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Rear Adm. John C. Harvey Jr. applauds Elmer Morris Jr. of King George and his wife, Marcy, at Dahlgren after presenting the WWII veteran with the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal.
Elmer Morris Jr. gets a hug from longtime friend Marguerite Eckard at last night's ceremony at Dahlgren, where he received |
By JEFF BRANSCOME
When a Japanese kamikaze crashed his plane into a U.S. destroyer in May 1945, Elmer Morris dashed toward the flames carrying tourniquets and "lots and lots" of morphine.
As the pharmacist's mate second class raced to help his wounded shipmates, another kamikaze plane hit the vessel.
The attacks separated the ship into three sections, killing 67 and wounding 87 members of the ship's 300-man crew. The fires weren't extinguished until five hours afterward.
Morris survived the second explosion, and earned a Purple Heart for a gash in his arm.
But the King George County native's wound symbolized just a small part of his bravery during the attacks on the USS Braine, a destroyer stationed near Okinawa during World War II. Despite his bleeding arm, Morris managed to give morphine to his shipmates and stop their bleeding.
Last night, 60 years after those deeds, Morris' heroism was honored during a special ceremony at a conference center in Dahlgren naval base. There, Navy officials presented him with the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal (with Combat "V"), an honor he was supposed to receive in 1945.
"Somehow or another, it fell through the cracks, and nothing was heard of it for years," Morris said, expressing concern that his shipmates didn't receive similar accolades.
More than 50 veterans, active-duty officers--including Capt. Joseph McGettigan, the commander of Naval District Washington--and Morris' relatives took part. The parents of Nick Mason, a National Guardsman from King George killed in Iraq, also attended.
Rear Adm. John Harvey Jr., the deputy for warfare integration on the chief of naval operations' staff, presented Morris with his long-overdue prize.
"It is difficult to imagine that scene, much less live through it, but those sailors, with their shipmates, fought the fires, threw burning ammo off the decks and brought their ship back from the brink of destruction," Harvey told the audience as he presented the award.
In fact, Morris was the only person from his four-man medical unit to escape serious injury in the Sunday-morning attack.
"People were burned and blown up so that it was hard to know whether you knew them or not," recalled Morris, 81, who lives in King George with Marcy, his wife of 55 years. "There were a lot of people in a lot of pain."
In November 1945--about the time Morris was honorably discharged from the Navy--his commanding officer, W.W. Fitts, recommended him for the medal, an honor even more celebrated than the Bronze Star.
"With limited supplies, he tended the injured and prepared them as well as possible to be transferred to undamaged ships," Fitts wrote Adm. W.F. Halsey.
But Morris didn't learn of Fitts' letter until 2003, when his curious granddaughter, 19-year-old Natalie Morris of Mechanicsville, typed his name in a Google search. That's when she stumbled onto a Web site about the USS Braine.
"I always heard about what he did [in the war] but never talked to him a lot about it," said Natalie, now a sophomore at the University of Virginia.
She discovered that her grandfather had supposedly been issued the Navy and Marine Corps Medal.
But when Morris wrote the Navy, officials couldn't verify the Web site's information.
So, Terry Moore--a retired Navy captain who works at Dahlgren and leases some land from Morris--contacted a USS Braine historian, as well as some veterans who were aboard the ship.
"[The historian] researched his archives and sent me a copy of the original letter recommending Mr. Morris for the award," Moore said.
Still, Moore had to collect three eyewitness reports from Morris' shipmates--plus a former officer's signature--before the Navy Awards Board approved the medal this April.
Marcy Morris, whom Elmer met when he attended Mary Washington College after the war, said she had never heard the graphic details of her husband's experience until they began their quest for the medal.
"I never questioned it because I felt if he needed to talk, he would," she said.
About a year ago, the couple watched film footage of the attacks, images that "will stop your heart," Elmer Morris said.
But Morris, who owned a Chevrolet dealership in King George for 47 years, said he still loves the ocean. He and is wife have gone on more than a dozen cruises, traveling to places like Bermuda, Alaska and the Caribbean.
"The thoughts of the war don't come up at all [on the cruises]. The food is entirely different," he said with a grin.
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