The Bridge to Tomorrow Series includes several historical characters. None of these is more important that Lt. Gail Halvorsen, a man who has gone down in history as "the Berlin Candy Bomber."
Lt. Gail Halvorsen joined the U.S. Army Air Corps during the Second World War and flew transport planes out of Natal, Brazil. A military professional, he was still flying transport planes in 1948 when the crisis in Berlin erupted. Halvorsen arrived in Berlin in early July when the Airlift was only a couple weeks old and the crews had been told the situation wouldn't last more than 25 days or so. Halvorsen was anxious to see some of the famous capital of Hitler's Germany from the ground before getting sent home to the States. So one day, instead of sleeping, he hitch-hiked on another C-54 and flew to Berlin as a tourist.
Below is an excerpt which depicts Lt. Gail Halvorsen's first candy drop seen through the eyes of my fictional character J.B. Baronowsky:
“The oldest of these kids couldn’t have been more than twelve,” Halvorsen stressed to his copilot in a breathless, excited voice. “The littlest was about eight. Yet every one of them understood that this Airlift isn’t about food but freedom! It was amazing!” The American pilots were sitting together in the mess having a quick meal before bed. Halvorsen had just returned from his off-duty trip to Berlin.
“Yeah,” J.B. agreed. “That is pretty amazing. Where did you say you ran into these kids?”
“They were hanging onto the perimeter fence right at the end of the runway. I’d gone over there to try to get a picture of a C-54 landing over the apartment houses, and they were clinging to the outside of the fence. They said they live nearby and come to watch the planes every day.”
“And what did they say about freedom, exactly?” J.B.’s scepticism was reflected in his voice. The kids he knew didn’t care about politics.
“Well, there was this little girl with blond pigtails wearing hand-me-down trousers from probably more than one older brother and she said, ‘When you bombed us and killed some of our parents and sisters and brothers —”
“She said that to your face?” J.B. asked horrified.
“Yeah, and then she went on—”
“Wait a minute! Didn’t you correct her? Didn’t you tell her you hadn’t flown bombers in the war? That you hadn’t even been in the European theatre?”
“No, that wasn’t important. What’s important is what she said. Listen to me, J.B.! She said, that during the bombing, they’d thought nothing could be worse than that — until the Russians came. She said something like, ‘After the final battle for Berlin, we saw what the Russians did in the city before you arrived. And we’ve learned more about Communism since.’ An older boy with good English added, ‘We don’t need lectures about freedom. We can walk on both sides of the city, and we have relatives who visit from the East. They are hungry for American newspapers and listen to RIAS.’ Several then chimed in to say that everyone listened to RIAS if they could get it — East or West.”
“Yeah, RIAS has a good mix of entertainment and information — and they have children’s programs, too.” J.B. conceded before asking, “Did you enjoy the rest of your sightseeing tour?” He had finished his meal and was wiping his hands on a paper napkin. Their next flight was scheduled to depart at 2 am and he wanted to get some sleep first.
Halvorsen nodded absently and answered between his last mouthfuls of dinner. “Sure. It was interesting, although everything’s pretty wrecked. The tour got cut short when we had to hightail it back in a hurry because some Reds started chasing us. Apparently, any American with a camera is treated like a spy. But I keep coming back to those kids.” He put his cutlery down and wiped his hands on his napkin. “Here they are living on less than 1,000 calories a day, with no candy or chocolate or gum. Geeze, they don’t even get much sugar on the rations we give them, but not one of them tried to bum something off me.”
They both stood to return their trays with the dirty dishes, and Halvorsen continued, “Everywhere else in the world the kids cluster around — not begging exactly, but, you know, hinting that they could sure use some candy or gum. Brazil, Colombia, Panama, wherever — the kids would grin and wave and call out: ‘Hey, chum, got any gum?’ But not these kids. I’d already turned away from them before I realised that they hadn’t asked me for a thing. I felt in my pockets to see what I had to share and came up with just two sticks of Wriggley’s gum — for a dozen kids! I tore the sticks in half and gave a piece to each of the kids who’d done most of the talking. You know what they did? They passed the wrappers to the others so they could sniff it — and you should have seen their faces! You would have thought they’d just been given a whole bowl of ice cream with hot chocolate sauce and whipped cream on top.”
The pilots put their trays on the counter for the mess stewards and started for the shuttle to the Zeppelinheim. “When I saw that,” Halvorsen continued casually, “I promised to bring them some candy today.”
