Uncle Wiggly Wings
By Ravi Nayyar
(Save for stylistic edits, this story is the same as that which the author originally composed as part of his study of Cold War literature in HSC Extension 1 English.)
Gail dabbed his wet handkerchief around his neck, as he squinted through the dusty C-54 cockpit window. He could just make out the tail markings of his brother 54,500 feet below him in their ladder from 4,000 to 6,000 feet, as well as the dots of the buildings in a small town. They seemed so insignificant from his altitude, so vulnerable, be it to the weather or to malevolence of the Soviets, cutting off all road, rail and barge connections as well as power, water and food to West Berlin. But what could he do?
Delivering barely 1.5 tons a day of supplies to the helpless West Berliners. When the figure needed to be at least 5 tons per day to make some sort of a difference to hapless and weakened Berliners, caught in the crossfire of the Soviet realpolitik. After all, for these commie bastards, ideology was a facade for their own fiendish schemes. Ah, the futility of it all.
‘Lifter 104, contact Tempelhof approach on 1–3–5-decimal-8’.
The tinny voice of the controller reverberated in his headphones.
Gail keyed in the frequency, as the aircraft thundered towards the approach path over the outer suburbs of the American sector, its engines roaring through the stratosphere. Again, he looked out at the dots of that town, hemmed in by the rolling green hills, trapped by the red sea of Soviet Germany. And not even the stifling August heat could dry up its waters, licking dangerously at whatever humanity lay in their path.
‘Lifter 104, runway 1, maintain present heading’.
‘Copy that, present heading’.
Gail flicked off the radio switch. He had grown familiar to that voice. It was Fritz, wasn’t it? The approach controller always had that seemingly deep German voice that boomed into one’s ears. Ah, he was a fine fella, doing pretty well for somebody only brought in to cover for a veteran suffering a bad case of heatstroke. And to think about it, he, like most of them, had a family, desperately trying but failing to make ends meet in a city barely supplied from the air; children, needing to go to school in such a climate to distract themselves from the predicament of the city isolated by Stalin; a wife, who couldn’t visit her friends because they lived in the Soviet sector.
A few minutes later, Gail could see the Tempelhof apron, its freshly laid tarmac gleaming in the afternoon sun. He flicked a number of switches, sweating in the suffocating heat of the cockpit.
‘Lifter 104, contact tower on 1–1–8 decimal 8’.
‘Copy that’. He keyed in the frequency.
‘Lifter 104, cleared to land runway 1’.
Gail flicked on his landing lights, gripping the stick as he guided the plane down the glideslope, counting the distance to the runway in his head, as the C-54 roared towards Tempelhof airport. The apartment blocks of Berlin came into view, and grew larger and larger, until Gail could see a young woman with a face like his wife Alta hanging her washing on her balcony, pulling her lock behind her ear in the process, much like Alta whenever she was nervous. She looked up to the plane scything through the hot Berlin afternoon and through the cockpit windows at Gail. He could swear he was looking at Alta, only that she bore an innocent expression mixed with exhaustion and pessimism. For she had seen hundreds of American planes like his with their propellers spluttering through the din of Communists mobbing pro-West German council officials on their way to meetings, but her life was still riddled with that questioning of the futility of existence in a city divided into four where one power was controlling around three million people.
A few minutes later, he touched down and contacted the ground controller before taxiing to the apron where the crews were standing by. After he switched off the engine and his loading officer began proceedings, Gail grabbed his Kodak 35 mm and exited the plane.
He strode to the wire perimeter fence of the airfield, checking the film canister in his camera. He looked up to find a crowd of young Berliners in dusty shirts and torn shoes watching him and the planes behind him in silent gaze, entranced. They shared a similar expression to the woman in the balcony: powerlessness, fatigue, innocence, images of the victims of this stupid situation. It was only their childish fascination at the planes that seemed to mask their pessimism.
Gail held out his hand to a boy with freckles on his cheeks.
‘Hallo. I’m Gail. What’s your name?’
Gail lowered himself to look straight into the innocent blue eyes. A taller eleven year-old girl standing with her hands on Thomas’s shoulders replied.
‘Thomas’.
The young boy stared blankly at Gail, who then handed him his camera. The boy’s eyes widened and the child-like innocence manifested, as he felt the metal shutter button and casing with his much smaller hands. Thomas looked up at Gail and smiled, rolling his lips over his teeth with delight. Gail grinned at him, planting his USAF cap on the boy’s head. It sagged at one end of his head, rather comical, making him grin back at Gail and the other children laugh dotingly at his appearance. A wave of calm washed over Gail as he laughed with the kids, making a salute to First Lieutenant Thomas of the United States Air Force.
The Berliner kids reminded of his own children, the way they would call, ‘Daddy!’ as he walked through the door in his uniform. This was meant to be why he and his compatriots of the Free World did their duty day in and day out. To preserve this innocence embodied by the faces of these children, forced to endure something no one should by an inhumane, devilish enemy.
Hell, even if the pilots couldn’t make 5 tons, they still had to do something.
‘Herr Halvorsen, do you have any, what is it, uh, candy?’
‘Sure’.
Gail felt around in his pockets for those two strips of Doublemint. He held them out to the girl.
‘Here’.
‘Danke’.
‘And you know what? I’ll bring back more if you promise me not to fight over it and share it around’.
All the kids started chirping with joy, now as if completely oblivious to the terrible shortages facing their city, their eyes widening and cheeks blushing. He felt like Santa Claus.
The girl handed one of the strips to a young boy and both began dividing each strip into ten equal pieces so that each child could receive a piece. Some simply smelled their bit and were satisfied, just like Gail was, also amazed by the generosity of each child and their instinctive drive to share.
One kid shuffled through the group to Gail, who gave him a hi-five.
‘How will we know it is you up there, Herr Gail?’ he inquired in his lilting voice.
Gail grinned.
‘I’ll wiggle my wings’.
He glanced at his watch.
‘It was lovely meeting you’.
He gently took his camera from Thomas’s hands and replaced his cap.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then’.
The children replied in a universal shout of ‘Servus’, waving at him and grinning.
Upon his return to his tent at Rhein-Main, he gathered a box of Hershey’s from his monthly candy ration and began tying the purple-wrapped bars to strings connected to handkerchiefs. Picturing the malnourished faces of the Berliner kids lighting up as they would bite into the finest American milk chocolate.
The next day, Gail loaded the packages into the cockpit and as he came in to touch down, he rocked the C-54 a bit, hearing the cheers of the West Berliner kids standing at the fence. His navigator then pushed the packages through the flare chute of the flight deck. Gail didn’t see whether they made their target, aiming to make a smooth landing.
As he later started taxiing to runway two before takeoff, he saw small flashes of white to his left. The West Berliners were cheerfully waving the handkerchiefs, yelling, ‘Danke!’ He waved back.
Yep, that was what they were fighting for. To keep the smiles on the faces of the Berliner kids.
