Grateful Berlin to honor airlift veterans - Relief effort marked
 beginnings of Cold War, Western alliance
     Berlin - May 11, 1998 9:24 a.m. EDT - "They called me the 'Candy
 Bomber,'" Gail Halvorsen remembers. "But the kids in Berlin called
 me 'Uncle Wiggly Wings.' That's because I wiggled the wings of the
 airplane when I came in over Berlin."
     Fifty years ago, Halvorsen earned his unusual nicknames as a
 pilot in what many call the largest humanitarian mission ever. The
 Berlin Airlift brought needed supplies to the besieged city for 11
 months, in one of the first confrontations of the Cold War.
     Now Halvorsen and his fellow pilots are preparing to return to
 Berlin, to a city and a country reunited. Aboard the "Spirit of
 Freedom," a Douglas C-54 cargo plane like the ones used in the air-
 lift, he and a dozen others will fly to Berlin this week to take
 part in anniversary celebrations. U.S. President Bill Clinton, on a
 European tour, also will attend.
     Capt. Jack Bennett, who flew more airlift missions than any other
 pilot, made the trip last week. In an emotional meeting, Germans
 thanked Bennett.
     "It was the most terrible, one of the most terrible episodes in
 history," Bennett said. "They tried to starve almost 3 million people
 to make them into Communists, a very bad deal, so flying the airlift
 was for me the most rewarding flying I've ever done."
                'Candy bombers' raised spirits
     While their cargo kept Berlin alive, Halvorsen and other pilots
 helped sustain the spirits of the city's children, for whom memories
 of war remained vivid. The pilots dropped candy, gum, and other
 treats tied to tiny parachutes.
     "The airlift was our life," says Irmtraut "Nina" Jueterbock, a
 13-year-old schoolgirl when the blockade began. Jueterbock lived with
 her family in a one-room apartment without electricity, the best they
 could do in the war-ravaged city.
     But when arrangements were made to fly children out of Berlin,
 the Jueterbocks declined.
     "I didn't want to be separated from my family," she says today.
 "It was said the blockade couldn't last long."
     But last it did -- from June 24, 1948, when the Soviet Union
 closed off road and rail access to Berlin, until the roads were
 opened on May 12, 1949.
                     'No guns, just flour'
     After Germany's defeat in World War II, the country was split
 into zones administered by the United States, France, Great Britain
 and the Soviet Union. The wartime capital of Berlin, deep within
 the Soviet zone, was split along the same lines.
     In 1948, the U.S., British and French zones were inching toward
 unification, into what would eventually become West Germany. In an
 effort to halt that process, the Soviet Union blocked all road and
 rail access to the western part of the city.
     All of the necessities for the city's 2.5 million residents -
 - an estimated 4,500 tons of food, coal and other materials each day
 -- had to enter the city by air.
     At first, the pilots did not know how far the Soviets would go
 to maintain the blockade.
     "The first couple of times, we wondered if we were going to get
 shot," Halvorsen says. "We had no armor at all. We had no guns, just
 flour."
     But the Soviets, dismissing the airlift's chances, did not shoot.
 On its biggest day, the "Easter parade" of April 16, 1949, the air-
 lift sent 1,398 flights into Berlin -- one every minute. Before it
 was all over, more than 278,000 flights would carry 2.3 million tons
 of relief supplies.
     Only 11 days after the blockade was lifted, the western zones of
 Germany adopted a new constitution. The airlift continued for four
 months after the blockade was lifted, until the end of September
 1949.
     The airlift marked a rise in tensions between the West and the
 Soviets, but it also helped heal divisions left by World War II.
 Almost immediately, The United States, Great Britain, and France
 shifted from Germany's conquerors to its protectors.
     "The airlift was the starting point for Germany's inclusion in
 the West and for the reconciliation with the Western powers,"
 Berlin Mayor Eberhard Diepgen says.
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