Greetings

[Porpoise]

Day 4

About 5am I was woken by a young Norwegian private and politely but urgently asked to attend the Operations Center as soon as I was able. I had only had an hour or so of sleep so I was still groggy when I reached my desk to see what the fuss was about. There was clear concern as the team had phones glued to their ears. Rather than interrupt I walked over to the shuffle board to see what was going on.
You've probably seen in films what an Operations Center looks like, the walls covered with projected displays and computers sit on every desk, and there is probably a video feed from a surveillance drone of the battlefield and an endless twitter feed on a scrolling bar underneath. Back then things were a bit more low tech. We had a plotting table in the center of the room, a big map, and clerks took reports from the printers or listened to the constant radio chatter and updated status boards or pushed markers representing different units around the table, like a big game of Risk. We called that table the shuffleboard. Nowadays that information is displayed on a computer screen fed by GPS data but during the war it was all done by hand. Above was a 2nd floor balcony surrounding the room where the brass could get a birds eye view of what was going. I climbed the stairs to try and spot what had changed from when I had left for a nap. The fog from that nap immediately cleared when I spotted the latest development on the shuffleboard.  



The main disadvantage to an amphibious landing is that it is predictable. There are only so many stretches of coastline suitable to land troops, only so many days per month when the tides are high enough to land troops close to shore, only so many of those days have fine weather, and so on. The Soviets had about a 4 day window in which to attempt a landing and they had started at 5am on day 2. At the same time Soviet paratroopers landed at Vojens airbase a few miles inland. The map of Denmark stretched out below had a number of red markers dotted along the east coast. As I looked down I noticed Vos at the Operations Desk looking up at me and I trotted downstairs to join her.

"Bill," she said to me and I was stunned for a moment. She had never used my first name before.
"Gerta", I said and then I was stuck. This was a thrilling development for me in our relationship, to be using each others first names. It was a shame it had to happen in the midst of the world collapsing, but at the moment when she said my first name my heart skipped a beat I was as happy as I have ever been.

I'm such a moron.

"Bill we need help," she said. I looked over at Olsen and Berger who were busy answering phone call after phone call while young Thomsen, who had probably been awake for over 24 hours appeared to be in a trance. I walked over to Berger and Olsen and got their attention and motioned for them to hang up. Just a a brief period with the phones ringing constantly beside us, the comms radios crackling behind us and the despatchers scurrying around us, we were an island of tranquility in a sea of chaos. Then I broke the spell.
"Thomsen," I said, "get some rest. Don't report back here for another 6 hours." Thomsen looked briefly at Major Olsen who failed to react, then stood up and left the Operations Center.
"The only way we can help Denmark," I said, "is by getting them as much air power as we can muster, agreed? With your permission, Major Olsen?" Olsen blinked twice before answering.
"Yes," he said, "of course."
"Herman," I said and Berger started upright, standing to attention while seated. "Go co-ordinate with the air defense cell and see if you can come up with a plan so we don't shoot down all of the air support we are going to send to Denmark." Berger nodded and rushed off to the air operations desk.
"Gerta," I said, and she looked up at me with her beautiful, serious eyes and prepared to end the lives of thousands of men without hesitation, "we need to get as much information as we can about where the enemy and friendly units are so we can flatten the Sovs and avoid hitting our own guys." She stood up and hurried to the intelligence section.
"Frederick," I said to Olsen, "you need to let everyone know what we're planning. No one will listen to me."
"We must try to counter attack," he said, "Holst will expect an aggressive response."
"Ok," I said, "what do you have in mind?"
"I'm not sure," he said confidently, "but something."
I resisted the temptation to strangle him, then looked across at the shuffleboard.
"You know the roads better than I do, can the 1st Zealand Brigade move west to cover and invasion from the west?"
"Yes," he said, "but that will leave Copenhagen vulnerable."
"We could move the 2nd Zealand north to cover."
"That should work fine," he said.
"Ok, I'll leave you to it."
"What will you do?" he asked.
"I'm going to ring around and try and beg, borrow or steal as many air missions as I can and direct them to Denmark." With that I picked up the phone and called Northwood in England.