Private David Morgan was a Welsh coal miner conscripted into the British 50th Division in 1941. In October 1944, during fighting near the German border, Morgan was ordered to clear a flooded foxhole of enemy soldiers. Inside, he found a young German boy — barely 16 years old, his leg shattered by shrapnel, the water rising to his chest.
The other Germans had fled. Morgan could have left the boy. Instead, he climbed into the flooded hole, lifted the boy onto his back, and carried him to the British lines. The boy survived.
Morgan was court-martialed for aiding an enemy soldier without orders. He spent three months in the stockade. His fellow soldiers were ordered not to speak to him.
After the war, Morgan returned to Wales and resumed coal mining. In 1974, a German man arrived at his door in Swansea. He introduced himself as Friedrich and said: You are the only reason I am alive. Morgan did not remember the boy's name but remembered the weight of him on his back, the way the water had felt that cold night, the way the boy had gripped his coat.
Morgan was awarded no medal for his actions. But Friedrich brought him a copy of a newspaper article: Friedrich, a successful businessman in Hamburg, had named his firstborn son David. For the man who pulled me from the water.