Wartime lovebirds reconnect after 71 years

Norwood Thomas sees former love Joyce Morris again through Skype. Photo / ABC News

Throughout Steven Thomas' childhood, his father would joke that his mother had almost been British.

Across the globe, Robert Morris' mother talked fondly about the American soldier who had romanced her during World War II.

The two men couldn't have known that one day they'd facilitate their parents' first meeting in 71 years, by internet video.

Norwood Thomas was 21 when he spotted a teenage girl and her friend along the banks of the River Thames. He was stationed at an army base 65km from London. That afternoon, he and a friend approached the two girls and invited them on a boat ride.

Thomas fell head over heels for Joyce Morris (nee Durrant). For nearly every weekend afterwards, he went to London to be with her. But when the war ended, after Thomas survived parachuting into Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, he returned to America. He wrote to her. He wanted to marry her but she didn't realise it was a real proposal. Thomas had kept a photograph of her that she'd given him. Life moved on, as it does, and they soon stopped speaking. Until she found him again.

A week ago, 93-year-old Thomas sat in front of a computer in Virginia and saw the woman he once loved fill the screen. The 88-year-old Morris, now living in Australia, looked back, though she couldn't see him well because of her bad eyesight, smiled and said, "It's been a while".

"Tell me. Do you see me?" he asked. "No, I can't see properly, no," she said. "Well, I'll tell ya, I'm smiling," he told her. "I'm sure you are," she said, laughing.

Norwood Thomas and Joyce Durrant (now Morris) as they were in 1944 during World War II. Photo / ABC News

Several weeks ago, Morris asked her son to look for Thomas. When he was 88 he went skydiving and it was covered by the local news.

Her son contacted the reporter who covered Thomas. The reporter called Thomas. Then the two sons started talking about how to arrange their parents' first conversation in more than seven decades. Except, Steven Thomas said the Skype date wasn't exactly their first conversation. Morris, it seems, couldn't wait for their middle-aged sons to figure out the technology. She called Thomas.

He answered, and she said, "Tommy?" It was her nickname for him. She told him that her son had printed a picture of him from the war that was online. He framed it and put it in her room. Every day upon waking she says, "Good morning, Tommy".

When they spoke again on Skype, he told her, "Just remember I will say good morning back to you. I would love to be there to say in person."

The elder Thomas has prostate cancer, so he's too weak now to travel, but the prognosis is good. If his health and their finances allow, the Thomas men may visit Australia.

- Washington Post, Bloomberg