Wartime Sweethearts Reunite After 72 Years

A 93-year-old World War II veteran has reunited with his wartime sweetheart more than 70 years after they last said goodbye.

Norwood Thomas was a 21-year-old paratrooper when he met 17-year-old British girl Joyce Morris in London just before D-Day. They dated for a few months before the war intervened and saw Mr Thomas sent to Normandy.

After the war ended he returned to his native America but the pair wrote letters to each other, Mr Thomas even asking his beloved to come to the US and marry him.

But young Joyce misunderstood his letter somehow and thought he had fallen in love with someone else.

She stopped writing and both she and Mr Thomas eventually married other people.

Mr Thomas' wife died in 2001.

Ms Morris moved to Australia with her new husband but their marriage ended in divorce after 30 years.

Despite the time that had passed, Ms Morris never forgot about her American paratrooper and last year she asked one of her sons to find Mr Thomas online.

After the discovery of his name in an article about D-Day in a newspaper in Virginia, the two made contact and spoke on Skype, with the help of their children.

Mr Thomas's local newspaper The Virginian-Pilot heard of the story and a reader started a campaign to send him from his home in Virginia Beach to Australia to meet his long-lost sweetheart again.

Donations flowed in and Air New Zealand donated first class airfares for Mr Thomas and his son Steve, who lives with his father and looks after him.

Before he embarked on the 10,500-mile trip, Mr Thomas told The Virginian-Pilot: "I'd rather die travelling to Australia than live sitting around at home wondering 'what if?'

"I'm just looking forward to seeing her smile" and "giving her a squeeze".

As they stood in the Australian city of Adelaide many hours later sharing their first embrace in more than seven decades, they laughed.

Mr Thomas told Channel 10: "This is about the most wonderful thing that could have happened to me."

Ms Morris, now 88 and struggling with failing eyesight, laughed, adding: "We're going to have a wonderful fortnight."