stalin murdered her husband and son. She had survived what she called ‘the years of terror’ but at a terrible cost. Yet, as she slipped her rosary into her handbag, she could not forget that a neighbour in Minsk had been sentenced to ten years in the Gulag just for owning one. The scars were there. They always would be. She was simply determined not to let them cripple her.

Emily Priestman called up the stairs, “Are you ready, Jasha? The car is out the front.”

“Yes, I’m coming.”  Jasha picked up the little wicker suitcase with her change of clothes and toiletries. Graham had booked them a room at the Hotel Olympia. She found she was both nervous and excited by the thought of sleeping with him. It was odd how the act of telling Graham about the rapes had freed her of their spell. They had been pushed into that place in in her brain alongside Jurek and Alojzy’s murders and her years as a slave, behind that mental door that she kept locked and barred.

She took the stairs slowly, afraid of falling out of her loose shoes, and found Emily waiting impatiently in the front hall. Yet when Jasha reached the last step, Emily broke into a smile and exclaimed, “You look lovely!”

“Yes?” Jasha asked back uncertainly. “I do not want to shame Graham. He is British officer. I do not want to look like peasant or servant.”

“You look like neither, Jasha,” Emily assured her, meeting her eyes. Then turning around, she pulled a large bouquet of pink roses from the table behind her. “Graham sent you these,” Emily told her as she handed them over, adding with a wink, “I did tell him the colour of your dress.”

They were so big and full that Jasha gasped in wonder. Where had he found roses like these in blockaded Berlin? They could only have come from some royal greenhouse in the West, she thought. Jasha felt tears in her eyes as she buried her nose in the blooms, breathing in their rich scent. Gardening was what had brought them together. Surprising her with a bouquet like this was the perfect gesture. 

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Characters of "Cold Victory" : J.B. Baronowsky, one of the Candy Bombers

J.B. Baronowsky is a former B-17 pilot who flew on the Airlift throughout the fall of 1948. He became involved in the candy drops to Berlin's children, but he has been yanked off the Airlift by his fiance's father. His soon-to-be father-in-law is a senior VP at General Motors, who could lean on his Congressman. 

 In this excerpt, J.B. listens to the news from Berlin and it triggers an unexpected conversation with his Dad with serious consequences.

J.B. Baronowsky stood in the living room of his parents’ small, single-level house in Ypsilanti, Michigan straining to hear the news crackling over the airwaves. The man speaking was Colonel Howley, the American commandant in Berlin. J.B. knew his voice well because he’d heard it a hundred times over the Armed Forces Network when he was flying the Airlift. Now, although the static made Howley sound like he was a world away, his elation and triumph had survived the trip across the Atlantic. “…a vote for Freedom! Mayor Reuter’s party has improved its hold on power by almost 16%. The SPD won an absolute majority with 64.5% of all votes cast.”

The reporter asked a question that was garbled by static, but Howley answered clearly. “The SPD is a democratic party, firmly committed to fighting Soviet tyranny and aggression. This is the party, remember, that voted unanimously against Hitler in 1933. Mayor Reuter is a courageous leader, and I look forward to working with him more closely than ever in the days and weeks ahead.”

Again, the reporter’s question was unintelligible, but J.B. hung on Howley’s words, “Absolutely, the Airlift will continue! The people of Berlin have made it 100% clear they do not want to be swallowed by the Russian bear. They don’t want to become slaves of Stalin. They’re willing to go without heat in their houses and live with just two hours of electricity a day and to walk to work and eat powdered potatoes, powdered milk and powdered eggs for as long as it takes to make Stalin loosen his hold. Let me tell you, it isn’t easy to live in the cold and the dark on half the food we Americans are used to, but the Berliners prefer that to being prisoners of a system that denies them the right to think for themselves. We could learn a thing or two from these hardy Berliners!”

The reporter thanked the colonel and the station cut off the connection with Berlin to turn to the sports news. J.B. reached up to switch off the radio altogether.

“What are you doing here, J.B.?” His father’s voice caught him by surprise. “I thought you were out with Patty all day?”

J.B. turned to face his father with a guilty shrug and a sheepish grin. “Yeah, I know, I mean — I don’t know. I wanted to hear what had happened in Berlin, and Patty and her folks don’t care. Besides, I needed to get away from them all for a bit.” He shrugged again uncomfortably and then admitted, “I made up an excuse about your car breaking down and how I had to take you and Mom over to grandma’s.”

His father nodded slowly, his expression unreadable, but his eyes were fixed hard on his son. J.B. avoided them, turning away to pick up the jacket he’d carelessly tossed on the sofa when he came in. He pulled the sleeves straight and folded it over his arm.

The elder Baronowsky watched him for a moment and then said in a low voice, “Look, Jay, I know you’re grown up and you don’t have to talk to me about anything. That’s fine. I don’t want to start running your life. But you ain’t been acting like a man who’s about to marry the girl of his dreams.”

