An American abroad rarely has to sit through paeans to the homeland these days, the W. & Co. wrecking crew be praised! But last weekend I did. The setting, naturally enough, was Berlin, where my wife and I were guests at a dual birthday bash for half of a quartet of sisters from an English class I taught more than 20 years ago.

Merrily flowed the evening, along with the contents of many a bottle. At an hour when booze-buoyed hearts had risen to tongue-level, the husband of the younger birthday girl plopped down next to me and poured out his thanks to the U.S.A. Like most of the people who were at the party, he's a western Berliner too young to have memories of Hitler but not of JFK.

"After Kennedy declared, 'Ich bin ein Berliner,' we felt secure knowing that America stood behind us," the man said, referring to the president's famous speech in front of West Berlin's city hall in 1963. Two years earlier, the Berlin Wall had gone up.

Kennedy's speech gave a huge morale boost to Germans in West Berlin, an enclave surrounded by Soviet-backed East Germany. It came on the 15th anniversary of the start of the U.S.-led Berlin Airlift, which kept West Berlin supplied with food, fuel, and other necessities during the Soviets' 11-month blockade of all land links.

Even before the airlift, the United States had won friends in vanquished Germany with CARE packages and the Marshall Plan.

The G.I.s stationed in West Berlin during the Cold War (smaller contingents of British and French forces had sectors too) were generally made to feel quite welcome. Their "American Way of Life" -- Coca-Cola, country music, easygoing can-do-itiveness -- attracted many Germans, and a rich web of German-American relationships developed. I benefited from this goodwill, emotionally as well as materially, when I studied in West Berlin. (In my final year I received a scholarship from the Stiftung Luftbrückendank, or "Airlift Gratitude Foundation." Established in 1959 by then West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt, it has helped more than 200 American, British and French students at Berlin universities.)

No "Green Zone" was needed.