HomeMy WebLinkAboutHomer B. Adams, Brazos Valley HeroesBy Bill Youngkin
Special to The Eagle
Homer B. Adams of College Station entered Texas A&M
University in fall 1941 on a basketball scholarship. But it
took him five more years before he was able to earn his
first varsity letter. It wasn't that he wasn't talented enough
athletically, it's that he had a war to fight before he could
earn that letter.
"I was born January 7, 1923 in Kendallville, Indiana
where basketball was king;' Adams said. "In 1938, my
sophomore year of high school, my family moved to Dallas
where I enrolled at Sunset High and played basketball. I
graduated in 1941 and was fortunate to have A&M offer me
a full scholarship to play basketball. I enrolled in the fall of
1941 but before I enrolled, I married.
"I was on the freshman team in basketball and lettered
but Pearl Harbor occurred and the war was on. I went to
summer school and had accumulated enough hours that I
was classified as a junior. I joined the enlisted reserve so I
could finish college. That didn't happen because in March
1943 our class was emptied out of A&M and we were all
sent for induction into the military.
"I was sent to Mineral Wells, Texas but after about a
week they sent us back to A&M to finish the semester. At
the end of that semester I was sent to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.
There wasn't any room in the OCS (Officer Candidate School)
classes so I was placed in'mulepack basic training for the
next 17 weeks. Because I had been in ROTC, when basic
training was over they let us switch to the Army Air Corps if
we wanted. I had had enough ofthe'mulepacktraining'so I
transferred to the cadet flight program.
"I was sent to Santa Anna, California for the cadet
program. I attended various schools. In 1944 at March Field,
at Riverside, California, I was commissioned as a Second
lieutenant. That was also the prettiest town I ever saw.
"We assembled our B-24 crew with me as the
bombardier and we were sent to San Francisco. We assumed
we would be sent to the Pacific but we received orders to
Boston instead. We flew out of Boston landing in Liverpool,
England on December 16,1944, the day the Battle of the
Bulge began. By the first week of January, we were flying
combatmissions,rnostly over Germany. Most of the targets
were rail yards, bridges, factories, etc., but one mission I will
always remember was our bomb run over Kiel, Germany.
"Kiel was where the German submarine pens were
located. It was the heaviest anti-aircraft fire we ever
received on any mission. When we would fly on a mission,
we usually flew in three,10 plane formations. One 10 plane
formation on the right, one in the middle and one on the
left. "We were doing saturation bombing at that time and
the lead bombardier in the lead plane was. the one who
actually sighted in the target. When he dropped his bombs,
the rest of us dropped ours.
"On the mission over Kiel, I was in the nose which was
my duty station. The flak was so heavy and then I saw one of
the planes above us get hit. It cut across our nose, in flames
and then exploded below us. There were no chutes that
opened. That was the thing that we all had to deal with on
any mission because it could have been us just as easily as
the plane above us. You have to be a little lucky to survive a
war and I guess we were lucky:'
Once the war in Europe ended after flying 19 missions,
Adams and his crew were sent back to the states on June 6,
1945. They would be sent to Sioux Falls, South Dakota for
training on a B-29 for service in the Pacific.
According to Adams, "We fully expected to be sent to
Japan, so it was with great relief that we heard about the
dropping of the atomic bomb and then the end of the war.
That was especially good news for me because I also had a
son born while in the war. I was discharged on September
30,1945 in San Antonio. School at A&M started on October
1, 1945. I was back in school and back on the basketball
team the next day. I graduated in 1947, lettering those two
years. We had a good team but we were limited by our lack
of height as our tallest player was only six feet, four inches:'
After graduation, Adams taught freshman accounting
at A&M and latertaught an insurance course. In 1955 he was
appointed as the Post Master of College Station. In 1960, he
opened Adams Transfer and Storage, North American Van
Lines here and in Conroe. He eventually sold out to his son,
Bob, and retired. During this time, he served two and one-
halfterms onthe College Station City Council
When asked to reflect on his military service, he said:
"I'm glad I went through it but wouldn't want to do it again.
It was very stressful especially for a guy who wanted to see
his wife and son again:'
HomerAdamsnameisfoundon theBrazos Va1leyVeierans
Memorial. If you want to have a name added to the Veterans
Memorial, for more information, to make a contribution, or
if you know a World War 11 veteran whose story needs to be
told, contact the BVVM at www. veteransmemorialorq or Bill