“Dad—”

“Wait!” The older Baronowky held up his hand. “Hear me out, son. It’s true that your mom and I never really warmed to Patty, but before you went over to Germany, we agreed that she made you happy. You were pretty hot for her and glowed with pride when she was beside you. Since you came back from Germany, I don’t sense that same excitement or passion any more. I don’t see much swagger in having such a swanky girl almost in the sack, either. Did something change while you were in Germany?”

“I didn’t have an affair, if that’s what you’re asking!” J.B. snapped back defensively.

“Hadn’t even thought of that. I just asked if anything had changed.”

J.B. couldn’t meet his father’s penetrating eyes. He looked down and then sank onto the sagging sofa. His eyes were fixed on the old coffee table. Stains of countless cold drinks that had perspired into the wood marred the surface, yet all he saw was Kathleen coming out of the fog towards him. For his father, he shook his head and said slowly, “Nothing specific, Dad.”

His father went around to the other side of the coffee table and sat down. “Want to talk about it?”

J.B. drew a deep breath. It would have been easy to brush the old man off, to say it wasn’t any of his business or it wasn’t important. But it was. He’d hoped that being back with Patty again would make him forget Berlin and Kathleen. Instead, the more he was with Patty, the more he missed what he’d left behind. He tried to put his feelings into words his father would understand. “We were doing something good over there, Dad. I was glad to be part of it. Somehow, choosing drapes for our apartment and selecting the music for the band at the wedding just doesn’t seem very important.”

“No, but if you loved Patty, you’d still find it all kinda cute,” his father suggested.

“Are you saying I don’t love Patty?” J.B. gasped out.

“Do you?”

J.B. dropped his head in his hands and scratched at his scalp with his fingernails. Without looking up, he muttered, “All she seems to care about is how things look. It’s all about appearances. Does this match that? What’s the latest fashion? What colour is in vogue now? What will the neighbours think of this or that? And the bigger the price tag, the better it is. Is that right, Dad? Is life just about money and fashion and prestige?” He looked up to meet his father’s eyes.

The elder Baronowsky didn’t answer. Instead, he stood, went over to the sideboard, and pulled out a bottle of vodka and two glasses. He filled the glasses, brought them back to the sofa and nudged his son with one hand.  

J.B. took the offered glass but didn’t drink. Instead, he put it on the table and tried to explain, “I’ve tried to tell her about Berlin — the conditions people live in, the way the kids went wild when we dropped the candy, the presents they and their mothers gave us — handmade things like knitted socks or old books and lace napkins, anything that had survived the bombing. They didn’t have enough to eat, but they kept trying to give us presents!” Although he sounded exasperated, what he wanted was for other people to feel the same amazement and incomprehension that he did. Instead, most people just said something meaningless like: “That was nice of them.” Patty, on the other hand, had responded with, “I hope you didn’t keep any of that junk! We don’t want to clutter up our beautiful house with dirty, old stuff.”

His dad’s response took him by surprise. “The Poles would have treated you the same way. In Europe, you never take anything without giving a gift in return. If someone invites you to dinner, you bring them flowers or wine. If someone gives you a birthday present, you offer them coffee and cake. Because you are bringing the supplies in, the Berliners want to give you something back. Otherwise, they would feel humiliated.”

“That’s it! That’s just what it is!” J.B. exclaimed. It was a relief to have the mystery solved and he wondered why he hadn’t talked to his dad about this earlier. “I think the biggest thing I learned is that they weren’t all Nazis. … Most of the Germans — just like most Americans — didn’t care much about politics until it was too late. …  It’s because of what the Nazis did that the Berliners don’t want to bow to Stalin. They know what a dictatorship is, and they’ve had enough. Helping them is the right thing to do. That’s why I’d rather be flying the Airlift than designing trucks for GM.”

His father nodded and asked the question J.B. dreaded, “And Patty? Where does Patty fit into all this?”

“I don’t know! She certainly doesn’t want to hear about Germany or Berlin or what I did there. She doesn’t care about any of it.” J.B. took a deep breath and admitted, “Sometimes, I get the feeling that she doesn’t care all that much about me, either. I’m just part of the furniture. I have the right looks to fit into her living room — yeah, maybe her bedroom too — but is that all I am? A body to put into her perfect home and bring home the bucks so she can live in style?”

“Don’t marry her, Jay.”

Despite his complaining, the answer shook J.B. “Hey, Dad! That’s pretty stiff medicine! She’s made wedding plans — a second time now! Her family has spent a fortune on a wedding gown, shoes, flowers, band, catering and all that—”

“No one asked them to,” the senior Baronowsky reminded his son. “That was their choice.”

“Yeah, I know, but she’s been patient while I was away. If I break up with her now, she’ll go to pieces!” It was a frightening scenario.

“Listen to me, Jay,” his father interrupted his thoughts. “It’s the rest of your life you’re talking about. If you aren’t crazy about her now, you ain’t gonna be crazy about her after she’s gained forty pounds and is spending your money like it was water.”

True, J.B. thought, but if he broke things off he’d trigger a tempest of recriminations.

