Yesterday my dear friend in Germany called me. She's been through all the ups and downs of the Bush years with me (well, there must have been some "ups" but I can't recall them) and has oftened sympathized with the disappointment I feel in my country's direction.
She, like many Germans, retains a different memory of the USA, one from her childhood. One from when we were a country that did extraordinary things sometimes, things to be proud of.
She told me about "The Raisin Bombers."
Bylle, my friend, launched into the conversation probably because she sensed I was fatigued and maybe a little down. Overwhelmed by life (who isn't sometimes) and overwhelmed by the nastiness still issuing from Washington and the media even as the words of "Hope" and "Change" are being spread around the world on the shoulders of the "skinny guy with big ears." (Obama's own description, so put away the flame throwers.)
Just the other day, German television recalled the Berlin Airlift with a full-court press of documentary video, political explanations, and perhaps most important of all, interviews with people who had been in Berlin during those scary times.
Another diary yesterday (which I can't seem to find) went into detail about the story from the US point of view, but Bylle took me down another path, and suddenly I was a youngster again myself, full of heart-pounding pride in my country. She took me back to when being an American could, and often did, mean being the most generous, helpful country on earth.
As other diarists have noted, Germany is ecstatic about Obama's visit. My friend says many of them say that if we don't want him, they do.
Our German friends remember C.A.R.E. packages. Oddly, many Americans today have forgotten those boxes of food and essentials we used to ship all over the world. Every American was asked to donate, and millions of those boxes containing everything from shovels, to seeds, to food, travelled to the far corners of the globe. The Germans remember them gratefully because they kept families fed and children alive when Germany lay in ruins. (And she added here that Germans don't blame anyone for what happened to their country, because they started the war.) The arrival of a C.A.R.E. package meant that life could go on for a few more days, that some farmer could get back to work in his fields, that someone could plant a garden to grow vegetables for the family.
She also says that Germans will never forget the "raisin bombers." The what? I asked, thinking she had said "racing bombers." She replied, you know, dried grapes?
And then she told me the story.
The Soviets decided to isolate Berlin by closing all the roads between West Germany (occupied by the rest of the Allies from WWII) and Berlin. The other Allies occupied West Berlin, and the Soviets didn't like that little island of "others" in the midst of East Germany. By preventing all traffic from the west, they reasoned, starvation would bring West Berlin to heel and prevent the other allies from supplying their own occupying forces. They expected withdrawal.
The CIA and Joint Chiefs argued for letting Berlin go, but Harry Truman would have none of it. He insisted he would stand by Berlin.
And thus it began. Every ten minutes, round the clock, planes loaded with supplies took off from Frankfurt and flew into Berlin. The skies over Germany were once again clouded with foreign planes, but the sight of them, as my friend said, would never again strike German hearts the same way. Every ten minutes another cargo plane offloaded supplies in West Berlin, everything from coal for heating to food. "Imagine," she said, "how hard and fast people worked. It is almost impossible to believe."
Indeed it is.
But then she choked me up. She said, "We remember the tiny parachutes." Of course I asked what she meant. I could hear the smile in her voice when she said, "the pilots made little parachutes out of handkerchiefs, and tied boxes of raisins or candy bars to them. And as they flew in, they tossed them into the open areas for children to gather. Can you imagine the excitement and joy those children felt when they saw those little parachutes coming down? The people who were interviewed still got a sparkle in their eyes."
I remember that America, the one that made me grow up with the sense that I should take care of people all over the world. Yeah, I know there was a much darker side to those years. I remember that, too. But that's not what I'm remembering right now.
All because a German friend, excited about Obama's visit, wanted to tell me about the America the whold world wants back.
I told my teen daughter about my conversation with Bylle, and her response was simply, "We ought to be doing that now."
I had a sudden vision of C.A.R.E packages being dropped all over the world's starving places, tied to tiny white parachutes.
How different things could be.