Léon Gautier, the last surviving member of an elite French unit who joined Allied forces during the D-Day invasion to wrest Normandy from Nazi Germany’s control, has died aged 100.
The death was announced Monday by Romain Bail, the mayor of Ouistreham, a coastal community on the English Channel where Allied troops landed on June 6, 1944 and where Mr Gautier lived out his last decades. He had been hospitalized with lung problems, Mr Bail said.
Mr Gautier, a nationally known figure, met with President Emmanuel Macron last month as part of the commemorations for the 79th anniversary of D-Day.
In France, he was a voice of World War II memory and warning. “The younger generations need to be told — they need to know,” he told The Associated Press in 2019. “War is ugly. War is misery – misery everywhere.”
Mr Gautier devoted much of his post-war life to giving interviews, taking part in commemorations and helping to set up a museum in Ouistreham commemorating the French commandos who helped liberate Normandy.
“He was a father to us, a grandfather to us, an important figure in everyday life,” said the mayor. “He was the hero of 1944, the hero of June 6, but also the little old man everyone knew.”
Born on October 27, 1922 in Fougères, a village in Brittany, Léon Gautier grew up surrounded by bitter memories of the First World War. He joined the French Navy in 1940 at the age of 17. blitzkrieg, he left for Britain, where General Charles de Gaulle of France gathered his compatriots.
On D-Day, Mr. Gautier and his comrades in the Kieffer Commando unit to the first waves of Allied troops storming the heavily defended beaches of occupied Northern France, beginning the liberation of Western Europe. In a massive invasion force made up largely of American, British and Canadian soldiers, Captain Philippe Kieffer’s commandos ensured that France also had achievements to be proud of after the disgrace of its Nazi occupation, in which some chose to join forces. working with Adolf Hitler’s armed forces.
“It was special for us,” Mr Gautier recalled in the 2019 article. “We were happy to come home. We were at the head of the landing. The British left us a few yards ahead.” He added: “For us it was the liberation of France, the return to the family.”
The commandos landed on what was codenamed Sword Beach, with four days’ worth of rations and ammunition. As they ran onto the beach, they cut through barbed wire under a hail of bullets. They spent 78 days on the front lines, in dwindling numbers. Of the 177 who waded ashore, only two dozen escaped death or injury.
Their initial objective was a heavily fortified bunker a few miles away, and it took the commandos four hours of fighting to get there and take it. “When we got to the walls of the bunkers, we threw grenades through the cracks,” recalled Mr. Gautier himself. He later injured his left ankle jumping from a train and had to serve out much of the rest of the war. His ankle remained painfully swollen for the rest of his long life.
Mr. Gautier met his wife, Dorothy, while stationed in Britain, and they were married for over 70 years. After the war he worked building bodies and training mechanics, living in Britain, Nigeria and Cameroon before returning to France.
Mr. Gautier said he didn’t like to talk about the war. “The older you get, you think you might have killed a father, widowed a woman,” he said, adding, “It’s not easy to live with.”
He developed a close friendship with a former German soldier who had settled in Normandy, Johannes Borner, and the two often spoke together about the horrors they witnessed. In a statement, Mr Macron said Mr Gautier had “united the virtues of a warrior and those of a peacemaker”.
Mr. Gautier is survived by many descendants, including a great-great-grandson who was born on June 6, 2017 – exactly 73 years after D-Day.
