As an aside, this article stirred a memory: During the cold war blockade of Berlin, I flew into Tempelhof via commercial airline. The glide path was below the tops of tall buildings, very close on both sides. An interesting landing.

“A former U.S. Air Force pilot famous for dropping candy to starving children during the Berlin Airlift of 1948 and 1949 has returned to the German capital as a guest of honor 70 years after the end of the crisis.

Gail Halvorsen, 98, received a hero's welcome as he donned his military uniform, signed autographs, and posed for photos with city residents on Saturday.

Halvorsen became known as the 'Candy Bomber' after inventing the idea to airdrop small bags of sweets to children in West Berlin, who were going hungry after the Soviet Union blocked railway, road and canal access to the city.

The blockade lasted from June 1948 until May 1949 and became known as the first crisis in the Cold War…”

https://mol.im/a/7019513

Thanks for posting. The cadet color guard from my Civil Air Patrol squadron was invited to provide the color guard for this Berlin Airlift 70th anniversary celebration in Germany. They were unable to go due to the extensive security requirements associated with having 12-18 year-olds in military-like uniforms wandering around Germany.

quote:

Originally posted by mikeyspizza:
Thanks for posting. The cadet color guard from my Civil Air Patrol squadron was invited to provide the color guard for this Berlin Airlift 70th anniversary celebration in Germany. They were unable to go due to the extensive security requirements associated with having 12-18 year-olds in military-like uniforms wandering around Germany.

Ah, you mean like they USED to a while back?

Well, I was in uniform, in Germany, at age 18. And it was not all that unusual! But back then we still had the draft going, and a fair percentage of American troops in Germany were draftees.

I know that many of us gave candy, chewing gum, etc to the German kids. Virtually every time we went on maneuvers we had interactions with local German kids. They would come to our locations to make shopping runs to the local stores for us. For which they always got a nice "tip" for doing so.

The Civil Air Patrol is the USAF Auxiliary, a volunteer organization, and the cadets are 12-18 year old civilian volunteers. The USAF, and I believe the State Dept, are the ones who put the kabosh on it.

Which is unfortunate, because I can see about zero extra problems about kids attending event venues in topical uniforms, with flags and even rifles. That happens at the annual Schützenfeste of the ubiquitous German marksmen associations all the time, after all.





Granted, Berlin in particular is a politically unruly turf where militant leftists frequently try to disturb public military events, but that's irrespective of the age of attendants.

Gail Halvorsen has been a staple of airlift commemorations for like decades, BTW. He has a couple school named for him, and for the current anniversary they did the same with the baseball park at Berlin's former Tempelhof Airport. Which is particularly appropriate, since Halvorsen also served as commander of the airfield from 1970 to 1974. I hope he sticks around for the 75th anniversary, too (he would be 103 then).