T. Moffatt Burriss

Market Garden Veterans Association,

RIP Hero of the Waal Crossing T. Moffatt Burriss

We are sad to announce the passing of one of 'our' veterans.

Thomas Moffatt Burriss, a former Columbia area contractor, Republican state lawmaker and American World War II battlefield hero, died Friday the 4th of January 2019. He was 99.
Burriss, who was known as a humble man with a good sense of humor, served as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1945 and participated in some of that war’s heaviest fighting, notably “Operation Market Garden” in the Netherlands.
That 1944 mission made massive use of U.S. and British airborne troops, whose mission it was to capture bridges deep inside Nazi-controlled territory and hold them until Allied ground troops could reach them. Burriss was in the lead elements of the American paratrooper forces, which saw in that operation some of the heaviest fighting of the war.
His and others’ roles in that operation were featured in the movie, “A Bridge Too Far.” Actor Robert Redford played a composite of Burriss and other 82nd Airborne soldiers.
Burriss wrote a book about his exploits called “Strike and Hold.”
The veteran also served as a representative in the South Carolina State House from 1977 to 1992 representing Richland County.
The people of Nijmegen (the Netherlands) will always rememeber him as one of their liberators.

Rest easy soldier!