## The Afternoon at the Fence
The specifics of what Halvorsen later described as the defining moment of his life have been told and retold so many times over seventy-plus years that it is worth being careful about which details he himself corroborated.
According to his own recollections, shared in interviews over many decades, Halvorsen visited Tempelhof on a day off, carrying a movie camera he used to film the aircraft operations. He walked out to the perimeter fence where, through the wire, he could see a group of about thirty children watching the planes come in. He walked over to speak with them. Some spoke English, and he was struck by the conversation that followed. The children expressed their awareness of their situation. They understood that the airlift was sustaining them. They told him, in his recollection, not to give up, and that freedom was worth protecting.
Halvorsen reached into his pocket. He had two sticks of Wrigley’s Doublemint gum. He broke each stick into two pieces and pushed them through the wire. The thirty children passed the four pieces around. Those who didn’t get a piece tore off sections of the foil wrapper and smelled the gum scent on the paper. No one protested. No one asked for more.
Halvorsen, by his own account, was moved by this. He had grown up in Depression-era Utah where things were scarce, but these children demonstrated a patience and restraint that struck him as unusual. He later said that he made a spontaneous promise: he would come back the next day with more candy. He would drop it from his plane. He said he would signal them by wiggling his aircraft’s wings as he came in on approach. One child, according to Halvorsen’s recollection, asked what “wiggle” meant in German, and another demonstrated the motion.