The Candy Bomber Turns 100

 

On September 11, 2001 a previously inconceivable act of terror occurred as passenger planes were flown into the two towers of the World Trade Center in Manhattan and into the Pentagon in Washington, DC. In great cities around the world, people gathered to express their sympathy and outrage and lay flowers and wreaths at the gates of the American Embassies, but no where was there a greater outpouring of humanity and emotion than in the German capital of Berlin. There, 200,000 people gathered along the broad avenue leading through the Tiergarten to the Brandenburg Gate. The crowd was mostly young and no one was quite sure why so many turned out. The few elderly that were there were especially emotional.

Two young men approached an old and stooped woman standing alone in the crowd and quietly sobbing. They asked her if she was all right. She seemed startled as if aroused from a slumber. “I love Americans,” she said quickly, in a way that was so imploring they understand that it startled them. Her eyes brightened and she smiled while looking upward, toward the sky “You see, I was a girl during the airlift…”

On June 24, 1948, intent on furthering its domination of Europe, the Soviet Union cut off all access to West Berlin, prepared to starve the city into submission unless the Americans abandoned it. Soviet forces hugely outnumbered the Allies’, and most of America’s top officials considered the situation hopeless. But not all of them.

Pres Truman, Secretary of Defense Forrestal, Army General Clay and Air Force General Tunner determined to airlift supplies to the 2.2 Million cut off inhabitants. The situation in the war-ravaged city was desperate and the supplies being airlifted were meager. The Soviets were offering food to anyone who defected and most feared the residents would not have the resolve to value their newly found freedoms over their hunger pangs. A 27-year-old pilot from Garland, UT listened to the Holy Ghost and succeeded in boosting the moral and resolve of the residents in Berlin to outlast the Soviet blockade through the simple act of dropping candy to the children in the city.*

Col. Gail "Hal" Halverson 

Col. Gail Halverson, also known as the Candy Bomber and to the children as Uncle Wiggly Wings,  turned 100 years old last Thursday, Oct 8.

“By small and simple things are great things brought to pass” (Alma 37:6).

* Abridged from The Candy Bombers, The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s Finest Hour, Andrei Cherny