Léon Gautier, the final surviving member of an elite French unit that joined Allied forces within the D-Day invasion to wrest Normandy from Nazi Germany’s management, has died at 100.
The dying was introduced on Monday by Romain Bail, the mayor of Ouistreham, an English Channel coastal neighborhood the place Allied forces landed on June 6, 1944, and the place Mr. Gautier lived out his ultimate a long time. He had been hospitalized with lung bother, Mr. Bail stated.
Mr. Gautier, a nationally recognized determine, met with President Emmanuel Macron final month as a part of commemorations for the 79th anniversary of D-Day.
In France, he was a voice of reminiscence of World Warfare II, and of warning. “The youthful generations should be advised — they should know,” he advised The Related Press in 2019. “Warfare is ugly. Warfare is distress — distress in every single place.”
Mr. Gautier devoted a lot of his life after the struggle to giving interviews, participating in commemorations and serving to put collectively a museum in Ouistreham that commemorates the French commandos who helped liberate Normandy.
“He was a father to us, a grandfather to us, an vital determine of every day life,” the mayor stated. “He was the hero of 1944, the hero of June 6, but additionally the little outdated man that everybody knew.”
Léon Gautier was born on Oct. 27, 1922, in Fougères, a village in Brittany, and grew up amid bitter reminiscences of World Warfare I. He joined the French navy in 1940 at 17. When France fell in June that yr to the German blitzkrieg, he shipped off to Britain, the place Gen. Charles de Gaulle of France was rallying his countrymen.
On D-Day, Mr. Gautier and his comrades within the Kieffer Commando unit had been among the many first waves of Allied troops to storm the closely defended seashores of occupied northern France, starting the liberation of western Europe. In an enormous invasion drive made up largely of American, British and Canadian troopers, Capt. Philippe Kieffer’s commandos ensured that France had feats to be happy with too, after the dishonor of its Nazi occupation, during which some selected to collaborate with Adolf Hitler’s forces.
“For us it was particular,” Mr. Gautier recalled within the 2019 article. “We had been completely happy to come back dwelling. We had been on the head of the touchdown. The British allow us to go a number of meters in entrance.” He added, “For us it was the liberation of France, the return into the household.”
The commandos got here ashore on what was code-named Sword Seaside, carrying 4 days’ price of rations and ammunition. As they sprinted up the seaside, they reduce by way of barbed wire beneath a hail of bullets. They spent 78 days on the entrance strains, in ever-dwindling numbers. Of the 177 who had waded ashore, simply two dozen escaped dying or harm.
Their preliminary goal was a closely fortified bunker a number of miles away, and it took the commandos 4 hours of combating to get there and take it. “After we arrived close to the partitions of the bunkers, we threw grenades in by way of the slits,” Mr. Gautier recalled. He later injured his left ankle leaping off a prepare and needed to sit out a lot of the remainder of the struggle. His ankle remained painfully swollen for the remainder of his lengthy life.
Mr. Gautier met his spouse, Dorothy, when he was stationed in Britain, and so they had been married for greater than 70 years. After the struggle, he labored constructing automotive our bodies after which coaching mechanics, residing in Britain, Nigeria and Cameroon earlier than returning to France.
Mr. Gautier stated he didn’t like speaking concerning the struggle. “The older you get, you suppose that perhaps you killed a father, made a widow of a lady,” he stated, including, “It’s not simple to reside with.”
He constructed a detailed friendship with a former German soldier who had settled in Normandy, Johannes Borner, and the 2 usually spoke collectively concerning the horrors they noticed. In an announcement, Mr. Macron stated Mr. Gautier had “united the virtues of a warrior and people of a peacemaker.”
Mr. Gautier is survived by many descendants, together with a great-great-grandson who was born on June 6, 2017 — precisely 73 years after D-Day.
