Lieutenant Morton Sher

Lieutenant Morton Sher passed away on August 20, 1943 at the age of 22 in Xin Bai Village, Hunan Province, China while on a mission with the U.S. Army's 76th Fighter Squadron, 23rd Fighter Group Flying Tigers. Born on December 14, 1920 in Baltimore, Maryland, he was the oldest son of the late David and Anna Sher. When he was a young boy, his family relocated to Gaffney. After his mother's unexpected passing, his father remarried Celia Robinson, who became "Mama" to Morton and his siblings. The family later moved to Greenville and became longtime residents of Augusta Road and active members of Congregation Beth Israel. Morton graduated from Greenville High School in 1938. As a teen he had a love of flying and was an officer in the Greenville High School Aviation Club. He was also a member of GHS Commercial Club and a founding member of the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization's Aleph Zadik Aleph (AZA) fraternity for Jewish teens in Greenville. Upon graduation, Morton enrolled in the University of Alabama as a Commerce major. He joined Kappa Nu fraternity and was manager of the Bama basketball team. While at Alabama, Morton was a member of ROTC and continued to pursue his love of flying. Morton enlisted in the Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet on June 2, 1941 at Ft. Jackson in Columbia and was sent to the Advanced Flying School at Kelly Field outside San Antonio, Texas where he graduated on January 9, 1942. Lt. Sher's first assignment was to the Panama Canal Zone protecting a vital shortcut for naval and merchant ships traveling between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in support of the war. After six months flying security missions in Panama, Lt. Sher headed to China attached to the Flying Tigers where he flew a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk along the Burma Hump, the hazardous air route over the Himalayan Mountains that Allied transport planes flew to supply China. His missions also included providing protection for bombers on raids against the Japanese where he engaged regularly with enemy interceptor planes. On October 25, 1942, American forces launched an air raid on Hong Kong, targeting the Kowloon Docks with 12 B-25 Mitchell bombers and seven P-40 Warhawk fighters, one of which was flown by Lt. Sher. Hong Kong had been captured by Japanese forces in December 1941 and became a significant naval and logistics base. The mission was to destroy the power plant that supplied the base. After the bombing mission was successfully completed and the planes were returning to their base, the bomber in the rear was attacked by seven Japanese fighters. Lt. Sher engaged and his plane endured engine damage. He was forced down in a small village within Chinese lines. His only injury was a head bump, suffered when his plane nosed over. The villagers had never seen an American before. They were very grateful that the U.S. was fighting to protect them from the Japanese invasion. They treated Lt. Sher as a hero and had a big feast for him. Their leaders asked him to speak and sing. He entertained 15,000 attendees with "The Star-Spangled Banner" and University of Alabama fight songs. He also related what he remembered of the story "Little Red Riding Hood." The village leaders presented "General" Sher with a silk banner for "doing a lot of great successful missions." They escorted him back to his base via a tour of several other mountain villages where he was warmly received. Lt. Sher wrote about this experience in an Army newsletter. The article was picked up by the Associated Press and published in newspapers and read over the radio all over the United States that year. During the summer of 1943, Lt. Sher's squadron carried out many strikes on Japanese supply lines, shipping routes, and installations, attacked Japanese aircraft, and defended their airbases from occasional Japanese bombing runs. On August 20, 1943, Lt. Sher was killed on a mission near Hengyang City, China. His plane crashed forcefully and burned in a rice paddy in Xin Bai Village and his remains were assumed to have been completely consumed by the fire. His squadron arranged for a memorial stone to be erected at the crash site. In September of 1943, Lt. Sher was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, which was presented to his "Mama," Celia at his family's home in Greenville. Shortly after the war ended, a U.S. search and recovery team located Morton's memorial stone at the crash site but was unable to recover any remains. On September 8, 1947, a Board of Review concluded that Lt. Sher's remains were likely destroyed in the crash and declared him Killed in Action - Unrecoverable. In 2012, a private citizen contacted the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), a U.S. Department of Defense agency responsible for recovering, identifying and repatriating the remains of unaccounted-for American service members from past conflicts. They provided a photograph of the memorial stone in Xin Bai Village where it had been stored in a barn due to regular flooding in the area. In May 2019, the DPAA sent a team to the village to investigate the site. They interviewed a person who had witnessed the crash firsthand as a child and directed them to the original location of the memorial stone. They were unable to locate any remains at that time. In 2024, the DPAA sent another team to the village to do a more in-depth search in the area. They were able to locate not only parts of the wreckage but also remains. Once the Chinese government confirmed the remains were American, they were released to the DPAA laboratory in Honolulu, HI. In April 2025, the DPAA requested a DNA sample from Morton's nephew for testing. In June, the family was notified that Lt. Sher's remains were positively identified. The Army then began the process of returning Lt. Sher to Greenville for burial, 82 years after he made the ultimate sacrifice for his country. Lt. Morton Sher is survived by his sister, Carol Fine of Greenville; four nephews, Steve Traub of Black Mountain, NC, Allan Fine of Columbus, GA, Bruce Fine of Greenville, and Joel Fine of Columbus, GA; a niece, Elizabeth Sher of Campobello; seven grandnieces and one grandnephew; as well as several great-grandnieces and great-grandnephews. The family requests that you support continued government funding of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) in its mission to recover and identify other personnel listed as prisoners of war (POW) or missing in action (MIA) from designated past conflicts, from countries around the world so that they, like Morton, can also be reunited with their families.