IDA, La.-This coming Thursday will mark the 75th anniversary of the murder of U.S. Army Capt. Fletcher Adams, an Ida, La., resident, at the hands of German civilians on May 30, 1944.
Back in July of 2010, this small town of about 284 people, located about 33 miles south of Texarkana and just south of the Miller County border with Louisiana, converted their vintage 19th-century wood-frame post office into a commemorative museum focusing on Fletcher's military life as a U.S. Army fighter pilot during World War II.
The museum's grand opening also included a reunion of many of Adams' fellow fighter pilots from the 357th Fighter Group. The reunion included Charles "Chuck" Yeager, one of the fighter group's most prominent members.
One year prior to the museum's opening, one of Ida's local educators, Joey Maddox, son of former Ida Mayor Clyde "Smokie" Maddox, researched, wrote and published a book detailing Adams' military life titled "Bleeding Sky-The Story Of Captain Fletcher E. Adams and the 357th Fighter Group."
The book, which took five years to research, contains a great deal of information from Adams's son, Gerald Loyd "Jerry" Adams who was just a few weeks old when enemy fighters shot down his father's P-51 Mustang (named "Southern Belle" in reference to his wife, Aline) over central Germany.
Prior to the book's publishing, many Ida residents knew little about their hometown hero and the group with whom he served. The book focuses on detailing the experiences of Adams and the other members of his unit.
Besides Chuck Yeager, some of the other combat pilots belonging to the 357th have recognizable names like Lt. Leonard "Kit" Carson and Lt. Clarence "Bud" Anderson. These men, as well as many others who played a crucial roll, defended the skies over Europe from Germany's Luftwaffe during 1944. This time period proved to be turning point in the air war over most of that continent.
While Maddox never got a chance to interview Adams, he did conduct extensive interviews with other military veterans as well as the detailed paper work and research by the 357th's flight line aircraft maintenance crew chief Merle C. Olmstead.
Adams' military background in the book starts on page 28 when, on Nov. 9, 1943, he boarded a train at Pocattello, Idaho, where he just finished air combat training, for Camp Shanks, N.Y.
From New York, Adams boarded the British passenger liner Queen Elizabeth on Nov. 23 for a cruise across the Atlantic before docking Nov. 29 in River Clyde in Northern Ireland. He was eventually assigned to Lieston Airfield on Feb. 2, 1944. There, he and the rest of 357th are assigned to fly heavy bomber escort missions in their P-51 Mustangs.
While serving as a fighter pilot, Adams made somber note of fellow fighter pilots in both his personal diary, as well as in letters home to his wife, who he had just married a few months before deployment.
Adams' noting of lost friends comes across poignantly as he observes the empty bed bunks in his barracks.
As an author, Maddox conducted an extensive piecing together of all the documents he could find related to Adams' capture and subsequent murder upon bailing out of his P-51. These documents include testimonies, affidavits, letters and official reports.
The museum is being relocated in Ida for better climate control.