After Second World War

Norwood Thomas with a photo of Joyce Morris at his home in Virginia Beach. Photograph: Bill Tiernan/AP

A 93-year-old second world war veteran from the United States has been reunited with his wartime girlfriend in Australia after more than 70 years apart.

Norwood Thomas and 88-year-old Joyce Morris laughed on Wednesday as they wrapped their arms around each other after Thomas flew from Virginia to the southern Australian city of Adelaide to reconnect with his long-lost love.

“This is about the most wonderful thing that could have happened to me, ” Thomas said, in a reunion broadcast on television.

“Good, ” Morris replied with a laugh. “We’re going to have a wonderful fortnight.”

Morris was a 17-year-old British girl and Thomas was a 21-year-old paratrooper when they first met in London shortly before D-day.

After the war, he returned to the US. The pair wrote letters to each other, and Thomas asked Morris to come to the US to marry him. But somehow Morris misunderstood and thought he’d found someone else, so she stopped writing.

The two eventually married other people. Thomas’s wife died in 2001; Morris divorced her husband after 30 years.

Norwood and Joyce speak on Skype

Thomas and Morris reconnected via Skype. After their story went public, hundreds of people made donations to help fund Thomas’s trip to Australia from his hometown in Virginia Beach.