PIECES OF OUR PAST - WE LIVED! WE MADE IT OUT! WE'RE GOING HOME!

WE LIVED!
WE MADE IT OUT!
WE'RE GOING HOME!

James Adams, known to his buddies as "Speedie", was one of nearly a hundred graduates of the Dublin High School Class of 1937.  The winds of war were howling in Europe.  Four of his classmates went off to war -  never to return home again.  Hiram Scarborough was the first Laurens Countian to lose his life in the war.  Wex Jordan, an all conference football player at Georgia Tech, lost his life in a plane accident at San Diego.  James and his buddy Jack Flanders, decided to enlist in the Army at Fort Jackson, South Carolina on September 17, 1940.  They were assigned to the 3rd Battalion, Hwq. Detachment of the 121st Infantry, 30th Division.  Many of their friends were members of Company K of the 121st, the local National Guard unit station in Dublin.  James enrolled in flight training as an Air Corps Cadet at Maxwell Field, Montgomery, Alabama.  He earned his wings and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on November 21, 1942.

Lt. Adams was awakened early on the morning of January 13, 1944.  He had just completed his 27th combat mission, flying eight in the last ten days.  That day was supposed to be a day of rest.  Another navigator/bombardier was sick that morning.  Lt. Adams was the only man to take his place.  After a quick breakfast Lt. Adams climbed into the plexi-glass nose of his B-25.  The mission was to bomb the airdromes around Rome, Italy.  The mission was going well.  Adams was, like always, choking on the strong acrid smell of gunpowder from the anti-aircraft flak hurled at the American planes.  The bombs hit the target.  The plane was pulling away.  All of sudden something went wrong.  The bomber suffered a direct hit in the tail.  Sgt. Joseph Grady, the turret gunner, was mortally wounded.  The first pilot, Lt. Henry Luther, managed to continue flying despite the loss of power and maneuverability. The crew bailed out except for Lt. Luther who escaped just before the plane crashed.

Lt. Adams landed safely  with his parachute on top of him - his fall cushioned by a few inches of snow

.  As his crawled out he was shocked to find a large contingent of German soldiers surrounding him.  One soldier tried to pistol whip him, but the frightened young man was rescued by a superior officer.  Adams was taken to the unit commander.  As a former prisoner of war in World War I, the English speaking German officer showed compassion toward Adams, allowing him to keep his cigarettes and a New Testament Bible, which Adams had received from his sister Lois just two days before.  An inscription in the Bible read "May this protect you from harm." Adams returned the favor by sharing a smoke with the officer.  Lt. Adams found Sergeants Frank Maraia and Robert Wooten, the radio operator and the tail gunner.  They were much more seriously injured than Lt. Adams.  The airmen were given a hot bowl of stew, their first meal in many long hours.  Luckily the group were put in the care of another compassionate German.  The English speaking doctor gave them the best medical care available and saw to improving the food and sanitary conditions in the camp. 

The prisoners were run through a series of filthy cramped cells and prisons.  For a brief period they were taken to Ciampino Airdrome, the target of their last mission.  Nearly a week later, Adams ran into Morton Mason, Jr., who happened to be from Dublin.  The pair almost didn't recognize each other in their emaciated condition.  Adams kept searching for his crew.  Adams finally wound up at his permanent prison camp, Stalag Luft 1 near Barth, Germany on February 6, 1944.  Pilot Luther managed to elude the German army for two months before being captured and taken to Stalag Luft III.  He managed to escape just before the end of the war.  Adams wouldn't learn of his fate for another 44 years.  Lt. Joe Berger, the co-pilot, also managed to avoid capture for a short while, but was eventually taken to Stalag Luft I, in the same cell block with Lt. Adams.  Sgts. Maraia and Wooten landed in Stalag IV in Poland.

Lt. Adams made many lifelong friends.  He kept a diary and his fifty year friend, Ed Dunlap, sketched revealing pictures of prison life.  The ingenious prisoners took dozens of photographs with a hidden camera.  Every attempt at escape was turned away by the guards, who even used earthquake detectors to detect the digging of tunnels.  While the conditions were bad, the prisoners were treated tolerably by their captors.   The prisoners kept up with the progress of the war with a make-shift radio tuned to the BBC.  They knew the end of the war was coming.  They could hear it in the rolling thunder from the countryside.  One day they awoke and the guards were gone - running in fear of the oncoming Russian army.  The prisoners remained in the camp for two weeks.  The long journey back to France was the shortest trip they ever made.

Fifty years after coming home, 61 ex-POW's went back Europe. They met some of their Russian saviors.  The highlight of the trip was the trip to Stalag I at Barth.  The prison was gone.  Visions of their 15 month home must have appeared in the now abandoned field.  Half of the crew is still living:  Lt. James Adams in Concord, North Carolina, Sgt. Frank Maraia in Staten Island, New York, and Lt. Henry Luther, the pilot, in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. The story which Lt. Adams would like to be told "is not the horrible part of it - it was horrible - but how many of us lived!"

Taken from the memoirs of Lt. James C. Adams, United States Army Air Corps, donated by Lt. Adams to the Laurens County Historical Society.