Vidalia Airport Plays Significant Role in WWII

Martha Price Thompson, the sole survivor of Vidalia's Air Watch Service of World War II, presents a token of appreciation to Lt. John Allison of The Blue Angles for the squardron's commitment to patrolling the skies.

Photo Caption: TAKING COVER — The Civil Defense ordered black cloth placed over the windows in the tower of Vidalia?s Union Train Depot for fear light from the tower might guide Nazi bombers to the railroad junction at night.

Vidalia Airport Plays Significant Role in WWII

By Kathy D. Bradford, Associate Editor

The Blue Angles have soared through the skies of Vidalia since last Wednesday, amazing spectators with their aerial feats. Now, they have packed their gear, powered up ?Fat Albert,? their C-130 cargo plane, and zoomed their F-18?s back to home base in Pensacola, Fla. But before they left, they were presented a special token by a lady who was a part of the history of the airport in which they performed.

Mrs. Martha Price Thompson wanted to do something special for ?The Blues.? Two years ago when they were in Vidalia, she tried to work out a time to make a public presentation but was unable to arrange it. But this visit, she was successful when she made the presentation to Lt. John Allison, narrator for the Blue Angles, who also pilots the #7 aircraft for media tours on Wednesday afternoon.

The story begins many years ago and is perhaps best described in the very words of Thompson. The following information was submitted the The Advance by Mrs. Thompson to Editor William F. Ledford, Sr.:

Dear Billy and Staff:
When the U.S. Navy Blue Angels come to Vidalia for the Onion Festival Air Show, local organizer Marsha Temples will present them with a small memento on behalf of World War II.
As you may know, Vidalia?s airport was originally constructed in the early 1940?s as a training facility for pilots and air crews during World War II. Hundreds of airmen from all over the United States trained in Vidalia prior to being stationed to urope or the Pacific.
I was a student at Vidalia High School during that time, and I volunteered to join an organization called the Vidalia Air Watch Service. I had to undergo an F.B.I. background check, and I still have my service wings issued be by the U.S. Department of War.
The Air Watch Service was comprised of civilians who helped the airmen conduct reconnaissance training.
On weekends, when the airmen had leave time, we would invite them to attend local church services and invite them into our homes for Sunday dinner. We would also organize dances, softball games, and other recreational activities and trips.
Needless to say, this was very emotional and patriotic time for all involved, and we became very attached to the airmen before they were shipped out overseas.
It has been some 60 years since I was in the Air Watch Service, and I am the sole surviving member of the Vidalia group. In 1999, an archivist at the Eighth Air Force Museum in Pooler asked me to write down my memories of the Air Watch Service as well as life in Vidalia during the war.
I have always been very proud of Vidalia?s airport, and am very happy that after 60 years, it is still being used to support and promote our nation?s military service personnel.

Sincerely,
Martha Price Thompson

On October 4, 1999, Thompson penned her memoirs as such:

The recent movie ?Saving Private Ryan? has generated a great deal of renewed interest in World War II and the sacrifices the Americans of that generation made to save the world from holocaust. A largely unknown aspect of that war was the effect it had on Vidalia, and the patriotism and sense of community spirit with which Georgians faced that era of uncertainty.

After the war began in Europe in 1939, people throughout Vidalia and surrounding communities would have scrap metal drives for England. Even though South Georgia was still struggling to overcome the Great Depression, Vidalia had drives to collect clothes, medicines and toiletries for war-torn Europe.

After Pearl Harbor in December 1941, people were very, very apprehensive about a possible attack on the many military bases that were located in Georgia. Back then there were no such thing as satellite reconnaissance to help locate fleets at sea. The Japanese fleet had been able to sail clear across the Pacific undetected to decimate the American fleet in Hawaii. People were afraid that a fleet of Nazi aircraft carriers could sail right up to the Georgia coast and bomb Camp Stewart at Savannah, the Army Air Forces training field at Warner Robins, or the paratrooper school at Camp Benning outside Columbus. The federal government was so concerned that Washington might be bombed, they took many of the reassures from the National Gallery of Art and sent them to the Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina, for safekeeping for the duration of the war.

In the first six months of 1942, Nazi U-Boats sank numerous American Ships at will all along the eastern seaboard.

On April 8, 1942, a U-Boat sank the oil tankers Oklahoma and Baton Rouge within site of shore just outside the harbor of Brunswick, Ga. The explosions tossed people out of bed and shattered windows for 18 miles inland. Many American seamen were buried in Brunswick?s Palmetto Cemetery. On April 11, 1942, a Nazi U-Boat torpedoed the tanker SS Gulf America just off Jacksonville Beach, Fla. At night. The U-Boat came to the surface to finish off the ship by shelling it with her deck guns, as hundreds of American watched in helpless horror from the beach.

