3.1 Lodestar

It was a cold night. Tyler Friesen dropped his file preparing to go to bed. In a second thought, he switched on the bed lamp and picked the memo cube on which he scribbled his notes. Removed the typewriter from a table by the corner where he sat by a window to do his writing. Out through this window, he could see a streetlamp and light fell on a snowscape yard. He could also see the road lying in front of the house from this window and houses standing by the bend. It was dark out there. This house belonged to a Connecticut family settled in Mt Vernon in Westchester and they were his friends. For the last three years, he was staying here.

He spread his notes on the small table. Each note scribbled with a word or a phrase; Airlift, Air Bridge, Air Corridor, Pumpernickel, Operation Vittles, Lodestar…

“Lodestar!” he picked the note, crumpled it and dropped on the floor, “Gee! I hate it! I hate!” That was the monicker painted on the aircraft he flew on the milk run. “Blockade! Embargo! What is the difference?” he thought, “The difference is if the commies did it, it’s a blockade. If the allies did it, it is an embargo.” He reasoned his query. “I do not like any of these titles to call my book. How the hell do I remember Lodestar?” Tyler picked the note from the floor and stretched it on the table, “Lodestar! Huh!”

His memories still fresh of the time he was flown from Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu to Rhein-Main Base in Germany. They were briefed by the commander of the unit, Major Allan Denis Howe, about the air bridge and how it was maintained depending on communication and a very sophisticated system of 360° scanners. Those rotating antennas installed on top of the roofs send and receive radio signals displayed on the radarscopes in the control rooms and flying machines to show permanent targets of the houses and buildings and moving objects. Because the ‘Air Bridge’ they had to fly, in and out at the same time, was a narrow corridor in space over 1000 feet from the ground and under a ceiling of 10,000 feet walled within twenty miles. There were three such corridors but his fleet flew two hours Rhein-Main to Tempelhof route.

At the end of the Second World War, a defeated Germany was divided amongst the victors; United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. The latter took control of the Eastern half of Germany and the Western half was divided amongst the US, Britain and France. Like the rest of the country, the capital city of Berlin sitting dead in the middle of the Soviet-controlled Eastern half, was also divided into four parts.

By 1948, it became apparent that the ideologies between the Western Powers and the former ally of USSR could not sit together and tensions climaxed. Capitalism verses Communism in general. The USSR demanded the US out of Berlin and all land and water access to the city was cut off by the Soviets. Two million citizens in their quarters in a war battered Berlin left stranded. There was no way to feed the Berliners.

On 26^th June 1948, the first planes took off from bases in England and West Germany and landed in West Berlin. It was a daunting task to provide food, fuel, water, clothing, medicine and necessities of life to the terrified citizens of the city. For fifteen months, allies flew planes around the clock to keep this lifeline going. At the height of the airlift, one plane reached West Berlin in every thirty seconds.

The Berlin Airlift ended on 30^th September 1949. In total, over 2.3 million tonnes of supplies were flown on 278,000 plus flights.

Tyler Friesen could remember his first flight to Tempelhof. As Technical Seargeant in his rank, his C-54 Skymaster flew at 170 miles per hour over the buildings of the city, its landing gear almost nudged on the tip of the last roof standing and touched down at 26-Left. Tyler saw that large terminal building located at the end of the runway and at first, he could not figure out its curvature design with a massive canopy roof overhang. Who could have a dream like that?

He retired the US Air Force as a captain in 1958. Since then, he began writing story books. Tyler Friesen wrote six novels and two children’s books for a bid from a New York publisher. One of the books did hit the stands and sold over one hundred thousand copies. None of his fictions did go over ten thousand and that was the issue he was facing with his publishers. They were not keen to publish his seventh novel. Its manuscript ready but a title not given, he should have done it even before starting the project. “Lodestar! It’s not my invention…” The doorbell rang. He looked out of the window glass. There was a big black limousine parked under the streetlight.