USAF Lt. Harold Shelton Forster was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on December 25, 1921 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the son of Justice of the Peace Adolf Forster (1888-1946) and Myrtle Carrie Turner (1899-1973). His father was a native of Tuscaloosa County and was appointed to his position before being elected to the position in 1944 for a total of seven years. His mother would later marry George Richard Brown (1898-1945) in 1933. After Georges death in March 1945, she and Harold were living at #12 Park Drive in Warrington.
Harold would graduate from Pensacola High School in the Class of 1941 not long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He enlisted in the US Army Air Corps on May 28, 1943 and was sent to Camp Blanding, Florida for processing. He would receive his wings in Eagle Pass, Texas in 1944 before being discharged in 1945. He married Helen Lucille Bell (1926-1994) from the Pensacola High Class of 1943 who was also a member of the US Nursing Corps. He would marry again to Martha Julia Rampenthal (1922-2012) in October 1946 before graduating from the University of Alabama in 1949. Martha was a widow who had lost her first husband as a bomber crewman during WWII.
After the Korean War began in June 1950, Harold was recalled to active duty in October as a 2nd Lieutenant. He was assigned as a F-51D Mustang pilot with the 12th Fighter Bomber Squadron of the 18th Fighter Bomber Wing. By this time, the old Army Air Corps had been renamed the" US Air Force" in September 1947. After his preliminary training was completed he was sent to Korea in April 1951. On May 20th, he was flying a mission over Chuncon, North Korea when he received a direct hit from an enemy antiaircraft battery and crashed in flames. He had been in Korea less than a month when reported MIA. When the area was recaptured by UN forces six months later his body was found and returned for burial in the Tuscaloosa Memorial Park in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
For the second time, war had left Martha a widow, but this time with two very young sons. In August 1953, Martha would remarry for the third time to USAF Colonel Selmon Willard Wells, later a general (1916-2010) but would lose him to death in 2010 before following him two years later.
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