His father hadn’t finished, “I know divorce is becoming fashionable in some circles, but the Church does not recognise it. In the eyes of God, once you give your vows to Patty and take her to your bed, you are bound to her and her alone — forsaking all others — until death takes one or the other of you. You may sin. A lot of men do. But you will never be free of her to find a woman who could make you happy. She will make you miserable, Jay — your whole life long.”

J.B. dropped his head in his hands again. Then he noticed the untouched vodka, picked up the glass and threw the alcohol down his gullet with one toss. Shaking his head, he addressed his dad, “If I break off with Patty, that snazzy job at GM goes up in smoke, too.”

“I thought you just told me you’d rather be flying the airlift than designing trucks?”

J.B. opened and closed his mouth, swallowed, and then pushed the shot glass across the table, “Can I have some more of that?”

His father got up, poured them both another shot of vodka and handed J.B. his glass. Still standing, he reminded his sitting son, “You never wanted that job, Jay. You wanted the job at the Michigan Aeronautical Research Centre.”

“Yeah, but that job’s long gone, Dad. They gave it to their next best candidate as soon as I turned them down.”

“So, you can go back on active duty with the USAF. I know!” His dad held up both hands as if in surrender. “They pay peanuts! Still, you could volunteer to go back on the Airlift.”

J.B. looked down at the table. Kathleen was coming at him out of the fog, and in the background, the kids were waving wildly in happiness.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?” his father drummed the message home.

“Yeah,” J.B. admitted, looking up at him.

“Then don’t let something as inconsequential as a dumb blonde and her temper tantrum get in your way. You’ve got more important things to do with your life, Jay.”

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Characters of "Cold Victory" : Alexandra "Alix" von Feldburg

 Alexandra "Alix" Baroness von Feldburg is the daughter of a German diplomat and the widow of a leading member of the German Resistance to Hitler. Readers of my novel about the German Resistance, Traitors for the Sake of Humanity, will recognize her. She returns in "Cold Victory" in her capacity as a lawyer, who has made her reputation assisting the prosecution at Nuremberg.

 

In this excerpt, she arrives in Berlin for the first time since the war and is confronted with her memories. 

Alix had lived through Bomber Harris’ ‘Battle of Berlin’ — on the ground. For the second half of 1944, when she was on the run from the Gestapo after the failed coup attempt of 20 July, she had spent much of her time hiding in closets and behind false walls, cowering in cupboards and lying under beds sometimes for hours. She was wanted for treason and had been given refuge by courageous men and women who allowed her to hide in their apartments, sometimes for only a few days, sometimes for a couple of weeks. Yet she had to keep moving, and without being registered at any residence, she could not appear in the air raid shelter without arousing suspicion. Staying above ground during air raids, on the other hand, became so dangerous that she decided to leave Berlin. She went first to a pig farm near Dessau, where she had disguised herself as a slave labourer for almost four months. From there, she made her way to Braunschweig where she had been able to turn herself over to American troops in the closing days of the war.

Her last memories of Berlin were of a city in flames. She had intentionally planned her escape from the city during an air raid because the raid disrupted normal traffic patterns and distracted the attention of the authorities. She had hidden herself aboard a supply train bound for the Western Front. The Allies targeted railheads, and the Reichsbahn did not want their precious cargo of munitions to be found by the RAF bombers. So, the train had crawled out of the city at a pace intended to be too slow for detection from the air. That had enabled her to climb aboard unseen — and prolonged the agony of uncertainty as the bombs rained down.

Yet for all the destruction she had witnessed on the ground, she was not prepared for the carpet of destruction spread out before her as they flew toward the city centre. Before they had reached the worst-hit areas, however, they banked to the right and started to follow the Havel. David shouted above the engines that it was time for her to return to her seat and put her seatbelt on. Alix obeyed in a daze. She'd underestimated how traumatic a return to Berlin would be.

Now she found herself wondering if she could cope. She had told Christian from the start that she would not set foot in the apartment house where she had lived with Philip and where he had killed himself. Christian had arranged for her to live somewhere else. But if she was in Berlin, didn’t she have an obligation to find out what had happened to her parent’s home? Both her parents were dead; her mother had died of heart failure while working in a munitions factory early in 1945, and her father had been shot for desertion during the assault on Berlin. However, her sister Grete was living with relatives in Marburg and her brother Rudi had returned from Soviet imprisonment without his legs; he was in a rehabilitation centre near Kassel. They might want to live in the family home in the future or they might want to sell or rent it — if it was still standing. To find out if it had survived, she would have to visit her childhood neighbourhood and face the memories….

And then there was the Bendlerblock where she had worked so many long, hard and yet rewarding hours. There she had met and forged friendships with the most determined and unwavering opponents of Hitler’s criminal regime — Generaloberst Beck, General Olbricht, General von Treschow — and Philip. Someone said there was a small memorial in the courtyard, marking where Olbricht, Stauffenberg and the others had been executed. She felt she ought to lay a wreath or at least a rose on that spot — yet dreaded the thought of treading the cobbles where such honourable men had been shot without trial. How could she stand where their blood had flowed, cooled and then been scrubbed away by some indignant and ardent supporter of Hitler?

