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This was the stage upon which Bolling and the Military Air Transport Service had to play their part in saving some of the approximately 200,000 Hungarians who escaped before the Soviets closed the country’s borders.

The Soviet Union’s reason for responding with overwhelming force was the Hungarian revolutionaries’ stated goals of withdrawing the nation from the Warsaw Pact and establishing democratic elections. Many nations sympathized with the plight of the Hungarians.

Photographs of the Soviet occupation of the city and their brutal means of keeping order were smuggled out of the country and reprinted in newspapers worldwide. Thousands of Hungarians escaped the Soviet dragnet, but were left without homes – and without futures.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a military tactician in a political office, saw an opportunity to endear American values to European allies and inspire hope among other Warsaw Pact nations. On Dec. 10, he approved asylum for the 200,000 refugees who fled Hungary. His proclamation led to a unique airlift mission that would figure prominently with Bolling’s Military Air Transport Service.

On Dec. 11, Air Force leaders at Bolling coordinated a reverse-version of the Berlin Airlift, bringing the 15,570 refugees to America on MATS, Navy, and commercial aircraft. While MATS was a prominent mission here, the sheer size of such a humanitarian airlift required the air transports from the 1608th Air Transport Wing from Charleston Air Force Base, S.C., and the 1611th Air Transport Wing from McGuire AFB, N.J. Approximately 5,000 more refugees came on three ocean-going transports.

President Eisenhower called upon America to embrace the refugees, to ‘‘take to heart the lessons the Hungarian people have written in their blood ... in their indomitable will to be free.” U.S. Labor Department officials accompanied the refugees, having many job-classified before they ever reached America.

Operation Safe Haven was an unparalleled success for U.S. foreign policy as well as proof of MATS’ ability to evacuate thousands in times of crisis.

But the subtlest victories of diplomacy are found in the details. The military and government officials involved in Safe Haven remembered that Dec. 6 was St. Nicholas Day in Eastern Europe. According to tradition, St. Nicholas leaves presents in the newly polished shoes of good children, and switches and pieces of coal for naughty kids. The displaced children were given toys, dolls and candy on a belated St. Nicholas Day. No observance of St. Nicholas Day had been permitted for Hungarian children since the Soviets seized power in 1947.