“Hal! We’re not allowed more than ten feet away from the aircraft, remember? You can’t go wandering off across the airfield to give kids candy.”
“I know, that’s why I said I’d drop it from the plane, just as we come over the fence.”
J.B. screeched to a halt, “You said what?” Then before Halvorsen repeated himself, he added, “We can’t do that! It would just get blown away and scatter all over the place. Hell, it would probably shatter on impact! We’re still 200 feet up and going 90 to 100 mph when we come over the fence.”
“I’ve been thinking about it all the way back, and I figured we could make little parachutes out of handkerchiefs.”
“Hal, you’re crazy. Sleep deprived, that’s what. Let’s get some shuteye, and you’ll feel better and see things straight when you wake up.”
They returned to their quarters in the old barn. J.B. stripped down to his undershorts, rolled himself into his blanket and was out like a light. When he woke up, he was dismayed to find that instead of sleeping Halvorsen had been fashioning tiny parachutes from his handkerchiefs. “They work too!” he assured J.B. “I tested one from the window of the loft.” Then with one of his irresistible, shy smiles, he asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have any left-over candy or chocolate bars, would you? I’ve still got six parachutes.”
Shaking his head, J.B. handed over all his candy rations, but he warned Hal. “If anyone finds out about this, we are going to get into a heap of trouble. Hell, Tunner’s such a stickler for regulations, he’ll probably court-martial us for something like this.”
“He’ll never find out,” Halvorsen insisted.
Soon they had Sergeant Elkins’ candy ration tied to parachutes too, and they hid the lot in Elkins’ tool kit. Promptly, at two am they took off for Berlin, arriving before dawn. The C-54 was unloaded with the usual efficiency, while they waited beside it, receiving one jeep after another with the weather and paperwork that went with each flight. They bought coffee at the mobile snack bar when it came by, and then flew back to Frankfurt. Here the routine was repeated with them waiting near the aircraft as it was loaded with a cargo of powdered vegetable soup and then they were in the corridor again. It was approaching noon when they entered the traffic pattern for Tempelhof.
Halvorsen hadn’t slept a wink that J.B. had seen, and he was very keyed up. J.B. had never seen him like this before. He was licking his lips every few seconds and leaning forward in his seat as he squinted against the sun. Then, sounding as excited as a kid, he exclaimed: “There they are! There they are!” He pointed ahead toward the airfield coming into view as they dropped down on their steep glide path over the apartment buildings. Sure enough, about thirty kids of all shapes and sizes were clustered at the perimeter fence and staring upwards at the approaching cargo planes.
“Sergeant Elkins, go back and prepare to drop the parachutes when I tell you to,” Halvorsen ordered.
“Are you really going to go through with this?” J.B. asked.
“Yes,” Halvorsen’s tone brooked no contradiction, and Elkins, shaking his head but grinning, retreated to the cabin where the parachutes waited near the flare-chute.
Halvorsen started wiggling the wings of the heavily loaded freighter; that is, rolling ten to degrees first in one direction and then the other several times in succession.
“The tower is going to think we’re drunk as skunks!” J.B. groaned, but his words were lost on Halvorsen. He was grinning from ear to ear as the kids started jumping up and down and waving like crazy.
“What if one of the aircraft waiting for take-off gets our number?” J.B. asked anxiously.
Halvorsen answered with: “Give me full flaps and 1800 RPM!”
Rolling his eyes, J.B. followed orders and as they almost stalled out over the end of the runway, Halvorsen called to Elkins over the intercom, “Now!”
Elkins answered with: “Bon-bons away!”
An instant later their tyres screeched on the runway and the nose wheel flopped down, but they had no way of seeing if the parachutes had landed near the children, never mind if they’d been retrieved.
Halvorsen is a character in "Cold Peace" Only
Berlin is under siege. More than two million civilians must be supplied by air -- or surrender to Stalin's oppression.
USAF Captain J.B. Baronowsky and RAF Flight
Lieutenant 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 and
abandoned children to freedom in the West. Until General Winter deploys on the
side of Russia. Buy now!
Based on historical events, award-winning and best-selling novelist Helena P. Schrader delivers an insightful, exciting and moving tale about how former enemies became friends in the face of Russian aggression — and how close the Berlin Airlift came to failing.
Winning a war with milk, coal and candy!