Or what if she had business with subsidiary organs of the Allied Control Council and had to visit the building where the so-called “People’s Court” had held kangaroo trials of those involved in the coup attempt? Where Roland Freisler and his fellow Nationalist Socialist ‘judges’ and lawyers had taunted, ridiculed and condemned her beloved Uncle Erich and so many others because they wanted to restore the rule of law and protect human dignity and rights?

As the tyres squealed under her feet at landing, Alix had a moment of panic. She didn’t want to be here!

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Characters of "Cold Victory:" GALYNA NICOLAEVNA BORISENKO

Galyna, a Ukrainian-born WAAF, is playing a dangerous game. When she was still a child, her idealistic and loyal Communist father was arrested for 'treason' and disappeared.  Her mother's second husband, a senior officer in the Soviet Secret Police, helped her to leave the Soviet Union and join her grandmother in exile. Now she is a translator at RAF Gatow, and the Soviet Secret Police think they know how to make Galyna spy for them. Galyna hopes to outsmart them.

 

 

In this excerpt, Galyna meets with her mother and step-father in their home in Potsdam for the first time after being 'recruited' as a Soviet spy.

WAAF Corporal Galyna Nikolaevna Borisenko was so frightened that her hands were trembling. That made the teacup rattle in the saucer, and her stepfather Maxim Dmitrivich Ratanov smiled faintly in satisfaction.

Seeing that he had noticed, Galyna lashed out at him, “Don’t think that betraying my colleagues and my adopted country is easy for me! Say what you like, the British gave me refuge. They gave me an education, training and status. I’ve been happy in the WAAF.” She threw this last remark at her mother, who sat at the head of the low table commanding the samovar.  Lovely if mismatched antiques surrounded the trio. The furnishings had been stuffed into the dilapidated and damp rooms of the Rote Haus am Neuen Garten, which once upon a time had housed the head gardener of the Prussian kings. In May 1945, it had been taken over by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany and, more recently, assigned to Colonel Maxim Dmitrivich of the Soviet Secret Police. The brick house snuggled under willows on the banks of the Heilegen See in Potsdam, and the windows should have revealed the calm waters of the shallow lake. Instead, they were draped in fog.

In the past, Galyna’s mother, Anastasia Sergeyevna, had ridiculed Galyna for her service uniform, saying it made her look fat. Likewise, Anastasia had dismissed the possibility that Galyna could find friends among the ‘cold’ British. Now, she tried to calm her daughter with a patronizing, “Of course, of course, you had no choice but to make the best of things, but now you can do something truly valuable.”

“Don’t talk that Communist rot with me!” Galyna shot back. “I’m not a child or an idiot! I saw with my own eyes what collectivisation did! I know the so-called Kulaks had nothing left, and yet you stole every last crumb from them, even their seed grain! And when you had taken everything, you still demanded deliveries of food! You drove them to cannibalism!” Galyna spoke passionately, causing her mother to recoil and her stepfather to raise his eyebrows. Galyna turned on him to declare in a calmer but more contemptuous voice, “I haven’t forgotten that Stalin was happy to betray millions to Hitler, either. I don’t believe black is white just because Stalin says it is!”

“You can believe whatever you like,” Ratanov answered laconically, his eyes half closed. “But Stalin is always right.” He paused before adding, “Because he silences anyone who says he is wrong.”

“And you are proud to serve a monster like that?” Galyna challenged him.

“You sound just like you did at 15 when I sent you to live with your grandmother in Finland. I’d expected you to have grown up by now.” His tone was cold and derisive.

“I’m only here to help my father. You said that if I cooperated, the terms of his arrest would be improved.”

Ratanov’s eyebrows twitched. Galyna wasn’t sure if he approved her spirit or pitied her naivety. He said nothing.

In accordance with the advice given her by the RAF intelligence officer Ft/Lt Boyd at Gatow, Galyna continued to stress her reluctance to cooperate, “Don’t think I’m an idiot. I’m not going to help you until I’ve seen proof that my father is still alive. I demand to see a recent photo of him!”

Ratanov shrugged and dismissed the request with a bald, “I don’t have one.”

“Then get one.”

“Or what?” he sneered.

“I will return to Gatow and get on the next plane back to England.”

“You won’t get as far as the Glienike Bridge,” Ratanov told her with a shrug.

Galyna had been warned to expect this kind of threat, and she had planned her response. She turned to her mother and asked, “Will you just sit there, Anastasia Sergeyevna? Will you let your husband threaten your daughter? Will you let him seize and torture me as you let him torture and deport my father? Is that the value of your motherly love?”

“Don’t be foolish and cruel!” Anastasia retorted hotly. “Maxim would never harm you. We only want you to understand the importance of being on the right side of history. The forces of Imperialism are doomed. Progress is unstoppable. The Socialist Motherland has conquered Hitler and humiliated the corrupt imperialist powers. All across Eastern Europe, people have been liberated —”

“Enslaved. Shot. Deported,” Galyna shot back in sincere anger.

