An 88-year-old British woman has embraced her wartime sweetheart in a reunion after more than 70 years apart.

Joyce Morris and 93-year-old former US serviceman Norwood Thomas laughed as they hugged each other after Mr Thomas flew from the States to the Australian city of Adelaide to reconnect with his long-lost love.

"This is about the most wonderful thing that could have happened to me," Mr Thomas said, in a reunion broadcast in Australia on Channel 10's The Project.

"Good," Ms Morris replied with a laugh. "We're going to have a wonderful fortnight."

She was a 17-year-old British girl and Mr Thomas was a 21-year-old paratrooper when they met in London shortly before D-Day.

After the war, he returned to the US. The pair wrote letters to each other, and Mr Thomas asked Ms Morris to come to the US to marry him, but she misunderstood and thought he had found someone else, so she stopped writing.

The two eventually married other people. Mr Thomas's wife died in 2001, and Ms Morris divorced her husband after 30 years.

Last year, she asked one of her sons to look for Mr Thomas online, and they found his name in an article about D-Day in The Virginian-Pilot newspaper.

The couple reconnected by Skype, and after their story went public, hundreds of people made donations to help fund Mr Thomas's trip to Australia from his home town in Virginia Beach.

The two are planning to spend Valentine's Day together.