TV show reveals how Scots hockey team played Cold War peace role

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The story of the historic match at the Olympic Hockey Stadium in West Berlin is told in "Cold War Hockey", a feature length documentary to be screened on BBC ALBA on Wednesday.
Former players Jenna Park, Valerie Crombie, Kit Smith and Alix Jamieson recall their trip to a tense geopolitical zone for a match that the Scots agreed to play after English hockey authorities turned it down.
Simply anticipating a tough game of hockey, the women's eyes were opened to the magnitude of the situation in Berlin -- a city that was physically and ideologically divided when the concrete wall that separated West Berlin from East Germany was built.
Jenna Park features in BBC Alba documentary (Image: BBC)
Dozens of people who tried to escape to the West would be shot.
Just weeks after construction of the wall began, the 12 Scottish international hockey players travelled from Edinburgh to West Berlin.
They met up with their West German opponents in Hanover and the teams journeyed together by bus to Berlin in a demonstration to the outside world and the population of West Berlin that the travel corridors to the city were accessible.
When they reached Checkpoint Charlie, the access point to West Berlin, they were held at gunpoint, however.
Armed soldiers boarded the team bus and the women were forced to watch in silence as their manager, Kate Weatherhead -- a late addition to the traveling party, whose name was not on official documentation -- was removed and interrogated.

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Jenna recalls: "It was an army compound with barbed wire, towers with searchlights on them, a little group of buildings where our poor manager was escorted off the bus to be interrogated.
"We all had to remain on the bus in our seats worrying about her. Two guards were on the bus with guns -- we weren’t to move, we weren’t to talk."

Valerie Crombie recalls their 1961 trip (Image: BBC)
Valerie adds: "We’d never seen guns before. The fact was we were apprehensive, but not aware of the real political situation."
The team were later paraded in front of Soviet tanks at Brandenburg Gate before they were able to begin preparations to play hockey.
The match, in front of a large crowd, ended in a 5-0 defeat, but, over 60 years on, Cold War Hockey reveals how, in a political speech delivered before the game, the Scots players were told that their visit had played a part in keeping world peace.
Jenna, who revisits the city for the first time with Valerie, says: "When it was explained to the crowd, it was all in German and we did not understand it.
"We were informed later on in the day what had been said at the stadium and then we understood it a lot better. The gentleman who spoke to us said: 'You have to believe that you have played a part in keeping world peace'.
"We felt very pleased with ourselves at that point."
Valerie adds: "I don’t think we had really realised just how important it was that we had been asked and that we’d come to this game."
Cold War Hockey, written, produced and directed by purpleTV’s Margot McCuaig, includes rare archive footage from the match, as well as personal memorabilia from the players, the National Hockey Museum and Scottish Hockey.

Rehearsals under way for Cold War insight (Image: BBC)
McCuaig said: "When I learned of Scotland’s trip to Berlin to play hockey in 1961, in such a critically tense period of the Cold War, I knew it was a significant historical event that should be more broadly known, particularly given the current political situation and the devastation of war in Ukraine.
"I am grateful to Jenna, Valerie, Kit and Alix for sharing their memories and evoking the extent to which sport and politics can be entwined in a highly charged environment.
"Cold War Hockey demonstrates the important role the Scotland hockey team played in Cold War politics."
Dr Wolfgang Schmidt, Research Assistant at the Willy Brandt Foundation in Berlin, tells the programme: "It was very important to West Berliners and also to the Governing Mayor, Willy Brandt, that West Berlin was seen as part of the Federal Republic. And, as a result, people were also very interested in hosting sporting events in Berlin -- especially international matches -- whether in football or field hockey.
"Of course, this was particularly important at that time as a symbol that the Federal Republic, West Germany, also stood by West Berlin. And, in this respect, it was also a sign of solidarity that such games and sports matches were held in Berlin, in West Berlin."
* Cold War Hockey will air on Wednesday April 5 at 9pm.