“Propaganda. Lies and propaganda. Only reactionary elements have been shot, and of course, the Germans had to be deported along with the Poles. We’ve seen how untrustworthy ethnic minorities are. They stab you in the back as soon as they get the chance.”

“Including the Ukrainians?” Galyna asked, lifting her eyebrows.

Her mother frowned. “Ukraine is a Soviet Republic, and it should be the home of all Ukrainians. There is no reason for Ukrainians to live in Poland or White Russia or Russia. Besides, that is not the point. Socialism brings prosperity —”

“Is that the term you use for famine?”

“Stop acting like a stupid fool!” Ratanov interrupted the exchange. “You are here to give us information about Gatow, not talk back to your mother like an impudent teenager.”

“Not until I know my father is still alive and that my treason will serve a purpose,” Galyna countered, her voice was firm even if her face was red and her hand still trembled.

“Your treason serves the Socialist Motherland and Progressive forces all over the world.”

“I don’t care. I care only about my father. I will not assist you unless you provide proof that my father is still alive.”

“Very well,” Ratanov snapped. “I will request a photo from the appropriate authorities. You will see it next time we meet. For now, I would urge you to think more realistically about your situation. We have discarded the German puppets of the Western warmongers who claimed to govern Berlin, and we have replaced them with reliable men loyal to us.”

“The Berliners do not recognise your Opera government. They plan to elect a government two days from now.”

Ratanov snorted and made a dismissive gesture. “The Western warmongers may try to gain legitimisation for their terror tactics by staging these so-called elections, but it will do them no good. We have things under control. Most people will stay at home. What do they have to gain by voting? They now have a competent and reliable city government determined to improve living standards rather than starve them to death! The Berliners want bread, peace and unity — not terror bombers day and night and isolation from their brothers and sisters in the surrounding countryside.”

Galyna glared at him. She didn’t know any Germans and had no way of knowing what the Berliners wanted, much less if or how they would vote.

“And don’t think your employer,” (Ratanov turned the word ‘employer’ into a term of derision) “will be saved by the Amis either. Colonel Howley and General Clay will soon be sent home in disgrace.  The American president understands that he must come to terms with Stalin, and he wants hotheads like Clay and Howley to disappear—”

“Although I can’t expect someone like you to understand,” Galyna interrupted him, “that doesn’t happen in America. Texas isn’t Siberia. American generals don’t get shot or ‘disappear’—”

“Believe that if you want to, but they can still be withdrawn from Berlin — and they will be. You can’t be so stupid as to believe your bankrupt and weary old Empire will remain here after the Americans have left, can you?” He snorted to show the question was rhetorical.

Galyna got to her feet. “If the Airlift is about to be called off, then Gatow is of no value and you don’t need my services, so I think I’ll leave now.”

“But you only had one piece of cake!” Anastasia protested.

“You keep telling me how fat I look,” Galyna countered with a saccharine smile, “It’s better if I eat less.” To her stepfather, she added. “When you have that photo of my father, let me know. I’m not coming again until I know my father is still alive and my cooperation with you has a purpose that I care about.” She snatched up her handbag and greatcoat from the chair near the door and disappeared into the fog.

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Characters of "Cold Victory" : CHARLOTTE WALMSDORF

 Charlotte Walmsdorf is a victim of the war. Her brothers were both killed fighting for Hitler, and her fiancee went missing. Her parents were killed by a strafing Soviet fighter. The family home was overrun by the Red Army and turned over to Polish refugees. She was gang raped by Soviet soldiers in the closing days of the war. Yet she survived and struggled to make a living, first as a journalist, then teaching English, and finally running the office of Air Ambulance International. She also fell in love with David Goldman and everything seemed to be getting better -- until her fiancee returned from Siberia.

In this excerpt, Charlotte drags herself through another day, which seems to her like everyday of the rest of her life.  She is living with her cousin, Christian, in his apartment in the American Sector in Berlin; her fiancee Fritz has moved into the guest bedroom since his unexpected return from a Russian prison camp.

Waiting in line for rations had taken five hours and forty minutes today. Charlotte was chilled to the bone despite wearing her dead brother’s Wehrmacht greatcoat over her mother’s thickest jumper and woollen underwear. Her feet were sore from standing so long, too. As she dragged herself back in the direction of the apartment house, she shuffled more like a woman in her sixties than in her thirties, and she did not want to think about the future.

On the blank brick wall exposed by the collapse of the house in an air raid, two young men were busy tearing down the SPD posters that had been put up the day before. Charlotte looked at them warily, prepared to make a run for her apartment building, but they were too thin and shabby to be Russians. She relaxed enough to watch them roll out a new poster and affix it to the wall with their glue-soaked brushes. It was a photo of Berlin burning after an air raid. In large red letters dripping red drops to suggest blood, it read: “Voting strengthens the warmongers! Voting means more night bombing!”

As if Hitler hadn’t started the war! As if Stalin hadn’t been his friend!

She had watched the youths for too long. One of them noticed her. “Hey! Frau! Do you live around here?”

“What business is that of yours!” She answered, turning to hurry away.

He shouted after her. “This block of houses has already been allocated to the Red Army. They’ll move in before the New Year. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to make them feel warmly welcome!” He and his companion laughed.

