Celebrating U.S. independence while honoring the fight for freedom around the world

  • Published
  • By Lt. Col. Richard Jones
  • 436th Airlift Wing Logistics Readiness Squadron
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. --  Forty eight years ago, America prepared to celebrate the Fourth of July with the usual fanfare - fireworks, hotdogs on the grill and picnics on summertime lawns. It was only the third peacetime celebration since the end of World War II, and many Americans, then as now, took time to reflect on the liberty secured so many years earlier in Philadelphia.
I'll return to the summer of 1948 later. First, I recently read about a survey that found more than one-third of Americans don't know why we celebrate the Fourth of July. Given how central Thomas Jefferson's Declaration is to the American experience, and to democracy itself, let's do our part to bring that "one-third" number down and reflect on the events that gave birth to American independence.

While July 4th is celebrated as America's official split from Great Britain and the start of the American Revolution, the process took far longer than the one day it took for Congress to adopt the declaration. In fact, the declaration came 442 days after the first volleys of the American Revolution were fired at the Battle of Lexington and Concord, Mass.

The full independence movement gained momentum in January 1776 when Thomas Paine published "Common Sense," a political pamphlet supporting American independence and sold over 500,000 copies in just a few months. Given the population at the time, that makes Paine's work the "Da Vinci Code" of its time.

In the spring of 1776, support for independence swept through the colonies. The Continental Congress convened, called for the states to form their own governments and assigned a five-man committee to draft a declaration.

Drawing from the philosophers of the Enlightenment era, Jefferson wrote the words that would forever be the defining vision of America, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The signers of the declaration did so at great risk to their lives, and Americans have been called upon to take such risks time and time again in defense of these principles. One of those times came in 1948.

Like July 4th celebrations before it, 1948's commemoration honored that courageous stand in 1776. But unlike many others, the 1948 celebration took place while Americans were helping others abroad to defend Jefferson's words and ideals - freedom from oppression.

On that Fourth, a city lay helpless to a strategy of starvation employed by a regime far removed from the enlightened ideals in America's Declaration of Independence. Post-war Germany was divided into four sections: the western three were controlled by the United States, Great Britain and France, and the east was ruled by the Soviet Union. Berlin, located well inside the Soviet section, was similarly divided into three western sectors and East Berlin was occupied by the Soviets.

By the Fourth of July, hundreds of thousands of people in West Berlin were eight days into a relief effort designed to thwart a blockade imposed by the Soviet Union to starve them of food and necessary supplies.

Cutting off West Berlin was the Soviet Union's attempt to gain full control of the city, violating post-World War II agreements. When the Soviets blocked all surface traffic, President Harry S. Truman reacted swiftly and ordered a continual daily airlift of essential food and supplies into the city.

President Truman knew it wouldn't be easy. He also knew it had to be done. There were only two airfields in Berlin and "Operation Vittles" needed to provide 4,500 tons of food and material daily to keep West Berlin citizens alive. Underscoring Allied determination to resist Soviet pressure, President Truman also sent three bomb groups to Europe, which placed Soviet targets well within the B-29 range.

Despite this deterrent, airlift pilots faced routine dangers from Soviet harassment: jamming radio channels, directing searchlights during night operations, "buzzing" cargo planes with fighters and drifting barrage balloons into the air corridors.

The pilots endured this while flying in a system so rigid that a plane which missed a landing time slot at Berlin had to return to West Germany.

On May 12, 1949, the Soviets cracked and they reopened surface routes into Berlin. The airlift saved West Berlin from Soviet takeover.

When it was over, more than 65 Americans, Britons and Germans died in the effort. Had the Soviets elected to respond militarily, something deemed likely by U.S. planners at that time, the causalities would have been substantially higher.

This was the first major test of the free world's will to resist Soviet aggression. Faced with the choice of abandoning the city or risking lives to supply it with the necessities of life, Truman chose the latter. It's recognized as one of the greatest feats in aviation history.

It also marked continued American commitment to those unalienable rights. Once saved from Soviet oppression, West Berlin stood for over forty years as the primary symbol of Jefferson's ideals in barbed-wire contrast to a dehumanizing system that suppressed liberty.

One can hardly imagine winning the Cold War without the iconic image of West Berlin, a place where oppressed people trapped in communism risked life and limb to reach. Winning the Cold War was possible because a U.S. President had the courage and vision to defend the unalienable rights of others.

Forty eight years ago, when U.S. citizens looked up to a sky filled with fireworks, they could also take honor in knowing German citizens looking upwards at the skies over West Berlin were also free from oppression.

It was not an overnight victory, as freedom is typically never an easy process.
So when you look skyward this Fourth of July, take a moment to remember those who have fought before you to secure your freedom, those who are fighting right now to help less fortunate citizens of faraway nations secure their freedom, and those brave Americans yet to come who will continue to fight for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.