Castleford Tigers Heritage
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Pre-Castleford background
Les Adams was born on 14th November 1909 in Hyde Park Leeds. He spent most of his childhood kicking a rugby ball around the back streets around Headingley, often with a runny nose by all accounts, which is where his nickname of Juicy came from. Les was always destined to play for Leeds and in 1926 he signed his first contract, making his debut on 26th March 1927 against Featherstone Rovers. By 1931 Yorkshire and England honours came his way, and domestic honours with his first Challenge Cup Winners medal when Leeds defeated Swinton 11-8 in the final sadly held at Wigan as Wembley was unavailable.“Juicy” at Castleford
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But it was Castleford who took an unusual step of paying £500 for his services. It was money well spent as Les went on to make 196 appearances in Cas colours, the most he made for any team. More Wembley glory came when Cas beat Huddersfield 11-8 in 1935 at Wembley. It was an amazing feat - three Challenge Cup Winners medals in four years (which could have been four) with three different clubs, an often overlooked record. Over the coming years he wove himself into Castleford folklore with his on field exploits. Having spoken to many who saw him play they all say the same - he was something special, unique, a one off.
Les in the RAF
A landlord at the Garden Gate pub at the time war was declared Les found himself in the RAF as a rear gunner in a Liberator crew in the far-east. Tail-end Charlies as they were known were often shorter men due to cramped conditions, life expectancy for rear gunners was tragically short, often 3 or 4 raids of about 5 weeks. But Les to his credit survived through the worst of the war, rising to Flight Sergeant. He was stationed in Burma with 159 squadron flying aboard Liberator BZ938 nicknamed Wottawitch. Sadly his aeroplane was shot down and he was one of the crew members listed as missing in action. His surviving crew mates suffered torture at the hands of the Japanese, some of whom were tried, convicted and executed for their war crimes against the crew. One man who survived the crash and the camp stated in an excellent book by Bill Kirkness DFM and Matt Poole "You will gather from this that it is my strong opinion that W/O Arthur Williams and his two companions were drowned off the coast of southern Burma. I think you will understand me when I write that I consider this a blessing, bearing in mind that, if they had survived the crash, Arthur Williams and Sgt Adams would certainly, and F/O Lowery probably, have suffered the same fate as the four members of our crew who were executed by the Japanese”.