Cold War

Halvorsen dodged puddles on the tarmac in his dash to reach his waiting C-54. J.B. and Elkins were already on board and together had cranked up the four engines. Hal’s cap and the shoulders of his tunic were dark with rain when he clambered into the cockpit and sank into the lefthand seat. He took his cap off and wiped rain from his forehead in a single gesture.

“What took you so long?” J.B. asked. “We aren’t supposed to be more than ten feet from the aircraft. If anyone had spotted—”

“We’re in a heap more trouble than you think!” Hal answered, shaking his head and looking ashen, adding, “You fly her out.”

That was standard practice between them now, so J.B. just nodded as he put one hand on the throttles, his feet on the brakes, and waved to the ground crew to pull the chocks away. Then he turned to Halvorsen to ask, “What’s happened?”

“I found a table in the ops room covered — and I mean covered — with letters addressed to variations on ‘Uncle Wiggly Wings’ and ‘Mr Candy Bomber’.”

“Jesus f*** Christ—” Elkins commented from between his pilots.

“Don’t insult the Lord, Elkins!” Hal admonished, frowning fiercely.

“Yeah, well, frankly, Hal, I agree with the tech sergeant on this one. I told you we were going to get in trouble,” J.B. chimed in.

“Well, they don’t seem to know who Uncle Wiggly Wings is yet—”

“Hal! Half the residents of the Zeppelinheim have been giving us candy and handkerchiefs!” J.B. protested. “All the brass has to do is ask around and every finger is going to point at us.”

“Okay! Okay!” Hal agreed nervously. “We’ll stop doing it.”

“Yeah, and what am I supposed to do with all the candy other guys have given me? I’ve got a shitload of candy bars in my locker in Rhein-Main!” Elkins complained.

Neither pilot bothered to answer because the ground crew was making angry gestures for them to move off their hardstanding. J.B. nudged the throttles forward and they waddled onto the taxiway while Hal called the tower to get clearance. They started for the head of the runway, splashing through the puddles while the windshield wipers slapped from side to side, and rain dripped through the airframe in half a dozen places.

As they bounced along the taxiway, fifty or so kids hung onto the fence, waving at all the passing planes. The rain kept some kids away, but crowd was still large enough to attract attention. “Don’t wave back at them!” J.B. warned his captain.

“Everybody waves at them,” Hal protested, but he was unnerved enough to obey J.B. even as he remarked miserably, “I just hate to think how disappointed they’re going to be when no more candy rains down on them.”

“Well, they aren’t going to get any more candy if we’ve been court-martialled and sent home, either,” J.B. pointed out.

“I thought you wanted to go home?” Hal reminded him.

J.B. wasn’t going to get into that thorny subject, and retorted, “Not that way! I heard a court-martial follows you around for the rest of your life just like a criminal record.”

There was no time for further discussion. They were number one for take-off. Hal contacted the tower while J.B. swung the nose of their battered old freighter into the wind. Cleared, they raced down the runway and lifted off, climbing steeply. Empty, the C-54 had a powerful rate-of-climb, and they easily roared over the apartment buildings before vanishing into the cloud.

Roughly 15 minutes later, they broke clear of the low cloud layer and into sunshine. Still climbing to their designated cruising altitude for the return trip, they turned onto the central corridor and took their place in a stately convoy of aircraft.

The engines were too loud to encourage conversation, so the three men retreated into their separate thoughts. J.B. found himself reflecting on the fact that he was no longer eager to go home. Ever since they had started collecting and dropping candy to the children of Berlin, he’d felt energised and excited — and not just about the candy but, curiously, about the entire operation. Reuter’s speech had struck a chord, too. The Stars and Stripes had printed a translation, and when he saw some footage of the mayor speaking in a news clip at the base movie theatre, he’d felt a chill run down his spine. They were doing something here that really mattered. He didn’t want to stop doing it. He enjoyed the flying, now that he flew with Halvorsen who let him take the controls at least fifty per cent of the time. He glanced over at the frail, balding pilot from Utah and noticed he looked miserable and beaten.

“Hey, Hal! Cheer up!” J.B. nudged him with an elbow.

Hal looked over at him crestfallen, and remonstrated, “You’d feel different if you’d met those kids one-to-one like I did.”

“I doubt it because I agree with you!” J.B. shouted over the engines. “We’re not going to stop until someone tells us to. So, cheer up!”

Hal’s face was transformed into sunshine. “Thanks, J.B.! You’re a real pal!”

