Greetings

[Porpoise]

Spike, I have a feeling Vos will have her moments. On to part 6.

As I drove home some time around 4am the sky was lit up by a brilliant white flash, like a massive lightning strike. I knew lightning was unlikely as there were very few clouds in the sky. The daily meteorological report mentioned nothing about thunderstorms and it was very reliable. Immediately following the bright flash every street light was snuffed out as if a switch had been thrown. It was surprising enough to make me pull over to the side of the road.
The Soviet planners obviously knew where our headquarters were located. Not even NATO could move or hide a mountain like Kolsas. I don't know if it was coincidental or intentional but the flight route selected for the Russian bombers took them directly across the road in front of me, following the valley south towards the Skagerrak. I saw the first aircraft streak past me then heard the screaming shriek of jet engines a moment before I saw the second aircraft behind the leader. Although I glimpsed them for only a fraction of a second, the moment is etched in my memory, the dark sky above a black valley, lit briefly by the afterburners of a Soviet jet racing home to safety. Two things were obvious to me. Firstly, the attack had knocked out the local electricity supply and secondly, my presence would be urgently required back at RHQ. To this day I'm not sure why they didn't hit Kolsas Leir as well. Whether it was considered impregnable due to being buried under a mountain or whether the aircraft tasked to bomb us was hit, I don't know. A lot of Soviet aircraft ran into power lines that first night, which is a more costly but equally effective way of removing an enemy's access to electricity.
I had only left ten minutes earlier and I turned the car around and drove back as quickly as I could, passing an ambulance and fire engines going in the opposite direction. As I was drove back to the entrance I surveyed the scene of chaotic urgency around me. Troops in all states of dress ran in every direction at once. Waiting at the closed gates for the nervous guard to remember how to speak English and let me through, a helicopter flew low over us to land at the football field ahead. We had our own independent power source and every light on the base appeared to have been switched on. We must have been lit up like a beacon to any nearby aircraft amidst the surrounding darkness. I eventually made my way into the operations center under the mountain and contacted the garrison office. The Lieutenant who answered the phone refused to switch off any lights until he received orders from his commander. This exchange was typical of the early hours of the war as people were in a state of shock, refusing the believe what was going on around them. They simply would not accept that the unthinkable was now reality.
I can barely describe how confused the situation was in the early hours of that first morning. Automated phone alerts went out to every person who needed to report for duty and they arrived at Kolsas in dribs and drabs, bleary eyed, confused, angry, upset, calm, numb, almost every emotion you can imagine except happy. There were also a small number who turned up late or not at all. The ever absent Jorgensen, Deputy Chief of Staff and head of operations was one of the missing. He didn't turn up the next day either and his home was found to be unoccupied. His wife had died the previous year after a long struggle with cancer. Out of a sense of loyalty Holst had made allowances for Jorgensen, accepting the frequent absences and dereliction of duty, figuring that Hagen would pick up the slack then be promoted to take Jorgensen's place when he retired later that year. In peacetime, this could have worked out but hostilities had changed everything. Rather than report for the duty he was no longer capable of fulfilling and for which he had prepared his whole adult life, Brigadegeneral Jorgensen drove to the middle of the forest and shot himself.
The operations team would go through periods of intense activity as reports seemed to arrive from different places simultaneously, and then periods of eery calm when nothing appeared to be happening at all. The phones would be silent for 10 minutes at a time then ring constantly for the next half hour, calls arriving faster than we could answer them. The calls themselves varied in nature, too. Mostly the requests were for information, and mostly from people who should have known better. It was difficult to get a sense of what was going on outside as different reports seemed to contradict one another, for example one early report said the Soviets had already overrun Berlin, then another that the assault on Berlin had been repulsed at heavy cost, then another stating the Berlin sector was completely quiet and no attack had occurred at all. After the war we discovered our intelligence networks had been infiltrated and agents were feeding us false information, but it was true that Berlin had been given a wide berth by Soviet air and ground forces.
The Commander in Chief of all NATO and allied forces in the north (CINCNORTH), was absent when the Soviets struck. Whether by design of by accident, and knowing the Russians now as I do I assume it was no accident, the senior commanders of NATO were all in Belgium for a conference. Our commander, General Mason-Clarke, was there along with his counterparts from the very top echelons of NATO command. In his absence the Deputy CINCNORTH was in command.
Around 6am that first morning Viseadmiral Fuchs, Deputy Commander of AFNORTH, called the senior leadership team to a briefing conducted in one of the base's many brightly lit tunnels. Given our leadership problems, it fell to me to be the senior operations staff officer for Allied Forces North, for all NATO land forces from the Kiel canal in Germany to Finnmark north of the Arctic circle. The prospect of making a mistake scared me more than any Russian bombing raid.