American, British and French veterans returned to Germany to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift.

Dr. Helmut Trotnow, curator of the Allied Museum in Berlin, attributed part of the dissolution of the Soviet blockade to the U.S. armed forces involved in the airlift. “This is not just an aspect of history in the books, but it's flesh and blood human beings,“ he said. “They had feelings. They had hopes. They had thoughts. They had ideas, and you know if they hadn't had stuck to their ideas of freedom and democracy, the Berlin Airlift might not have been a success.“

The Berlin Airlift kicked off with Operation Vittles. Its mission was to supply roughly 1,500 tons worth of goods daily to keep more than 2 million East Berliners alive while under Soviet occupation. West Berlin was occupied by Allied interests: the United States, Great Britain and France.

In June 1948, the newly created U.S. Air Force, with help from the French and British air forces, reacted to the blockade with continual daily flights that dropped much needed food and supplies into the city of West Berlin. On May 12, 1949, the Soviet government yielded and lifted the blockade.

“We had a job to do and we got it done,“ said retired Master Sgt. Jonny Macia, an aircraft maintainer from the airlift. “The crews were flying night and day. We had everybody doing their job, and at Templehof, the planes were coming in about every 90 seconds. The aircraft were tearing up the runways, so the German's had men and women on the side with shovels and sand and tar filling up the holes. It took everyone to run the operation.”

The Airlift ended Sept. 30, 1949, 15 months after it started. In total, the U.S. and British aircrews delivered more than 2.3 million tons of goods from 277,569 flights to Berlin. Some historians say this “battle“ saved more than 2.5 million people without firing a single shot.

Tricare merges pharmacycontracts

Express Scripts, Inc. of St. Louis has been awarded the Tricare Pharmacy Program Services (TPharm) contract which provides for the delivery of mail order pharmacy dispensing services to begin on Sept. 1, 2009. Retail pharmacy dispensing services are scheduled to begin Dec. 1, 2009.

The TPharm contract consolidates two current contracts: Tricare Mail Order Pharmacy and Tricare Retail Pharmacy. The contractor is expected to process more than 78 million prescriptions during the first year of operation. The contract also provides required beneficiary support services, including monthly pharmacy Explanation of Benefits and new specialty pharmacy services for DoD-identified specialty drugs.

The contract award is for a phase-in base period and unexercised options. The phase-in base period is July 27, 2008 through Aug. 31, 2009. The options provide five full years of prescription services at both mail order and retail pharmacies.

The contract was competitively procured via the Tricare Management Activity e-solicitation Web site with five offers received. The value of the awarded phase-in base period is $10.6 million. The estimated contract value for the base period and all unexercised options is nearly $2.8 billion, excluding cost of pharmaceuticals.

Women veterans not forgottenby Veterans Affairs

Recognizing the valor, service and sacrifice of America’s 1.7 million women veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has created a comprehensive array of benefits and programs.

Women veterans are entitled to the same benefits and medical care as their male counterparts, including health care, disability compensation, education assistance, work-study allowance, vocational rehabilitation, employment and counseling services, insurance, home loan benefits, nursing home care, survivor benefits and various burial benefits.

In addition, VA has a multitude of services and programs that respond to the unique needs of women veterans, including pap smears, mammography and general reproductive health care; substance abuse counseling; counseling for sexual trauma; and evaluation and treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. More than 200,000 women are on active duty today. About 11 percent of the U.S. forces currently serving in Afghanistan and Iraq are women.

VA’s screening for breast and cervical cancer for women exceeds screening in private-sector facilities, but women veterans lag behind their male counterparts in some quality measurements.

VA has an aggressive program to ensure women veterans receive the highest quality of care, including $32.5 million to purchase additional equipment to meet the health care needs of women. This includes full field digital mammography equipment, stereotactic imaging technology, specialized ultrasound and biopsy equipment, and scanners for bone density measurements.

There is a women veterans program manager at every VA medical center, a women’s liaison at every community based outpatient clinic and a women veterans coordinator at every VA regional office.