Lost But Not Forgotten
A local airman is remembered in a foreign land
By Betsy Iler, Editor of Lake magazine, July 2, 2917
Forget-me-nots stand in relief on the marker at Staff Sgt. James Lester Evers’ grave in the Woods Presbyterian Cemetery a few miles north of Dadeville on State Route 49. “Died in service of his country,” reads the inscription above the engraving of an aircraft propeller and feathered wings – the insignia for the U.S. Army Air Corps that is carved between the numbers 1923 and 1944, dates that indicate a life cut short in wartime.
A native of Tallapoosa County, James Lester Evers grew up in the Eagle Creek community. He graduated Tallapoosa County High School in 1941, and he was 21 years old when the American Liberator, the B-24J bomber in which he served as waistgunner, crashed in a field far from home during World War II’s Operation Market Garden.
The mission was the real-life basis for 1977’s fictionalized film, A Bridge Too Far, which starred Sean Connery, Ryan O’Neal, Michael Caine, Gene Hackman, Anthony Hopkins, James Caan, Colin Farrell, Liv Ullman, Robert Redford, Lawrence Olivier and a host of other big names in Hollywood. The crew of the B-24 bomber had dropped its supply cargo behind enemy lines and was headed home when it was hit with anti-aircraft fire and lost an engine.
