Morris Kalikoff

Morris Kalikoff was born in Kyiv, in what is now Ukraine. In the 1920s, he had fled anti-Jewish violence there with his parents and sister, and they settled in Islington. He was living at 260A Upper Street on the eve of war in 1939.

Morris enlisted in the Sussex Regiment in 1941, volunteering for airborne service in the First Parachute brigade. He served with the Second Parachute Battalion in North Africa, fighting through Sicily into Italy, and finally at the notoriously fierce Battle of Arnhem, where he served as a section commander (sergeant) in the Mortar Platoon. One of his men there would later write of his ‘sad, almost fatalistic, outlook on life … and [he] was quietly spoken - for a sergeant. He was a first-class soldier and one of the finest human beings I have ever met’.

Morris and his platoon had reached and secured the northern end of the critical Arnhem Bridge, along with nearby buildings. He was commanding the mortars at an exposed island of shrubs and trees in the roadway when they ran out of ammunition. Morris and his men made a dash for safety, but the house he reached took a direct hit from the enemy. He was seriously wounded and is thought to have died on the way to a POW camp in Germany.