Child's wooden shoes take WWII vet back to Normandy
Navy seaman Morris Dennis faced no Nazi gunfire when he landed at Normandy beach on D-Day in 1944.
Instead, he came face to face with a thin French girl, who told him, in perfect English that her grandparents were dying of hunger.
“She waved for me to come to her,” the 90-year-old World War II survivor recalled.
“My grandparents are starving, and I’m trying to take care of them,” the little girl said. “The Germans have taken all of our food and everything we had. Do you have any food you can give me to take to them?”
His heart melted.
Dennis – a lifelong Nashvillian – went back to the Navy transport ship and told the story to his commander. Soon, he had a pile of rations and other food gathered.
But the little girl wouldn’t take it, she said, unless Dennis took something in return. That’s how she was raised.
The little girl looked over her worn clothes, and her face lit up when she saw her wooden shoes.
She and her grandparents didn’t have much, but her grandfather was a wood carver, and he easily could make more shoes.
“He’s good at it,” the girl beamed.
She took off the shoes and thrust them at her American hero, insisting repeatedly that he accept her offering.
Dennis put the shoes with his things in the Navy LST (landing ship, tank).
He continued with his duties, never taking gunfire but regularly being exposed to the devastation of combat.
On one mission, he and other sailors pulled dozens of soldiers' bodies from a river in Hamburg, Germany.
Many times, his LST transported badly wounded American and German soldiers from battlefields to hospitals in England. Dennis would guard the wounded Germans, always giving them food and water.
“I remember one telling me, ‘Even though I’m a prisoner, you sure have been good to me,’” Dennis said, eyes shining with tears.
In fact, many memories from the war make Dennis — founder and owner of Nashville's Dennis Paper Company — emotional these days.
He didn’t talk about those memories with family or friends for decades, but now, he is opening up.
And he finds those are hard memories.
“They make tears come to your eyes. It’s tough talking about it sometimes,” Dennis said.
“Bad things, so bad, and you see it,” he said. “I can see some of the (WWII) reruns on TV and even though I’m home by myself, I can’t help but cry.”
Dennis was on a pass — “overnight liberty” — to London when the Germans surrendered. He joined thousands who cheered and jumped up and down, clapping and yelling in celebration.
“It’s over! It’s over!” soldiers and civilians shouted again and again.
After a couple of months of clean-up work, Dennis was on his way to the Pacific when the Japanese surrendered, and he got sent home.
The Navy transported him to Memphis and gave him $196.95 in discharge pay and another $11.90 for travel. Dennis hitchhiked to Nashville.
He carried a Navy seabag with one slightly burned German flag, a 40 mm shell, a "Stars & Stripes" newspaper with the headline "GERMANY QUITS," one uniform, some work pants – and a pair of wooden shoes given to him by a brown-haired girl he helped on a beach in Normandy.
Reach Brad Schmitt at 615-259-8384 or on Twitter @bradschmitt.