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Friends and family described him as outgoing, hard-working, always friendly and helpful to everyone. His great joy was operating anything with an
engine, from motor cycles to heavy equipment. And it was said that he was such a good shot he could knock a squirrel out of a tree at 100 yards with his .22 rifle. Yet no matter how hard-working a
person were, the Great Depression years were economically rough for everyone.
Morris' father Nick died in 1932; and as Morris' siblings married and began their own families, he became more and more the primary bread-winner for his mother and himself. But his jobs as a farm laborer and truck driver were both now only part-time at best; and they didn't bring in enough. So to better support his mother and himself, he joined President Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a federal program designed to match up our nation's essentially unemployed young men with critically-needed federal and state land, road, bridge, forest, fish and game, and other projects. The CCC was a military-like organization, with enrollees formed into companies of about 125 men under the command of regular Army officers. Pay was $30 a month – the men were allowed to keep $5; and $25 had to be sent home to support their families. Although he enrolled in Indiana, Morris' CCC company did most of its work in the Payette National Forest in Idaho. As the CCC Program was winding down, Morris was honorably discharged in March 1940, with records attesting that he was very industrious and genial. His friends said that Morris genuinely enjoyed the structure and order of the CCC Program and that it was a natural fit when he later joined the Army.
Morris Fletcher voluntarily enlisted in the Army on 11 February 1941 and received basic training at Fort Benjamin Harrison, near Indianapolis. He was then assigned to the 82nd
Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd
Armored Division, stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia. The Division Commander, General George "Old Blood and Guts" Patton knew war was coming, and over the next year Patton put Morris and the entire Division through grueling training maneuvers in the Carolinas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia. In November 1942, Morris' unit saw its first combat action in North Africa, capturing critical facilities in and around Casablanca. After this campaign, Morris was a member of the Honor Guard for President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill during the Casablanca Conference of January 1943.
The next major combat for Morris was during July and August of 1943 in the invasion and capture of Sicily. It was here where he was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in combat action, including his
voluntarily and single-handedly taking out an enemy pillbox which had pinned down and inflicted heavy casualties on his unit. It was also here that he received his first Purple Heart for wounds he sustained during the
capture of Palermo. After several months of rest, re-equipping, and more training in England, Morris' unit made the epic invasion of Normandy in June 1944. As they spearheaded the attack out of Normandy on
4 August, they came under intense enemy artillery and automatic weapons fire. Morris left his vehicle to rescue a fellow soldier who had been shot and was paralyzed. He reached the man and was trying to tend to his
wounds, when continuing artillery and land mine explosions severely wounded Morris. Unable to do anything more for his fellow wounded soldier, Morris covered him with his own wounded body. When the skirmish subsided and
other soldiers came up to remove our dead and wounded, Morris' platoon commander saw that he was still alive and tried to pick him up. In a weakened voice, Morris told his Lieutenant: "Put me down, sir; I'm a goner.
Take care of the other boys." But the Lieutenant did carry him out, and he was evacuated to a U. S. military hospital in the rear of the lines. On 8 August, despite the best medical care available there,
Corporal Morris M. Fletcher died of his wounds. He was initially interred in the U. S. Military Cemetery at La Cambe, France. At his mother Susie's request, Morris' remains were returned home in January 1949 for
memorial services and burial alongside his father Nick in the Round Lake Cemetery, near Toto, Starke County, Indiana. Morris never married and had no children. This account of Morris' tragically
short, but unquestionably noble and honorable life was the result first of searching through local Indiana newspaper articles of the era and the few official military records which remained. Then there followed many
interviews with his family and friends and with six fellow soldiers from his unit – those who truly knew him when times were at their worst. Most notable among these was a long and extremely personal conversation with
the soldier whose life Morris surely saved that fateful day. All of his Army colleagues remembered Morris well and described him with words like: "…god, what a fine man…a darn good soldier and leader…a man who carried
his share of the load and part of mine, too…liked the Army; would've been a career man…didn't have to do it; it wasn't his job, but he was always there when something needed to be done or someone needed help…saved a
heck-of-a-lot more than one life…" Morris Manuel Fletcher's military awards include:
the Silver Star Medal, 2 Purple Heart Medals, 2 Good Conduct Medals, the American Defense Service Medal, the European-African Campaign Medal with 4 (campaign) stars and 2 (invasion) arrowheads, and the World War II Victory Medal. His life, his goodness, his service, and his sacrifice are memorialized on no less than four monuments: at his gravesite in the Round Lake Cemetery; on the Magoffin County Veterans Memorial, on the Starke County Memorial Monument to War Dead; and on the town square Memorial at St Sever-Calvados, the French village near which Morris was mortally wounded.
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