Berlin Airlift vets dedicate memorial, honor the fallen

By Jeremy Fugleberg, Journal staff | Sunday, October 05, 2008

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Fred Hall remembers flying into West Berlin, toting coal to the starved and hungry members of a city shut off by Stalin and the Soviets.

With flight after closely-timed flight keeping the city alive in 1948-1949, coal dust soon painted black everyone in Hall's C-54 transport plane.

"After a couple of times, nobody knew what you were," he said.

Hall was a 19-year-old private first class at the time and said he quickly realized the flights weren't a lark. Residents of the city were holding their lives close, heated by something else, something brought on each streak of silver wings.

"They had one thing burning for them," Hall said. "They wanted freedom."

On Friday, veterans of what became known as the Berlin Airlift met at the South Dakota Air and Space Museum at Ellsworth Air Force Base to unveil a new plaque and display commemorating their efforts and fallen comrades.

A bell rang out as Earl Moore, the head of the Berlin Airlift Veteran's Association, read the names of the 31 American airmen who died during the airlift. His voice sometimes broke as he read the names, stopping to tell a story about one man or another.

"That man was everything to that town," he said, as he told the crowd about Charles King of Britton, in South Dakota's northeast corner.

A bell rang in honor of the dead, and the crowd responded to each name.

"We shall remember them," they said.

The Berlin Airlift was a massive effort that supplied West Berlin after Communists troops, on order of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, closed rail and road access to the city in June 1948. Otherwise surrounded by Soviet-controlled East Germany, the closure left the city cut off from supplies -- a move Stalin assumed would force American troops and their allies out of the city.

But the allies fought back, not with guns and bombs, but with transport planes and thousands of tons of supplies. Soon the crews of the newly-minted U.S. Air Force began dropping candy to hungry German youngsters, an effort soon sanctioned by command under the name Operation Little Vittles.

Noting that he and Moore were dentists, speaker Paul Reinke of Rapid City noted the irony of the candy drops.

"We both feel guilty about dropping candy from the air," he said, to laughter from the crowd.

Reinke was instrumental acquiring part of the Berlin Wall for placement in Memorial Park, and he spoke fervently about the success of the massive airlift. The Soviets finally relented, threatened by the possibility of atomic attack and surprised by the Allies' airborne torrent of supplies.

It was an important victory at the beginning of the Cold War, Reinke told the veterans.

"What you did ultimately resulted in the defeat of Soviet tyranny," he said. "You revealed America's total commitment to the freedom of Western Europe."

Contact Fugleberg at 394-8421 or jeremy.fugleberg@rapidcityjournal.com