Charlotte fled, trying to tell herself it was just empty threats and intimidation. “Bullying” was the word David would have used.

The thought of David almost made her stumble. David, David, David. He had given her the practical, thick-soled, warm shoes on her feet and the soft woollen gloves on her hands. Most of all he had given her back the will and a reason to live. Charlotte had hoped this Christmas would be filled with thankfulness and joy for the first time in five years, but that dream had shattered with Fritz’s return.

She paused before the door of her apartment house and looked up toward the top floor. Fritz was up there now, waiting for her and the rations. She wished she didn’t have to go up to him. Even queuing in the cold was better than being with Fritz. He watched her every move and his eyes seemed to take her clothes off and seek to penetrate her soul at the same time. He pressured her to tell him everything that had happened since they parted in the autumn of 1942.

She’d told him what she could: what it had been like in Silesia on her father’s estate with only women and prisoners of war as labourers. She’d tried to describe what it was like as the front came closer and the refugees swept through, full of horror stories about Russian atrocities.  She informed him of her brothers’ deaths and explained her father’s decision to flee by horse-cart. She’d forced herself to recount how the strafing Soviet fighter had killed both her parents, her mother’s maid and one of the horses. She’d attempted to convey how numb and hopeless she’d felt when she arrived in Berlin. She’d tried to make him understand her relief at being given refuge in her cousin’s house. Yet when she admitted that her cousin had been part of the plot against Hitler, Fritz had spat out “treasonous filth!” and she had said no more.

That didn’t stop Fritz from trying to drag more information out of her. He’d asked her what happened after the war, but she kept her answers vague. She claimed she’d survived as a freelance journalist, which was partially true, but she hadn’t breathed a word about Air Ambulance International — or David, of course.

What was the point? She’d broken off with David, admitting to herself that her hopes for a life with him had been a fantasy. He didn’t know about the rapes. He would never have married her after he found out.

Drawing a deep breath, she put down the string bag with the rations, took out her key and unlocked the front door. Once inside, she started wearily up the shallow stairs. In the dark of the unlighted interior (there would be no electricity in this part of the city until six am tomorrow), fear closed around her like a stagnant fog. Those young men had said the Red Army would move in as soon as the Western Allies withdrew. Everyone queuing for rations had been talking about how the Amis and Brits would pull out after the election. Not enough planes were getting through. Food reserves were running out. Rations could not be cut any more. Some people claimed that the announced evacuation of children and chronically ill was a sham. What was really happening, they said, was that the Allies were sending their own children home. The Allied troops would be on the last planes out, and then all of Berlin would belong to the Ivans again.

Charlotte stopped on the landing to get hold of herself. Her heart was pounding not from exertion but from fear. She would not let them do it to her again. Her cousin Christian had given her a pistol, one of several he’d bought on the black market. She had a dozen bullets as well. She would kill herself rather than let them touch her again.

Sometimes, she indulged in imagining what it would be like to kill one or two of them first. She would aim for their faces. Once upon a time, when she had been the daughter of a count with a large estate and had gone hunting with her brothers, she had been a good shot. She was not unfamiliar or uncomfortable with guns. If they were trying to come in the front door, she could position herself in the doorway of the corner room, just three or four metres away. From there, with them confined in the hall and silhouetted against the light on the landing, she thought she could hit them in the face. Out of hate. Out of revenge.

But she mustn’t think about it, she told herself. It was bad enough that her thoughts rotated around this final moment of her life in the dark of her sleepless nights.

She continued up the stairs to the fourth floor and again put down the bag of rations to let herself into the apartment. The interior was dark, silent and icy cold. They did not have enough coal to heat anything except the kitchen oven, and that for only a couple of hours a day. Charlotte could see her breath.

The sound of the door clunking shut behind her provoked a growl from the far end of the hall. “Is that you, Lotte? Where have you been?” Fritz demanded, adding in a self-pitying tone, “I’ve been waiting for you for hours!”

“Yes, Fritz, it’s me!” Charlotte answered, trying to sound cheerful. “I told you I was going out to get our rations.”

“That was hours ago!” Fritz complained, limping to stand in the doorway of the “Berliner Room” that occupied the corner of the house. “Don’t you realise I can’t do anything without your help!”

It was too dark to see more than his shape, but Charlotte could picture him all too well: the way his left eye couldn’t stay focused and drifted off to the side; his mouth with only half his teeth and the others rotting and stinking horribly; the mutilated right hand with only two remaining fingers with perpetually filthy nails. Christian and she had found clothes to replace the rags he’d arrived in, but they had no hot water to give him a proper bath. Although Christian had made him strip down and stand in the tub to be sponged off with water heated in the kettle, the stink of the Gulag clung to him.

“The lines are very long,” Charlotte explained. “I had to wait five hours and forty minutes.”

“Arrogant bastards,” Fritz snarled.

“They’re doing the best they can,” Charlotte reminded him.

“Really? In that case, they’re incompetent fools. Bumbling idiots! We could organise things much better!”

