Mort Harris was a young man in a brown leather jacket piloting a freezing cold B-17 Flying Fortress with a 10-man crew during a bombing…
Mort Harris was a young man in a brown leather jacket piloting a freezing cold B-17 Flying Fortress with a 10-man crew during a bombing mission near Caen, France.
It was June 6,1944. From above, he could see soldiers struggling to scale a cliff.
« So many were killed, » he said. « It was a terrible scene. Terrible. »
Harris, 99, arrived over the beaches of Normandy with members of the U. S. Eighth Air Force. He flew not one, but two missions that day as more than 150,000 Allied forces staged an assault on German troops in the biggest military invasion in history.
As people around the world gather Thursday to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day, they will pay tribute to people like Harris, who charged into danger to try to end a horrific war.
Harris said he was just doing his job.
« I was no hero. I just went where they told me, » he told the Free Press in a recent interview at his sun-filled Bloomfield Hills home.
After more than seven decades, many memories of an incredible military career are still fresh.
Harris, who grew up in Detroit near Henry Ford Hospital, enlisted in the armed services when he was in his early 20s and an engineering student at Wayne University (now Wayne State). He learned to fly planes in Texas before going to Europe.
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A squadron commander, Harris was stationed in England and flew in more than 30 missions during the war. He volunteered to drop supplies into Warsaw to help besieged Polish resistance fighters.
He also bombed Berlin, Germany, seven of the first eight times it was bombed, said his son, Stuart Harris. That earned him the nickname « The Berlin Kid. »
« He was the only lead pilot to live to do that, » Stuart Harris said. « It was phenomenal what he did. »
Harris was shot down twice. Once he went down in the North Sea, losing four men. Another time, he was barely able to clear the White Cliffs of Dover before bringing down the damaged plane in a farm field.
Harris saw many of his friends die.
« I did know one guy who I had breakfast with that morning. And he had a nice beautiful new airplane, as I did.
