Medal Of Honor Winner Winds Up POW

Two and a half months after receiving the Medal of Honor, Lt. “Red” Morgan was shot down over Berlin on March 6, 1944.

Born in 1914 at Vernon a few miles south of the Red River, John Cary Morgan did most of his growing up in Amarillo. He did, however, finish high school at New Mexico Military Institute at the insistence of his father, a prominent attorney.

Late in life after his hair had turned white, Morgan remembered it had been “flaming red during my flaming youth.” This reference to his wild and wooly days was supported by his poor performance in the classroom. He changed colleges at least once a year attending Amarillo College, Schreiner Institute in Kerrville, West Texas State Teachers College in Canyon, and the University of Texas all by the age of 20.

In 1934 the head of family sent his problem child to live with an uncle in the Fiji Islands, where he worked on a pineapple plantation. Even though there were only two automobiles on the small island, reckless “Red” collided head-on with the other vehicle.

Morgan came back to the U.S. in 1938 and found a job as a roughneck in Oklahoma. The broken neck he suffered in an oilfield accident and his sub-par college transcripts proved to be a double whammy, when he tried to enlist in the Army Air Corps. To add insult to injury, he was reclassified 4-F by Selective Service.

The Canadians, already at war as part of the British Empire, could not afford to be so choosy. Morgan was accepted by the Royal Canadian Air Force, trained to fly, and shipped off to England in 1942.

The next March, he changed uniforms. The Texan once deemed unfit for duty was welcomed by the Air Corps with a lieutenant