The Characters of "Cold War" -- Wing Commander "Robin" Priestman, Station Commander RAF Gatow
Because the Bridge to Tomorrow Series is designed to show the first confrontation of the Cold War from a variety of perspectives, there is no clear protagonist. Nevertheless. no character plays quite as central a role as Robin Priestman. As Station Commander of the RAF Gatow, he is at the very centre of the vortex. His position enables him to see the bigger picture, like an eagle hovering over the entire mess. However, he is not just an observer. He is also an important actor, contributing often subtly yet sometimes decisively in events.
Readers of mybest-selling Battle of Britain novel, "Where Eagles Never Flew" willbe familiar with Robin. That novel opens in May 1940 with Robin, then a flying officer, onhis way to France with the rest of his squadron. It ends roughlysix months later with Robin, an "ace", a squadron leader, and commandinga front-line Hurricane squadron from RAF Tangmere.
The Bridge toTomorrow series picks up Robin's story in late 1947. After serving onMalta in 1942 and leading a fighter wing in 1943, he has spent the last days of thewar in a German POW camp and the first years of peace in a staff position atthe Air Ministry. In Cold Peace, Robin is promoted to wing commander andappointed station commander at RAF Gatow, the small, sleepy, grass airfield inthe British Sector of Berlin. Although he arrives in Berlin hostile to theGermans, he soon recognizes that the real enemy is the Soviet Union.Overcoming bureaucratic inertia, he undertakes construction of a concreterunway at Gatow, and by the time a blockade starts he identifies strongly withthe city of Berlin.
Cold War opens with Robinconfronting the fact that HM government and the United States have committed themselvesto supplying more than two million German civilians by air -- although the infrastructure necessary to fulfill that commitment is woefully inadequate. As the commander of one of the two “receiving” airfields in Berlin he is particularly alarmed by the fact that his concrete runway isn’t finished yet and in blockaded Berlin neither construction equipment nor concrete is available. Another problem is that air traffic controlis an “accident waiting to happen.” In addition to those objective problems, he is confronted with bureaucratic petty mindedness on the part of his direct superior, and then there is the ever-present threat of Soviet sabotage….
Below an excerptfeaturing Wing Commander Priestman:
As he reached for his appointment diary, Sergeant Andrews,the WAAF clerk who ran his office, entered with his morning tea. “Everythingall right this morning, sir?” she asked cheerfully.
“So far,” Priestman answered, just as the ceiling light wentout. They both glanced up towards the light fixture in the centre of the room.
“Must be the bulb,” Andrews suggested, “I’ll callmaintenance.”
But Priestman noted that the sound of the vacuum had cut offat the same instant that the light went out, and he had a sinking feeling. Fromthe hallway came excited jabbering in German. His desk faced the window towardsthe runways, but the windows on the other side of his office looked out overthe rest of the station. Priestman stood and went to look out of these. Just ashe’d dreaded, agitated people were emerging from various buildings. A momentlater the generator for the control tower groaned into operation. “We’ve lostpower all across the station,” he told his secretary in a resigned tone.
“Do you think the construction crews working on the new runwaymight have cut the main line, sir?” Andrews suggested optimistically.
“We can hope,” he answered as he returned to his desk. Withoutbothering to sit down, he reached for the phone, half expecting it to be dead;he was relieved to hear a dialling tone. He rang through to the tower. “Howmany aircraft do you have on approach?”
“Two in Berlin airspace and six in the corridor. All eightaircraft of No. 30 Squadron coming in loaded with flour and other foodstuffs.”
“Get them down. I’ll try to stop the next squadron fromtaking off.”
“Do we know what happened, sir?”
“I can guess.” Priestman hung up. It was one of the bizarreanomalies of the absurd situation in which they found themselves that — althoughGatow received its electricity from the Soviet Sector — power had not been cuton 24 June when the lights went out across the rest of the Western Sectors.Since no one wanted to wake sleeping dogs, the issue had not been raised withthe Soviets. It appeared, however, that the Soviets had just discovered their mistakeand corrected it.
Priestman startedto work through the consequences. The radar generator for the tower might workfor another hour or two, but eventually it would run out of diesel. While theystill had limited reserves of diesel, without power the petrol bowsers wouldnot work, so they would have to refill the generator by hand, which would takea long time. Yet even if they could keep the tower operational, they still neededelectricity for the equipment in the maintenance hangars and to light the flarepath for landings after dark, not to mention lighting for taxiways, hangars,and heat to run the kitchens etc.
The StationAdjutant, Flying Officer “Stan” Stanley, was in the doorway. “Are you awarethat we’ve lost power across the airfield, sir?”
“Yes. Check withLieutenant Colonel Russel about whether his construction crews might havedamaged something. Meanwhile, I’ll find out if incoming flights can be divertedto Tempelhof.” As he spoke, he sat down behind his desk and took up thereceiver again, requesting a connection to Group Captain Bagshot, the RAFAirlift commander.
Priestman wasrelieved to be put through to the senior officer promptly, although Bagshotsounded irritated — as if he didn’t like having to deal with Gatow. “Sir, powerhas been cut to Gatow. We’re talking the airborne aircraft down usinggenerators, but our diesel reserves are limited and, of course, without electricity,almost nothing else works either. Would it be possible for you to diverttraffic to Tempelhof?”
