An American hero, an Anglophile and a heart warming story



What a great story – an American serviceman in immediate post war Britain who helped rescue 27 people from floods in Norfolk – has just died.

His obit is humbling.

Reis Leming was a 22-year-old American airman and couldn’t swim but braved storm waves and freezing temperatures to rescue 27 people during the devastating east coast floods of 1953.

It nearly killed him - on his third rescue trip in a dingy he to be rescued himself.  He was taken to the American hospital at Sculthorpe. For years afterwards he had nightmares about the first remark he heard when he awoke — “cut off his legs!” — discovering only later that they were the words of a nurse wanting to remove his rubber suit so that he could be massaged back to life.  telegraph.co.uk

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