Ohio Man's Story of WWII Veteran Praising His Black Brothers in Arms Goes Viral: 'THIS Is Who We Are'

What almost was a missed opportunity became a wonderful moment at a gas station in Northfield Village, Ohio, between a black man and a white World War II veteran, who recalled his experience on the battlefield with his black battalion. “THIS is who we are,” said the man, who thanked the WWII veteran for his service.

“I’m with my mother & I go into the gas station and I see this real old white man walk in. I happen to look up at his hat and it said ‘World War 2 veteran.’ I’m like wow,” Darvio Morrow began of his experience at a gas station just 20 miles outside of Cleveland.

“Normally when I see people with veteran hats on I thank them for their service. And I was going to do that here. But I got distracted, laughing and joking with another customer and I forgot,” he continued.

“So as I get back in my car, I see the guy walk back out, slowly, to pump his gas,” Morrow added. “I pull back around to tell him thank you for his service. At first I’m in the car and he can’t hear me, not even looking my way.”

Morrow then explains what happened next:

So I pull over and get out and walk up to him and say “I just want to thank you for your service.” He looks at me, and he says “I want to tell you something. You got a minute?” I say yes sir. He starts telling me about this all black battalion in the war. He says “they kept them separated from us and that was wrong.” And he tells me that they were great fighters and they destroyed Nazi tanks at even a higher rate than the white guys.

He says “The Germans wanted to know who were these guys.” He said they found out and captured them. He says “the Germans cut their eyes out, cut their hands off and killed them.” And as he’s telling me this I still see the pain and anger in his eyes. Like he’s back on the battlefield. He tells me “I captured Germans, I held them prisoner. I never killed anybody. I didn’t know what they did until later. Had I known what they did to those black guys, I would’ve killed every last f**king one of them.”

Looking in his eyes I knew he meant every word. This man was 96 years old and you could tell that he was still so angry about what the Nazis did. He tells me “there’s not a lot of guys like me left from that war.” I said “God bless you.” He says “He did. I don’t know why, but He did.”

“As I shook hands with him one more time and get back in my car and I’m pulling away, trying to emotionally process all of that, it was a reminder to me: THIS is who we are,” Morrow said.

“To see this old white man enraged all over again as he thinks about how the Nazis treated black soldiers that really had an impact on me,” he added. “What mattered to him was that they were Americans. They were soldiers. They were his countrymen. That was powerful.”

“All of this at the gas station lol,” Morrow laughed. “My goodness. God bless you sir.”

Morrow told Breitbart News that his story has since garnered 5 million impressions on Twitter.

After being asked why he believes a story like this resonates with so many people, Morrow said, “I think that people are responding to it because it represents an America that we all want to live in, the America that deep down we know we have to work to build up again.”

“I think the average person doesn’t want to be at their neighbor’s throats everyday,” he continued. “And me sharing that experience gave most people an opportunity to put the political weapons down for just a second and be neighbors again.”

“I never expected it to go this far,” Morrow added. “I just knew that I had an amazing experience with this incredible hero and I had to do something with what he gave me.”

Darvio Morrow is also the cohost of The Outlaws Radio Show.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.