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Mercedes’ Chickens

Mercedes Simon Wild
Interview by: Jess Boydon

Pets

Transcript

Mercedes was a little girl that had the chickens.

Says, "You're causing me a terrible problem!

You're dropping those parachutes and scaring my chickens,

and they're not laying eggs anymore!

And for having to clean out the chicken coup every Saturday

when the kids were going fishing, I do all of my chickens.

And that got my eye right away.

Little seven year old girl, Mercedes.

That's me.

Said, "You're causing me a terrible --

Those chickens aren't laying eggs anymore!

You're scaring, their feathers are falling out!"

(laughter)

And so I -- but then the paragraph said,

"When you see the white chickens,

drop it there, I don't care if it scares them."

Well, we found her house

and dropped her a plate of candy bars.

Summary

Your parachutes are frightening the chickens!

Colonel Gail Seymour "Hal" Halvorsen is best known as the "Berlin Candy Bomber" or "Uncle Wiggly Wings" and gained fame for dropping candy to German children during the Berlin Airlift from 1948 to 1949. He was a pilot on one of many C-54 cargo planes used to ferry supplies into the starving city. At Templehof airport, he saw a group of children pressed against the wire fance, and gave them some gum from his pocket. He remembers that the kids broke them into pieces so they could each try some. Halvorsen recorded that he wanted to do more for the children, and so told them that the following day he would have enough gum for all of them, and he would drop it out of his plane. This gesture developed a groundswell of official support, and eventually resulted in over 23 tons of candy being dropped for the children of Berlin.

Story collecting supported by the RAF Museum American Foundation

Locations

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People in this story

Mercedes Simon

Role Berlin Airlift Eyewitness