Candy Bomber: 2/5/14

Pages: 1 - End
Prompt: Describe a character that you would like to meet (which doesn’t mean that you think you would like the character, but that you think the character would be

interesting). List 4 questions that you would ask.

     In the Candy Bomber Gail Halvorsen brings candy to starving children in West Berlin. Berlin was deep in the Russian area of Germany but all the Allies Split it up. The communist Russia had allied with Germany early in the war but were betrayed and only sided with the allies, who were democracies, because the Germans had betrayed them. They did not like the allies very much. They cut of any trains cars, trucks, or boats to the city to try to get the allies to give it up to them. The only way to get to Berlin was to fly food in. They had to feed over 2 million people this way. Flights were three minutes apart from the allies Rhein to Berlin. Planes flew at 5 different altitudes to avoid interference and planes at the same altitude were 15 minutes apart. This was called Operation Vittles, the German word for food, by the Americans.

     During a break Gail Halvorsen went on a sightseeing trip in Berlin. He sees about 30 kids wearing ragged clothes at the end of the runway. He talks to them and they tell him what the Soviets are doing to the people in east Berlin. They tell him the Soviet occupation is worse than the war. They told him they could live with very little as long as they kept the freedoms the allies gave them. Halvorsen said goodbye and started to walk away. He had heard that kids in other parts of the world beg soilders for candy but these kids hadn't even asked. He had two pieces of gum in his pocket. He broke them in half and gave them to the kids. The kids who grabbed the gum kept it and the other kids ripped the paper into strips and smelled the minty freshness. When he saw their excitement he told them that if they shared he would drop more candy the next time he came. The didn't know how they would recognize him so he told them he would wiggle his wings when he was over them. When he told his crew his plan they immediately agreed to give him their candy rations. He made three packages attached to handkerchiefs and dropped them on his next flight. 

     He didn't tell his commanding officer about his plan because he thought they wouldn't allow it but he almost hit a reporter with a parachute. The reporter discovered from the kids what was happening and published the story across England. He called it Operation Little Vittles. His commanding officer loved the idea, gave him silk parachutes and told him he was invited to a international press conference. He wrote a message in German to return the parachute. He also got more candy ration donations and some candy shipments from the U.S. He went to a polio hospital with a new shipment of gum and some chocolate. He taught them how to blow bubbles and for the next few days that was everyones favorite pastime. He received mounds of fan mail and was given two secretaries to handle all of it. 900 pounds of twine and 1,100 yards of linen were donated and school children made them into parachutes and stamped "This candy is sent to you from the school children of America." A few weeks before Christmas he received 6,500 pounds of candy. They had several big parties and gave all the candy away. One girl even gave him the teddy bear that had comforted he all through the war. He sometimes dropped thousands of parachutes in a day with all the other pilots that helped him. She even met a girl who had saved a letter she had received from him with some candy attached.