US 'candy bomber' back in Berlin after 70 years

When in 1948 US bombers started dropping tiny, improvised parachutes loaded with sweets into Berlin during the Soviet blockade, one little German girl wrote to complain.

Mercedes Wild, now 78, recalled how she protested that the constant drone of airlift planes disturbed her chickens -- and during the Soviet blockade of West Berlin, eggs were a valuable commodity.

Then Gail Halvorsen, the US pilot who dreamed up the candy drops, wrote back, enclosing sticks of chewing gum and a lollipop with his letter.

His gesture sparked a long-lasting friendship between Halvorsen, Wild and their families which mirrored the post-World War II German-American relationship, she told AFP.

"It wasn't the sweets that impressed me, it was the letter," she said. "I grew up fatherless, like a lot of (German) children at that time, so knowing that someone outside of Berlin was thinking of me gave me hope." "Candy bomber" Halvorsen insists that the real heroes of the Berlin Airlift -- the mammoth logistical ...