Bagshot gruntedhis displeasure, but agreed, “I’ll see what they can handle, but it won’t beeverything. What the devil caused the power outage and how fast can you get itrepaired?” He made it sound as if he suspected Priestman of some sort of negligence.
“I’m checking onthat now, sir. There’s an outside chance that the runway construction crewdamaged a power cable but given that our power comes from the Soviet Zone, I’mafraid we must assume that the cut was intentional.”
“Did you just saywhat I think you said?” Bagshot sounded incredulous and his Scottish accentbecame particularly thick. “Your power comes from the Soviets?”
“That’s correct.”
“Why didn’t they cutit off before now, then?” Bagshot asked flabbergasted.
“You’ll have toask the SMAD that, sir.”
“Why didn’tanyone tell me about this?”
“I’m sure Imentioned it in your first briefing, sir, but since the Soviets hadn’t cut thepower, it appeared that they did not intend to do so.”
“In other words,you assumed everything would be all right,” Bagshot sneered. “WingCommander” (he stressed the lowly rank of the offender) “Priestman assumed— and was wrong! Don’t you understand that if Gatow has no power, we can callthis whole thing off? It’s impossible for us to supply everything Berlin needsby air if we have only one receiving airport! But because Wing CommanderPriestman assumed the Soviets would not cut off his power, we’ve startedthis massive operation and crowed about it to the whole world! We’ll certainlylook the fool now!”
This outburst,Priestman decided, did not require a response. He confined himself to asking ina clipped, professional voice. “Will you be able to stop incoming flights toGatow until further notice, sir?”
“Oh, I’ll stopthem all right! But if you don’t get this sorted out very soon, you can be sureyou won’t be commanding Gatow for very long — or any other station either! Ivery much doubt you’ll keep your commission after making His Majesty’s entiregovernment look like perfect idiots to the rest of the world!” With that, theGroup Captain hung up.
Priestman put thereceiver down and stared at it for a moment as if waiting for it to catch fire.Then, unable to sit, he stood and went to the window overlooking the runways. Hewatched dispassionately as the first of 30 Squadron’s Dakotas set downdecorously on his PSP runway and rolled to the far end, braking carefully. Asit turned off the runway, it was met by a Land Rover that led it to the apronin front of one of the hangars. Already the next Dakota was in sight, turningin for the final approach.
After severalseconds, Priestman realised he’d been left cold by Bagshot’s threats to hiscareer. The far more important issue was the Airlift itself. As Group Captain Bagshot had so bluntly pointedout, supplying Berlin entirely by air was challenging even with two fullyoperational receiving airfields. It would be utterly impossible to maintain theAirlift if Gatow were knocked out of the game.
Which was exactlywhat appeared to have just happened. The Ivans were on the brink of shutting downthe Airlift before it fully got off the ground. Embarrassingly, they had noteven needed to employ force, making a mockery of Clay’s promise that “nothingshort of war” could force the Western Allies out. Far from starting a war, all theIvans had needed to do was flip a switch. Now Gatow was useless, ‘kaput’ as theGermans said, and that meant the Airlift was over.
Yet, some part ofPriestman’s brain refused to accept that very simple fact. Some stubborn partof him insisted there had to be a way out of this fiasco. Maybe there was achance they could draw power from the one small, inadequate, and overworkedpower plant located in the West? Obviously, meeting Gatow’s electricity needs,would reduce the amount of power available for the factories, transport, facilitiesand households of the civilian population, but the alternative was surrender. Furthermore, he had to be sure that wastechnically possible before raising the possibility with the city government. Theman who could answer the technical question was Lt. Colonel Russel. Meanwhile, thearrival of the Sunderlands might distract attention while they looked for asolution. If he was lucky, it might be afternoon before anyone noticed that theairspace over Gatow was strangely silent.
A knock on thedoor interrupted his thoughts and he turned to call, “Yes? Come in!”
LieutenantColonel Russel, Corps of Royal Engineers, stuck only his head around the edgeof the door as if he were trying to make as small a target as possible before squeakingout in mock terror. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! It wasn’t us!”
Priestmanlaughed, thankful for the engineer’s humour at a time like this. “I neverthought it was — I only wished it was. Come on in. I was just about tocall you, anyway.”
Russel was a headshorter than Priestman with chest and shoulders too broad and powerful for thelower half of his body, which appeared awkwardly stunted. Russel wasn’t ahandsome man either, but he was a bundle of energy. As he came deeper into theroom, he was already speaking. “I’ve got something which I think will interestyou.” From under his arm, he pulled several large sheets of paper. Headingstraight for Priestman’s coffee table and spreading out the large blueprints,he explained, “These are plans of the city infrastructure that Mayor Reuterlent me so we could tap into the gas mains. I remembered seeing something odd onit – something possibly useful. Come and have a look!”
Robin 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 ofHitler’s capital, former RAF officers, a woman pilot, and the victim of Russianbrutality form an air ambulance company. But the West is on a collision coursewith Stalin’s aggression and Berlin is about to become a flashpoint. World WarThree is only a misstep away. Buy Now
Berlin is under siege. More than twomillion civilians must be supplied by air -- or surrender to Stalin's oppression.
USAF Captain J.B. Baronowsky and RAF FlightLieutenant 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 andabandoned children to freedom in the West. Until General Winter deploys on theside of Russia. Buy now!
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Winning a war with milk, coal and candy!
