Word: berlin
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...fact that all over Germany men were acutely aware of liberty and of its connection with the U.S.-British air lift was the real answer to last week's Russian note. The Kremlin said flatly that they were using the blockade to pry the Western powers out of Berlin...
Where did that leave the crisis? The Western powers could go on supplying Berlin for months. Some experts in Washington now believed that the volume transported could be greatly increased and that Berlin could even be supplied with coal through the winter. The operation would be fantastically expensive, but worth it, politically. The Berlin lift was a kind of 20th Century miracle play representing both the West's humanitarian purpose and its military strength. Said a high-ranking U.S. air officer last week: "A year's supply of Berlin would be cheap compared...
...Russians continued intransigent, the U.S. had another possible course. It could use its meager armored forces (see cut) to blast a land route to Berlin. But that would mean that the U.S. would abandon its present morally unassailable position. As matters stood, the air lift over the blockade could go on until the Russians stopped it-but only...
Americans had done jobs as marvelous as the Berlin air lift before. Take the time Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox dug the St. Lawrence River in three weeks. When Billy Pilgrim tried to make it tough for Babe by wetting and stretching the buckskin ropes attached to the scoop shovel, Babe just sat down until the sun came out and dried the ropes. As they dried they shrank, and pulled that scoop for miles & miles up to Babe. And there was the St. Lawrence, practically...
Over at Gatow Airport, in the British sector of Berlin, pilots had fun with a British WAAF operator known as Squeaky Mary. Whenever she told a pilot his course in her high-pitched voice, he answered in an equally squeaky imitation. Squeaky Mary called the U.S. airport. An American answered briskly: "Shoot, Luke, you're faded." Mary was momentarily nonplussed. After giving her message, she explained: "You see, it's been so long since I've had close contact with Americans-it's good to be at it again...