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Berlin. "Russian legislation must apply to all sectors of Berlin," 7 they proclaimed. The West answered this by bringing its new currency to West Berlin and announcing that both currencies would be legal tender there. General Lucius Clay, the United States Military Governor of Germany and commander of the U.S. forces in Europe, told the Russian Military Governor: "I reject in toto the Soviet claims to the city of Berlin." The Soviet reacted by cutting off West Berlin.
Clay's response to the blockade was a daring airlift, dubbed "Operation Vittles." 8 For the next eleven months planes landed in West Berlin every two and a half minutes, unloading powdered milk, flour, and diesel fuel, as well as the sacks of coal that Frank Borman had been sitting on. In the process, the people of Berlin accepted severe deprivation and near-starvation in order to resist Soviet rule. A second airport was quickly built, and at its peak the airlift was shipping more than 10,000 tons of supplies each day, including endless tons of coal needed to keep the people of West Berlin from freezing in that brutal winter cold. 9
After almost a year, the Soviets finally realized that force would not get their former allies to leave Berlin. Furthermore, the siege had been hurting their own zone, which needed the shipments of coal, steel and machine parts that West Germany supplied. In May, 1949 the Soviets finally lifted the blockade, re-opening the rail lines and highways leading to Berlin.
The airlift continued, however, for another two months. When Borman arrived in June the Allies were aggressively re-stocking West Berlin with supplies, just in case the Soviets once again changed their minds.
Borman's European tour ended in Greece. There, a guerrilla army of communist rebels was trying (for the third time) to seize power by force. Knowing that they would certainly lose in the 1946 elections (some estimated they would only receive nine percent of the vote 10 ), the communists abstained and declared war instead. Using bases in neighboring Yugoslavia, Albania, and Bulgaria, they made repeated forays into Greece, attacking villages and killing hostages. 11
     

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When Borman arrived in the summer of 1949, the rebellion was on the verge of defeat. The rebels had lost the support of Yugoslavia, and were defending their last strongholds within Greece itself Borman and the cadets were taken to the front lines, where both sides were preparing for what in mere weeks would be the war's final battle. 12 En route, one of their convoy trucks hit a land mine, and once at the front the cadets watched for several days as the two sides lobbed mortar shells back and forth at each other.
Still young and eager to prove his mettle in the world, Borman had stood witness to the start of what was to be a forty year "cold war," a toe-to-toe stand-off which would dominate every aspect of the world's politics and culture. With the development in the late 1940's of the atomic bomb, the stakes rose to a frightening level, preventing outright war but forcing both sides to take actions that sometimes abrogated their own ideals. Machiavellian politics led to military dictators, the funding of terrorists, and indecisive military skirmishes throughout the world. In the end, however, the outcome of this stand-off determined whether the world's entire population would live under a state-run communist system or the free and chaotic capitalist system.
That 1949 journey through the ruins of Europe radically changed Frank Borman's perspective on life. His three years at West Point, dedicated to the motto of "Duty, Honor, Country," forged in him a desire not merely to fly airplanes, but to do it in defense of his country. The devastation of Europe and the communist oppression he saw there further committed him to the deeper principles he felt his country stood for: freedom, democracy, and the right of any human soul to pursue his or her dreams.
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As Susan Borman notes