Sixty years ago, in June of 1948, the Western Allied Forces responded to the blockade of the three Western zones of Berlin with the Airlift. During the following months, American, British and French aircraft brought millions of tons of freight on hundreds of thousands of flights to West Berlin. The US Air Force took the lion share of the transports, taking off from the airports in Frankfurt and Wiesbaden Erbenheim.
Yesterday, June 29, the U.S. Forces were having an open house at Wiesbaden Army Airfield in Wiesbaden-Erbenheim.
I was a little late so I missed the first candy drop and during the second I was just sitting in a Globestar (or was it called Globemaster?) C-17 (The Spirit of Rhein-Main) and could not get out quickly enough. But anyway, I might have passed the age limit for this kind of thing, after all, the sweets were for the kids ;-) And later I was able to buy a little souvenir bag including one handkerchief parachute, a candy-bar (Hershey`s milk chocolate with almonds, yum!) and Wrigley`s chewing gum.
The chewing gum actually reminds me of a story my grandma used to tell me about my Dad. As a kid I could not get enough of this story, I asked her to retell it again and again. Here in Hesse – like anywhere else - the American soldiers were extremely friendly with the children giving them sweets and of course chewing gum. And my dad was lucky enough to get one. And what did he do? He exchanged his already chewed (!) chewing-gum against the little neighbour`s girl huge sandwich ;-) That deal would not work today, I guess ;-)
Update July 1, 2008:
A friend from the US just asked me: “So, when your father traded the neighbor his already chewed gum for her sandwich, did she actually chew the same gum?”
Oh, yes. That is why this story still makes me laugh today.
“How did he manage to pull that one off?”
Well, he was of course a very cute looking little boy back then ;-) but I would say the main reason was: Chewing gum was completely unknown in Germany back then and therefore hip.