Jul 03, 2023 at 6:32 PMUpdate: 4 minutes ago
The last living French D-day veteran Léon Gautier has died at the age of 100. He was part of an elite French unit that stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. This action heralded the liberation of Western Europe.
Gautier’s death was announced by Mayor Romain Ball of Ouistreham. That was one of the villages where the Allies landed in 1944 and where Gautier lived the last years of his life.
Gautier was hospitalized with a lung infection. A special ceremony is expected to commemorate his life.
Gautier attended the 79th D-Day commemoration last month and then met French President Emmanuel Macron. He called the deceased veteran a “hero of the liberation” on Monday.
Unfortunately, this content cannot be displayed. We do not have permission for the necessary cookies. Accept the cookies to view this content.
Change cookie settings
‘We are not heroes, we did our duty’
Gautier himself did not want to use the word ‘hero’. “We have done our duty,” he used to say of his presence on the beach of Normandy. He and 176 other members of the so-called Kieffer Commando were among the first wave of soldiers to set foot on June 6, 1944.
The Kieffer Command fought for 78 days after the storming of Normandy. Of the 177 soldiers, only twenty survived the battle. Gautier injured his left ankle when he jumped off a train. As a result, he did not participate in the liberation of the Netherlands in the autumn of 1944. He suffered from this persistent and painful ankle injury throughout his life.
The French command was composed of elite soldiers to assist the Americans, the British and the Canadians. They had to save the French honour, after the capitulation in June 1940 and the years of occupation.
Gautier conducted missions on submarines
Gautier enlisted in the Navy in February 1940 at the age of seventeen. He carried out several missions in the Atlantic Ocean during World War II and sailed on submarines off the coast of Africa and the Middle East.
In 1943 he volunteered for the elite commando, which was trained in Scotland. At the end of May 1944 the commandos heard that they were going to be part of a secret landing on Normandy. When they landed, they were carrying 70 pounds of ammunition and four days’ rations.
Their main task was to take a German bunker, from which there was continuous firing. On the beach, the commandos had to cut through barbed wire and try to avoid a barrage of bullets.
Veteran wanted his story not to be forgotten
After the Battle of Normandy, Gautier returned to England, where he married a British woman he had met in 1943 and had already become engaged to. They remained together until her death in 2016 and had two children. Gautier left the army and found work in a car factory as a coachbuilder.
After his retirement, Gautier told his story into old age, in interviews, at schools and at commemorations. The veteran did not like to reminisce about the war and his role in it. “As you get older, you realize that you’ve probably killed fathers, or widowed women,” he said. 2019. “That thought is not easy to live with.”
But he thought it was more important that his story was not forgotten. “The young generation needs to know what happened,” he stressed. “War is nasty. War is misery, just misery everywhere.”
As of April 17, 2021, he was the only veteran of the Kieffer Commando still alive.
2023-07-03 16:32:23
#French #Dday #veteran #Léon #Gautier #dies #age