Occasionally, a U-Boat would be captured after being forced to the surface by depth charges from an American destroyer. Wild stories spread all over the Southeast that cinema tickets were discovered on board, saboteurs, who were riding over rural Georgia taking photographs of railroad bridges. ( U-Boat actually did land some saboteurs on the Georgia and Florida coast, but most were quickly captured.) The Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and other industrialists abandoned their cottages on Jekyll Island for fear Nazi agents might try to kidnap or assassinate them. The Coast Guard and Civil Defense organized the ?Beach Watch,? civilians who would patrol the beaches at night to look out for Nazi agents coming ashore. With news reports of Allied disasters at Corregidor and in Europe, plus the increase sinking along the Georgia coast, a wave of near hysteria swept over the Southeast.

In that ear, railroads were the main mode of mass transportation. Vidalia was the junction for two of the main north-south and east-west railroads in this part of the state, and many people feared Vidalia would be a prime target for bombing or saboteurs. The Civil Defense recruited civilian volunteers in Vidalia. My father, Jake Price, was the air raid warden for Durden Street, and his duties included walking up and down the street every night to be sure people?s outdoor lights were off.

My mother, Pearl Price, had worked for the railroad in the 1920?s, and after so many men went into the service in 1942, she went back to work at the train depot to help with the crush of troop trains that steamed into Vidalia.

The locomotives would have to stop here, take on fuel and water, and the cars loaded with troops would be sitting ducks until the trains could be refueled and leave. This made the trains a possible target for saboteurs, and the train schedules were considered to be TOP SECRET information.

Clements Restaurant was located on the first floor of the Union Train Depot, which sat at the intersection of the main north-south and east-west rail lines. Many locals would eat dinner there, and many of us children like to climb up into the tower, where you could see trains coming from several miles away. After war started, the Civil Defense ordered the windows in the tower to be covered with black cloth, for fear lights from the tower might help guide Nazi bombers to the railroad junction at night.

Many businesses located on north and south Main Street along the railroad began taking up donations for gift baskets to give to the soldiers on the troop trains. The baskets would contain fruit, nuts, gum, candy, soap, stationary envelopes, stamps pencils tooth past and brushes, crackers, magazines, etc. When the troop trains would stop to refuel, the troops were not allowed to disembark. So my mother and Alice Moore at the train station, Sarah Thompson at Thompson?s Farm Supply, the D.C. Morris Grocery family, the Shuman?s Grocery family, the Estroff?s and Max Smith?s Department Stores families would all run out with gift baskets and distribute them to every car of every troop train that came through Vidalia through to the end of the war. They must have given away a small fortune in snacks and goodies before the war ended.

In March 1942, when I was a sophomore at Vidalia High School, I heard about the Civilian Air Watch Service, which was run under the auspices of the Army Air Forces Reconnaissance. Just like the ?Beach Watch? that looked for Nazi U-Boats and saboteurs on the Georgia coast, the ?Air Watch? was to look for any and all aircraft that flew over Vidalia.

Caught up in the patriotic fervor of the day, I joined because I felt it my duty to protect Georgia from the dreaded Luftwaffe!

All the volunteers attended night classes three nights a week in Mr. Elbert Sanders? history classroom at Vidalia High School, then located on First Street. Our instructor was Owen Whitman of Pennsylvania, who was an Army Air Force officer. He would show silhouettes of various Allied and Axis fighter and bomber aircraft on walls with projectors and we would have to be able to identify them from their shape. We also had flashcards with place silhouettes to memorize. After six weeks, we had to pass a test, and I was presented with my Air Watch Service sings. I as so proud I felt as though I had won the Congressional Medal of Honor!

The volunteers were required to man, in shifts 24 hours a day, a cubicle that was located on the roof of the City Hall, which is today the Ladson Genealogical Library. We reached the roof by a ladder from the top floor of the City Hall. The cubicle was roughly eight by eight feet square with a tar paper roof. The west wall was solid all the way up to the roof. The north, south and east walls only ran half way up, and then were open on up to the roof. The Army felt that any enemy planes would come from the north, south and east. Later, when it became cold weather, the openings were closed in with glass.

We were issued a pair of binoculars and were required to observe and identify every aircraft that flew over Vidalia. The cubicle had a phone that connected us to Camp Stewart and we had to report every plane we saw. Sometime, the Army would send planes over just to test us and see if we were on the ball.

After the Vidalia airport was constructed between November 1942 and July 1943 as an Army Air Forces training facility, Vidalia was inundated with soldiers and aircraft.