“What do you mean?” The question cracked like a gunshot from Christian, who stepped out of the front salon. He lived there now that Fritz had moved into the second bedroom.

“People never had to wait in long lines for rations in German-occupied territory. Everything was properly organised and went like clockwork!” Fritz bragged.

“Right into the gas chambers!” Christian flung back, adding, “Nobody stood in line for rations because we killed or deported them instead.”

“I should have known a traitor like you wouldn’t be proud of his country!”

“You’re proud of murdering millions?”

“Stop it!” Charlotte shouted. “Stop it!” It was directed at both of them.

“This is my house,” Christian answered in a tone of voice his subordinates in the Luftwaffe would have recognised. “I’ll say what I please.”

“Don’t, Christian! Please don’t!” Charlotte pleaded, tears forming in her eyes. She dropped the rations and, pushing past Fritz, ran to her room at the far end of the hall, slamming the door. Behind her, the angry voices of Christian and Fritz exchanging insults continued. She flung herself onto the bed, covered her head with her pillow and started sobbing. Part of her wondered if she should bother waiting for the Ivans to come. Maybe she should just shoot herself now? 

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Characters of "Cold Victory " - Wing Commander Robin Priestman

 Cold Victory has a large and diverse cast. There is no one character who dominates the book and deserves the title of "main protagonist." Nevertheless, as the senior officer at RAF Gatow -- at this time in history the business airfield in the entire world -- Robin does take precedence of the others. Besides, he's was the hero of "Where Eagles Never Flew" and is familiar to my loyal readers as a Battle of Britain ace and squadron leader.

 

This excerpt is the first scene in which Robin appears in Cold Victory and highlights the situation he finds himself in at the the start of the book. 

The drizzling rain from the low overcast sky suited Wing Commander Robin Priestman’s mood. Although somewhat better than the dense fog of the previous few days, the ceiling was still too low to allow a return to full operations. The tower was landing aircraft with ground-controlled approach (GCA) once every five instead of once every three minutes, and due to worse weather at the departure fields, there were intermittent gaps in the incoming traffic.

Hearing the silence, Robin left his desk and went to gaze into the gloom. Spread out directly before his window were the hangars and hardstandings where the aircraft off-loaded inbound cargoes and a couple of the civilian charter aircraft loaded outbound cargoes. Further in the distance were the parallel runways, one surfaced with pierced-steel-plate or PSP for take-offs and one made of concrete and surfaced with tarmac for landings. Roughly two dozen Yorks were being off-loaded just below his window, while a squadron of Dakotas was drawn up beyond the farthest runway preparing to embark children bound for the West. But no aircraft were moving.

Robin sighed. He was no longer the station commander, merely the “acting station commander” until his replacement arrived. He could not allow that subtle change to alter his efficiency or his outward appearance and behaviour. He had been careful to arrive sharply at 7:30 am as usual. He had dressed in his best blues with his shoes polished to a shine and the creases of his trousers smartly pressed. He attempted to look and sound cheerful whenever he interacted with other personnel.  

In the privacy of his office, however, it was hard to maintain that façade of normality. Although he had accepted the assignment to Berlin reluctantly, in the eleven months since his arrival, his lingering wartime hostility toward the Germans had melted away. In its place, first mistrust and then gradually hatred of the Russians had taken root. He had come to see Stalin as every bit as bad as Hitler — if not worse. Stalin had institutionalised inhumanity and was actively trying to spread his reign of terror to the whole of Germany and ultimately the rest of Europe. He had to be stopped. As a result, with each day of the Airlift, Robin’s commitment to aiding the besieged Berliners had grown. It had long since reached the point where his work here was not a job but a mission. Only, as of Sunday, it was not his mission any more.

There was a knock on the door, and he called “Come in” over his shoulder. Flight Lieutenant Boyd, the intelligence officer, entered. “I’ve got today’s papers for you, sir.”

Robin returned to his desk but remained standing as Boyd spread the press clippings out in front of him. Most of the headlines declared “SED Putsch!” or “Attempted Communist Coup!” He also noticed an article headed with the words: “Mayor Reuter requests Allied protection.” According to the translations tacked to the Soviet-controlled newspapers, the tone in the Eastern media was triumphant: “Workers and Farmers End Tyrannical Government,” “Capitalist Puppets Thrown Out!” “Democratically Elected Council Boots Out Reuter Terror-Clique!”

“I’d like to draw your attention to the following item,” Boyd continued his briefing by pointing to one of the clippings. “In this article, the Soviet Military Administration promises to increase coal rations and to provide 250 grams of chocolate per household per month to those registered in the East.”

Robin snorted, then with a glance at his intelligence officer, he asked, “Do you think many West Berliners will take the bait and register in the East for the sake of a little more coal?”

“It’s hard to know,” Boyd admitted. “Everyone I’ve been able to talk to scoffs at the idea — pointing out that it highlights Soviet stinginess and contempt. But it’s the people I can’t talk to who may be inclined to take up the offer.”