They landed back at Rhein-Main more than two hours later. It was now almost 5 pm, and the sun was streaming over the Western horizon as the clouds moved east. The pavement was already starting to dry out. They were scheduled for one more run to Berlin, and dutifully taxied behind the follow-me jeep to a loading position. Elkins went back to open the cargo door. A truck and trailer manned by a crew of five stevedores in their coal-stained, canvas overalls were already standing by to load sacks of coal into the C-54.

“Who’s that guy?” Hal asked, looking out the cockpit window at a man in a clean uniform.

“I don’t know, but he’s got ‘staff’ written all over him,” J.B. replied suspiciously. Then trying to be optimistic, he suggested, “Maybe he just wants to hitch a ride to Berlin for some reason.” He was certainly waving at them.

Hal shoved back the cockpit window, and J.B. heard a faint voice straining to be heard over the roar of engines from the taxiing aircraft in the background. “Are you Lt. Gail Halvorsen?”

“Yup,” Hal answered.

“You and your copilot are to report to HQ immediately.”

“But we’ve got to fly another run to Berlin,” Hal tried valiantly to postpone Armageddon.

“Not today you don’t!” the staff officer wearing captain’s bars answered. “Another crew is on their way to fly this bird back to Berlin. You and Baronowsky need to join me in my jeep. And that’s an order.”

There was no arguing with that.

A quarter of an hour later they were ushered into an office with a sign saying “Colonel Haun” on the door. Haun stood rigidly to one side, but the man sitting behind the desk wasn’t a colonel. He was a two-star general, whose face was all-too-familiar from the newspapers and newsreels. It was Willie the Whip himself, General Tunner.

“Holy Shit,” J.B. muttered involuntarily, and Hal looked at him with the eyes of a sacrificial lamb.

They came to attention and delivered the smartest salutes of their lives.

“So, do you want to tell me just what the hell the two of you have been doing?” Tunner demanded in an ice-cold voice, his steel-blue eyes pinning them to the back wall.

“Flying like mad, sir!” Hal croaked out gamely, while J.B. held his tongue, implicitly backing his captain.

It was the wrong strategy. Tunner burst out angrily, “Do you think I’m stupid?” He reached over, grabbed a newspaper and snapped it open on the desk in front of them. It was a German newspaper with text entirely in German, but front and centre was a big picture of a crowd of kids standing on ruins and looking up at the sky where tiny parachutes came drifting down. The tail-number of a C-54 from which the little packages streamed was painfully legible. They had been caught red-handed. The game was up. J.B. felt not so much fear as bottomless disappointment.

Tunner snarled, “You almost hit a reporter on the head with a candy bar yesterday, and the phones have been ringing off their handles ever since! My headquarters staff have had about a million questions about a ‘candy bomber,’ and I didn’t know a God-damned thing about him! Didn’t anyone anywhere teach you to keep your superiors informed?”

Hal wisely opted to reply with “Yes, sir.”

“In that case, smart-ass, why didn’t you tell Colonel Haun what you wanted to do and ask for his permission?” With a hand gesture, Tunner drew attention to Colonel Haun beside him.

Unfortunately, that question could not be answered with “yes, sir.” Hal squeaked out a timid but honest, “Because I didn’t think he’d approve.”

Haun rolled his eyes, and Tunner answered for him. “You mean after we’ve dumped something like one hundred thousand sticks of bombs on Berlin, you thought we might object to you dropping a few sticks of gum?”

J.B. held his breath in disbelief, afraid to believe his ears. It sounded like Tunner was about to approve the whole business.

Hal ventured, “I guess I wasn’t too smart, sir.”

“Well I hope you have a steep learning curve because I’ve called an international press conference for tomorrow afternoon. Then I want you on the next courier flight back to Washington. The public relations guys in the Pentagon think we might be able to get you on the television program “We the People” and maybe you can do some other press conferences and publicity stuff — but don’t let it go to your head. You’re still just a lieutenant and an airlift pilot. Got it?”

“Yes, sir!” Halvorsen stood very stiff and kept his eyes aimed at the wall.

“Good. Then have a good time and hurry back.”

J.B. risked a glance in Tunner’s direction and realised the fierce general was smiling at them.

His gesture attracted the general’s attention to him. Tunner turned to J.B., “Meanwhile, Captain, you take over coordinating the drops. I want a central collection point for candy donations and parachutes, and I’ll put out the word that any crew that wants to participate can. Of course, you’ll have to give the RAF a heads-up since we’ll need to spread the drops across the city rather dumping all the goods in one place. That’s all for now, gentlemen.” Tunner stood up and this time he offered each his hand. J.B. and Hal were grinning like Cheshire cats as they left the office.