For children, the situation was particularly stark. West Berlin had a large child population, many of them from families that had been in the city throughout the war and its aftermath. These children had grown up knowing scarcity. Candy, chocolate, and gum were rare enough to be significant. When an American pilot offered pieces of chewing gum, the offer was not trivial. The children at the Tempelhof fence who tore the foil wrappers into strips and smelled them were not being dramatic. They were doing what children did in a city where such things were genuinely scarce.
Berliners’ attitude toward the airlift evolved during its course. The city had been an enemy capital three years earlier. Now American and British pilots were risking their lives to bring it food. The shift in perception was not instantaneous, but it was real. By late 1948, West Berliners had come to understand that the airlift pilots and their nations were, in some practical sense, on their side. When about 300,000 West Berliners gathered at the Reichstag building in the fall of 1948 to protest Soviet pressure, they were also expressing something about how they saw their own situation.
## Gail Halvorsen Before Berlin
Gail Seymour Halvorsen was born October 10, 1920, in Salt Lake City, Utah. His family was part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and his upbringing was shaped both by the Depression and by the rural rhythms of small farming communities in Idaho and Utah. He grew up on farms in Rigby, Idaho, and Garland, Utah, graduating from Bear River High School in 1939.