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A child of the Berlin Airlift tells her story

  • Published
  • By Karl Weisel
  • USAG Wiesbaden Public Affairs
U.S. ARMY GARRISON WIESBADEN, Germany (AFPN) --  A storybook came alive for German and American youth here when the tale's lead character appeared in person.

After collaborating on a video project for the children's story, "Mercedes and the Chocolate Pilot," in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, students from Aukamm and Hainerberg elementary schools here and the nearby Nauheim Grundschule were treated to a visit by the book's real-life title character.

"I'm of course much older than years ago," said Mercedes Wild with a smile.

She went on to describe what it was like to be a 7-year-old child in post-war Berlin during the Soviet blockade from June 1948 to May 1949.

"We had little to eat," Mrs. Wild told her young audience.

The western section of Berlin had very little farmland and, though the Soviets tried to entice Berliners over to the eastern side with promises of food, those in the West knew better than to sacrifice their freedom.

When allied airplanes began delivering coal, food and other supplies, Mrs. Wild said she was terrified bombs would once again fall on her city. 

"I asked my grandmother if we should go downstairs in the cellar once more, but she told me this time the planes were bringing food and coal,"  she said.

It was a brutal winter that both Mrs. Wild and her husband, Peter, remember all too well.

"We had no good clothes, no shoes," she remembered. "But we didn't fear the cold; we feared the Russians."

When a plane crashed barely 200 meters from her house, killing the two pilots, Mrs. Wild recalled everything in sight being coated in white flour.

"All I remember thinking is it might have been our house ... that the plane hit," she said.

She also said she remembers being very sleepy in the mornings because of the noise of the airplanes at night.

Mr. Wild told the German and American students that the flights between Berlin and other cities in Germany were only the tip of the iceberg. 

"The real airlift stretched all across the United States and the Atlantic Ocean, using airplanes, trains, trucks and ships," he said.

It was an incredible logistical effort involving the delivery of more than two million tons of food and other supplies using a total of 277,569 U.S. and British flights to Berlin. 

He also described the phenomenal achievement of building Berlin's Tegel Airport from scratch as the airlift was in progress. 

"Ten thousand women built a new airport in three months," Mr. Wild said.

As recounted in the story by author Margot Theis Raven, a young Mercedes watched as planes flew overhead, wishing that one day the tiny parachutes bearing chocolate would find their way into her hands. After completing a suggestion by her grandmother to write the "candy bomber," then-Lt. Gail Halvorsen, Mrs. Wild eventually received a response explaining the pilot was unable to spot her house and her white chicken from the air. Tucked in the envelope was a piece of peppermint gum. She gave the treat away, having never before tasted anything like it, 

"The most important thing for me was this letter," she said. "Chocolate and chewing gum were unknown to us."

Having lost her father during World War II, Mrs. Wild said she looked to then-Lieutenant Halvorsen as a surrogate dad.

"My father was also a pilot in World War II and he (went missing) early in the war," she said. "My mother and I didn't know what happened to him. The chocolate uncle became a symbol of my father."

Then, in the early 1970s, the two were able to meet face-to-face. The now retired Colonel Halvorsen was visiting Berlin and Mr. Wild approached the American with the treasured letter that was delivered to Mrs. Wild more than two decades earlier. The meeting evolved into a long-term friendship between the Halvorsen and Wild families that continues to this day. 

"You see what a letter, what a trail it has -- 60 years later -- that is friendship," Mr. wild said.

The relationship continued to evolve and even grew into a partnership program between the Gottfried Keller Gymnasium, where Mr. Wild taught in Berlin, and Provo High School, near Colonel Halvorsen's home in Utah. 

The Wilds also explained to the children how they learned "American, not English" after the war by listening to American Forces Network Radio. 

"The best teacher for German kids to learn (the vernacular) was AFN," Mr. Wild said.

In 1997, during the 50th anniversary of the airlift at Temploehof Airport in Berlin, Mrs. Wild was invited on stage alongside Colonel Halvorsen and President Bill Clinton, where she had "the honor to say thank you on behalf of the people of Berlin."

"Without the help of the Americans (and the allies), I wouldn't be here," Mrs. Wild said. "I wouldn't be alive to enjoy the freedom you brought to us Germans." 

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