A WORLD WAR II veteran has reunited with his wartime girlfriend – 71 years after they last saw each other.
93-year-old Norwood Thomas has travelled from his home in Virginia in the US to Adelaide, Australia, to reunite with Joyce Morris, his English girlfriend from before he was sent to Normandy in 1944.
“This is about the most wonderful thing that could have happened to me,” Norwood said of the reunion, which was broadcast on Australian television’s The Project.
“Good, we’re going to have a wonderful fortnight,” replied Joyce.
When the couple last knew each other Norwood was just 21, while Joyce was 17.
They dated for several months after meeting London before he was mobilised as part of the D Day invasion at Normandy on 6 June 1944.
After the war Norwood was returned to the US in such a hurry the two never had a proper chance to say goodbye.
While they wrote to each other, and Norwood suggested that Joyce come to America to marry him, she misunderstood him and presumed that he had met someone else. The two drifted out of contact.
Both Joyce and Norwood subsequently married. His wife died in 2001 while Joyce divorced after 30 years.
Last year, on a whim, Joyce asked her children to see if they could locate Norwood online, which they duly did via an article involving D Day veterans in the Virginia Pilot.
The pair spoke to each other over Skype, and their reunion had since become something of an internet cause célèbre.
Now reunited, it’s understood that the couple plan to spend Valentine’s Day together this coming Sunday.
“To find somebody who loves you, you love them in the latter years of your life, it would rather be special wouldn’t it,” said Joyce.
It’s hard to argue with that.
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