Bombers crews, mostly B-17?s and later B-24?s, would be stationed here for about three week intervals, and would practice taking off and landing day and night. When we would wake up in the morning we could hear the bomber engines warming up at the airpoet. I would get up and fix my breakfast and go eat it sitting on the front steps of my house on Durden Street. The bombers were lumbering, prop-driven craft which took a long distance to gain altitude. They would take off from the airport and, by the time they reached our house, they would still just be clearing the tree tops. I would run out in the front yard and wave at the planes. You could actually see the gunners in the glass bubble on the nose cone and in the glass bubble on the belly, and the crewmen would actually wave back to me.

Kleig light crews were also stationed at the airport. At night, we could sit on our front porch, or from anywhere else in the area, and watch the light crews try to catch the bomber crews in the ?cross hairs.? The bombers would dive and weave trying to escape the lights, and the light crews would practice trying to catch the bombers so they could be ?shot down.?

Where the Goodie Garden and Harton Chevrolet are now located on Hwy. 280, were then vacant lots. There was a tented camp of soldiers with Kleig lights in each location, and they, too, would try to catch planes as they went over. You could ride on Hwy. 280 all the way from Vidalia to the Ohoopee River, and on every other high hill along the road would be five or six men camped out beside a Kleig light practicing for when they would be assigned to Europe or the Pacific.

On weekends the soldiers were given a few hour of leave, but it was difficult for them to catch a bus or train or car ride to Savannah. Most of them, hundreds on Saturday and Sunday, would wandeer the sidewalks of Vidalia looking for anything to do. They would visit at the train depot and watch trains come though. They would go to the Pal Theater for the double features and to tap dance show by Madge Bland?s dance students accompanied on the piano by Miss. Lula Mae Leveritt! They would go to the bowling alley on North Main Street and next door to the shooting gallery, where they would try their expertise with the air rifiles.

On Sunday mornings the Baptist and Methodist churches on Church Street would be packed with soldiers. If you didn?t get there early, you would have to sit in folding chairs in the aisles, or stand against the walls in the back. After service, every family would take several soldiers home with them for dinner. People from Lyons and who lived out in the country in surrounding counties would double-park on Church Street and invite several soldiers to come home with them for dinner. Everybody in town knew the soldiers were lonely and far from home, and this might be the only home-cooked meal they would have for a while. Each family in a neighborhood would have two or three soldiers for dinner every Sunday and afterward they would sometimes organize neighborhood softball games. Often the soldiers just wanted to listen to the radio, or play the piano or write letters, or just try to sleep. Not just on weekends, but on everyday of the week, the Max Smith home that was located on Jackson Street where the Georgia Power office now is, would be covered with soldiers on the front porch and carpeting the lawn, listening to the radio or playing records.

A couple of times a year, some local businessman or club would hire a big dance band to come play to entertain the soldiers. They were open to the general public, and hundreds of people from all over the area would attend. One was held at the tobacco barn that used to sit where Taco Bell Company now is on Hwy. 280. Hundreds of people from all over came to dance and socialize with soldiers and each other. Most every family around had a father, or a son, or a brother, or a cousin, or some other family member away in the service. Even though most of these soldiers were here for only a few weeks, the entire community adopted them as though they were surrogate sons.

The most famous person I can remember that the war bought to Vidalia was John Eisenhower, son of the-General Eisenhower. Sometime before the spring of 1944, a train carrying John from Savannah to Columbus stopped in Vidalia to refuel. Despite his famous father, John was restricted by the same rules and regulations as any other soldier and was not allowed to disembark. The conductors just could not stand to keep such a secret from everyone in the depot as to the identity of their famous passenger. They ?let it slip,? and within minutes my Mother, everyone in Clement?s Restraurant in the depot, as well as many people from nearby stores soon gathered around one of the Pullman cars to shake hands and speak to John. The news spread like wildfire, and soon people were racing to the depot before the train could pull out. Needless to say, John?s short visit to Vidalia was the main topic of conversation in Vidalia for days and weeks to come.

I graduated from Vidalia High School in 1944 and went to Bessie Tift College in Forsyth. When I came home from college for the summer of 1945, the war in Europe had already ended, and the local Air Watch Service had already been disbanded. I have no information as to exactly when. Also, the bomber and Kleig light training crews were gone by the summer of 1945, but I have no information as to exactly when.

The cubicle on top of the City Hall (Ladson Library) building was still there until the late 1980?s when it was dismantled when a new roof was put on the building.

The only mementos I have of the Air Watch Service are my service wings, the warm memories we all have of those soldiers and the great community spirit we had developed in the face of an uncertain future.

Martha Price Thompson

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