Morris Todd: by Benjamin Hager
Germans had just shot down his fighter jet, and he was parachuting into hostile territory. His vision was obscured by blood, but he made out an Me-109 aircraft heading his way.
“It got so close that I was face to face with the German pilot. I could see his eyeballs, and I know he could see mine. Maybe he saw all the blood and didn’t want to waste ammo — I don’t know what it was — but he didn’t shoot me. He waved at me, I waved back, and he was gone.”
This narrow escape was just the beginning of WWII tribulations for Morris Todd, a lead navigator for the Air Force on a mission to bomb an enemy synthetic oil refinery. After bailing at 24,000 feet, Todd, with a “flattened” nose and bloody face, landed in a wheat field where he was greeted by an intimidating cast. “What I first saw was a civilian with a rifle, a soldier with a pistol and a little fat girl holding a sickle,” he recalls. “Even if I’d tried to run, I don’t know where I would have gone. One of them, I don’t remember which one, said to me,
‘For you, the war is over’.”
… read Morris Todd’s whole story and the story of other WWII vets from our neighborhood here in this Advocate feature story from a couple years ago.
There also is our more recent post about Mel Kusin, a vet who recently spoke with Lake Highlands High School students about what he did when he was about their age (went to war).
It’s also a good time to remember Honor Flight Dallas, a neighborhood-based nonprofit that takes WWII vets to Washington D.C. to visit the war memorials. WWII vet Bernice Press, 95, who we interviewed for our story about amazing seniors about town, went on the trip in 2011.
In additions to remembering all neighborhood veterans as Veterans Day approaches, Semper Fi and happy birthday to Marines in the neighborhood and around the country today — Fred Wiatrowski, John Reeg, Donovan Campbell and his men, Colby Vokey, Tristan Fick (all Marines we have written about) as they celebrate 239 years.