“Not that it hurts us in any way,” Robin reflected. “The more coal the Berliners get from the Soviets, the less we need to fly in. As for the chocolate….” He shrugged. “Why would any child want Russian chocolate when American chocolate rains down on them from the skies?”

“My view exactly. You may be more interested in this piece.” Boyd indicated an article he had circled. “The SED’s counter-mayor has promised to give workers a 30% pay rise while declaring his intention to expropriate all factories and businesses employing more than five people.”

“At least he’s honest and open about it. Anything else I need to know?”

“Not just now, sir,” Boyd replied. Robin thanked him and the flight lieutenant withdrew.

Before Robin could settle into his work, however, there was another knock. This time the head that looked in was that of Lt. Colonel Graham Russell of the Corps of Royal Engineers. Graham was not his subordinate; he was a friend.

“Got a minute, Robin?” Graham asked.

“For you, yes,” Robin answered.

Graham closed the door behind him and advanced across the room to stand just in front of Robin’s desk. “I had to talk to you because I’ve heard a terrible rumour at Army HQ.”

Robin raised his eyebrows.

“Herbert made an off-hand remark that you were on our way out. Surely that isn’t true?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“But why?” Graham sounded stunned.

“Because I went ahead with the evacuation of the children and other vulnerable citizens without clearing it through Group Captain Bagshot.”

“But the Berlin City Government requested the evacuations?”

“Correct.”

“I must be missing something,” Graham admitted and looked at Robin expectantly.

“General Herbert is Commandant of the British Sector of Berlin. He has no authority over the Airlift. He asked General Tunner to handle the evacuations and Tunner said ‘no,’ but gave explicit permission for the RAF to do whatever it liked. Herbert asked me for RAF action, bypassing Bagshot, and I agreed without clearing it. Bagshot, unsurprisingly, was livid about my breach of military protocol and sacked me on the spot.”

“Did he order the evacuations halted?”

“Even he recognised that I’d made that impossible by my promise to the City Council and by starting the evacuations on a large scale before running cameras. Which is why, no doubt, he was so determined to have my head.”

“I can’t say how sorry I am about this. Your friendship, Emily’s hospitality — it has meant the world to me,” Graham stammered out. [...]  "I can’t believe you’re being cashiered for doing what General Herbert asked you to do. Does this mean you could face additional unpleasantness?”

Robin drew a deep breath, “It could. The Air Ministry doesn’t like ‘insubordinate officers’ and I may be handed a bowler hat instead of a new assignment.” Robin tried to keep his voice as neutral as possible, but Graham saw through him. They were alike in this; the service was their life.

Graham asked in a low voice, “Do you regret it, Robin?”

“Not for a moment. Look out there, Graham.” He pointed toward the row of Dakotas and the dilapidated Berlin buses disgorging children beside them. “Every child that gets out of Berlin today is one who will not be subject to Stalin’s terror tomorrow. Every child boarding those Daks will have a chance to grow up without the fear of famine or arrest or a trip to the Gulag.”

Graham nodded grimly. Eleven days in Soviet detention had convinced him that the worst rumours of brainwashing, slave labour and mass murders were true. Graham had learned to fear the Russian bear.

Robin was watching the invariably chaotic embarkation of the children. Despite efforts by teachers and parents to keep the kids quiet and still, they were too excited to do as they were told. Even from this distance, Robin could see children drifting off to look at the planes and saw frantic adults trying to herd them back to the side as a Lancastrian tanker on approach fell out of the cloud and plonked down hard on the runway.

“Do you think the kids appreciate what we’re doing for them?” Graham asked from behind him.

“They understand, Graham,” Robin answered seriously, “they understand more profoundly than you could imagine.” He turned to look back at Graham and asked, “Haven’t you noticed anything unusual on my desk?”

Graham looked blank and then directed his attention to the Station Commander’s desk. It took him a moment before he exclaimed, “The Teddy Bear!”

Robin reached over and took the ragged, threadbare and lopsided stuffed animal from his desk. He looked down into the beady eyes of the toy for a few moments before turning it around and holding it up to face Graham. “Meet Bertie the Bear, a wise veteran of — I’m told — 62 air raids, including one that destroyed the house in which he lived. Bertie, his friend Liesl explained, kept his beloved friend safe day and night, even when the Ivans broke into her apartment and did terrible things to her mummy. Bertie, she said, was the only thing of any value that she could give to me. I tried to convince her that he wanted to stay with her, but she said ‘no.’ She said, ‘You are keeping us safe from the Ivans. I want Bertie to help you, so you can make sure my mummy will not be hurt like that ever again.’”

In the silence following his words, the sound of the rain seemed stronger.

“If I were still station commander, Graham, I would ask permission to increase, not reduce, these evacuations. I would seek to get not just the children and chronically ill people out of Berlin, but the single mothers and some of the youths as well. Did you know the Boy Scouts have asked permission to help off-load the aircraft? Not one of them weighs what they should at their age, but they insisted they could double up to carry ten-pound sacks of coal!”

Graham nodded understanding, and Robin concluded with a defeated shrug, “But I am no longer station commander, and God knows how my successor will feel about the evacuations — or the Berliners themselves.”

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