Morris Herman

Private, East Surrey Regiment
1/6th Bn.
Service number: 6145275
Died 23 Nov 1940
Buried Willesden Jewish Cemetery, United Kingdom
Age 24

Headstone Inscription
‘IN LOVING MEMORY OF MY DEAR HUSBAND. FOR EVER IN OUR HEARTS, DEEPLY MISSED BY ALL’


Morris was born on 24 November 1917 in Liverpool, Merseyside to Romanian parents Simon and Millie nee Deutsch and he had four brothers and a sister. Simon was a cabinet maker and carpenter and his sons were also carpenters. In 1938, Morris married Agnes Hedges and they lived in Twickenham, London.

At the outbreak of war Morris enlisted into the East Surrey Regiment and was stationed in Southampton. Local newspapers reported that on 23 November 1940, ‘This was a raid. The whole town and suburbs suffered severely. Intense AA fire. Many fires, houses, shops etc. gutted. Flares and incendiary bombs lighting up the whole town. German communique reports 250 planes used 250 tons of bombs and 12,000 incendiaries.’ That night Morris and another soldier George Lawrence were found badly injured on the pavement in Cumberland Place.

On 5 December 1940, King George VI visited Southampton and assembled in the forecourt was ambulance driver Frances Hartley who had been driving an ambulance on 23 November, when a police officer stopped her and asked her to take two soldiers to the hospital. They had been found lying on the pavement in Cumberland Place. While they were being loaded with the help of a Dutch sailor, a bomb landed nearby and the ambulance was blown into Watts Park, still upright. Mrs Hartley threw herself onto the driver’s seat, with her head in her hands. As things started to settle, the policeman helped her out to lie on the grass to recover herself. Although she then had to take shelter under the ambulance once or twice, this “small and frail woman” went on to drive the soldiers to the Hospital. Unfortunately, the men were already dead. In his report of Mrs Hartley’s bravery, the unnamed policeman identified the two men as Privates Morris and Lawrence, of 1/6 Battalion East Surrey Regiment.

Jewish Chronicle