Air Force News, news from Iraq - Air Force Times

DeRidder Army Air Base in for reunion

DERIDDER, La. — The little that remains of the DeRidder Army Air Base includes the yesteryear stories that old soldiers and former employees tell.

Thousands of airmen — including bomber units and fighter pilots — trained at the base during World War II. Some even flew directly to war from there.

Retired Army Col. Dick Anderson, 82, a Kansas native, teaches private flying lessons at the Beauregard Regional Airport — the site of the former base.

Anderson, who is also the airport’s janitor, has worked there for decades and has researched the base’s history.

He said he always had an interest in aviation.

“My generation and my Dad’s generation were greatly influenced by Lindbergh’s flight to Paris. All of us were bit by the flying bug,” he said.

Anderson, who is looking forward to the “Wings and Wheels” fly-in and drive-in at the airport on Nov. 7, is also hoping that more stories about the former air base will emerge at a reunion for those who served or worked there.

The reunion, on Nov. 6, is sponsored by the Experimental Aircraft Association Chapter 1356 El Camino Real Flyers.

Anderson said a “Friends of the DeRidder Army Air Base” group was recently formed. Its members, who have an interest in preserving the base’s history, are collecting base memorabilia to exhibit at the gathering, which will be in one of the base’s original hangars.

“We want people to come out, have some coffee and tell us what they know,” Anderson said.

In the mid-1930s, Works Progress Administration workers cleared stumps at the site of the present airport.

Tension overseas drew the government’s attention to the property and, in 1941, the government leased it from the Beauregard Parish Police Jury.

Construction on infrastructure was quick.

Anderson said a photograph from that time shows the base commander in his office that had walls of two-by-fours and tar paper.

“The idea was to put it up fast, get in it and abandon it when you get out,” Anderson said.

The first wave of troops arrived in DeRidder for training in late 1941.

Anderson said the base’s purpose was to give airmen additional experience before they were sent to war.

Anderson said airmen rotated in and out on short terms.

“The base gave them the capability of operating as a unit and flying airplanes in simulated combat conditions,” he said.

The base had four runways, a rail spur, a theater, a commissary, a hospital, a post exchange, a library, a chapel, office buildings, bowling and billiards, a shooting range and living quarters for soldiers and civilians. It also had a swimming pool an old sawmill pond that was used for training. A practice bombing range is said to have been near Merryville.

According to records, 35 men died while training at the base. They were memorialized in May 2000 with historical highway marker erected on airport property.

Anderson said the base created jobs in the community, which had been strapped during the Depression. Airmen patronized local businesses and the USO in DeRidder, reportedly the nation’s first, for recreation.

“A good many communities sought involvement in World War II, and I think there was an actual effort by the local citizens to get something here,” Anderson said.

Anderson said while the DeRidder base was not a large one, at times there may have been more people at the base than in DeRidder.

When the base closed in 1945, the land was returned to the parish. Most buildings were moved or demolished and buried.

A map of the base in its heyday will be available for viewing at the reunion and at “Wings and Wheels.”

“We are hoping to have a good turnout at both. We want to get the locals out at the reunion — they are a grand source of information,” Anderson said.