Description
Here is your chance to add a truly amazing piece of WWII history to your collection….This is a WWII period Purple Heart with period done government engraving to a soldier by the name of James Russel Morris, James was a member of the D-Day invasion with the 29th Infantry Division, 116th Infantry Regiment during the invasion….
James had enlisted in the Virginia National Guard before it was mobilized in February 1941, but after the creation of the 1940 “yearbook.” He trained with the unit at Fort Meade, Maryland and Camp Blanding, Florida before being sent with the 116th Infantry Regiment to England in September 1942. It was sometime after mobilization but prior to deployment to England that James married Hilda West of Altavista, VA. He was assigned to Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 116th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division and was serving as a Technical Sergeant at the time of the D-Day amphibious landings on Omaha Beach on June 6th, 1944 where he would hit the beaches… He was promoted to 1st Sergeant of the unit on 20th of June 1944. He continued to serve with the unit until wounded in the La Trinite operation on August 30th 1944. Evacuated to hospital, 1st Sgt. Morris died of his wounds on September 6th 1944. 1stSG Morris was repatriated in 1949 and re-interred in the Green Hill Cemetery in Altavista, Virginia where he still rests today.
