June, 1948: Life from the Sky

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The Berlin Airlift : June, 1948 - July, 1949

How do you keep an entire city alive from the air?

Sixty years, I think, has dimmed the appreciation of what a massive airlift effort this was.

The Allies would need to supply seventeen hundred calories per person per day, consisting of 646 tons of flour and wheat, 125 tons of cereal, 64 tons of fat, 109 tons of meat and fish, 180 tons of dehydrated potatoes, 180 tons of sugar, 11 tons of coffee, 19 tons of powdered milk, 5 tons of whole milk for children, 3 tons of fresh yeast for baking, 144 tons of dehydrated vegetables, 38 tons of salt and 10 tons of cheese.

In total, 1,534 tons were needed daily to keep the over 2 million people alive. Additionally, the city needed to be kept heated and powered, which would require another 3,475 tons of coal and gasoline.

Operation "Little Vittles"

Col. Gail Halvorsen, one of the many Airlift pilots, decided to use his off-time to fly into Berlin and make movies with his handheld camera. He arrived at Tempelhof on July 17, 1948 after hitching a ride on one of the C-54s, and walked over to a crowd of children who had gathered at the end of the runway to watch the planes coming in.

Here is his experience in his own words:

One day in July 1948 I met 30 kids at the barbed wire fence at Tempelhof in Berlin. They were excited. They said, "When the weather gets so bad you can’t land don’t worry about us. We can get by on little food, but if we lose our freedom we may never get it back." The principle of freedom was more important to these children than the pleasure of enough flour.

"Just don’t give up on us," they said.

The Soviets had offered the West Berliners food rations but they would not capitulate.

For the hour I was at the fence not one child asked for gum or candy. Children I had met during and after the war in foreign lands had always begged insistently for such treasures. These Berlin children were so grateful for flour to be free they would not ask for anything more. It was even more impressive because they hadn’t had chocolate or gum for months. When I realized this silent, mature show of gratitude and the strength that it took not to ask, I had to do something. All I had was two sticks of gum. I broke them in two and passed them through the barbed wire. The result was unbelievable. Those with the gum tore off strips of the wrapper and gave them to the others. Those with just a piece of paper put it to their nose and smelled and smelled the tiny fragrance. Their expression of pleasure was unbelievable.

I was so moved by what I saw and their incredible restraint that I promised them I would drop enough gum for each of them the next day as I came over their heads to land.

"How will we know your plane?", they asked.

I told them they would know my plane because I would wiggle the wings as I came over the airport. When I got back to Rhein-Main I attached gum and even chocolate bars to three handkerchief parachutes. It was delivered the next day. What a jubilant celebration. We did the same thing for several weeks before we got caught; threatened with a court martial by our commanding officer which was followed by an immediate apology.

General Tunner said, "This is great! Keep it up!"

Letters came by the thousands addressed to "Our Chocolate Uncle" and "The Raisin Bomber".

A little girl, named Mercedes, wrote that I scared her chickens as I flew in to land but it was OK if I dropped the goodies where the white chickens were. I couldn’t find her chickens so I mailed her chocolate and gum through the Berlin mail.

Twenty two years later, in 1970, I was assigned as the Commander of Tempelhof. One letter kept asking us to come to dinner. In 1972 we accepted. The lady of the house handed me a letter dated November 1948. It said, "Dear Mercedes I can’t find your chickens. I hope this is OK." Signed, "Your Chocolate Uncle." I had included a box of candy and gum. The lady looked at me with a smile and said, "I am Mercedes! Step over here and I will show you where the chickens were." We are close friends today, November 2007.

A little girl accompanied by her mother came to my plane on the tarmac at Tempelhof. She offered me her only surviving possession; A well worn teddy bear. She presented it to me with tears in her eyes, "This kept me safe during the bombings. I want you to have it to keep you and the other fliers safe on your trips to Berlin." I tried to refuse it but her mother said words to the effect that I must accept it because her daughter wanted to do all in her power to help save their city. I would like to find that little girl.

In 1998 on a visit to Berlin flying an old Airlift C-54, The Spirit of Freedom with Tim Chopp, a 60-year-old man told me he had caught a parachute in 1948. "It had a fresh Hershey candy bar attached. I made it last a week," he said. "I hid it day and night. But it was not the chocolate that was most important. The most important was that someone in America knew I was in trouble and someone cared. That was hope for me." And then, with moist eyes, he said, "Without hope the soul dies. I can live on thin rations but not without hope."

My experience on the Airlift taught me that gratitude, hope, and service before self can bring happiness to the soul when the opposite brings despair. Because not one of 30 children begged for chocolate, over 20 tons of chocolate, gum, and goodies fell from C-54 Skymasters by handkerchief parachutes into the eagerly outstretched hands of Berlin children.