Léon Gautier, the last surviving member of an elite French unit that joined Allied forces during the D-Day invasion to wrest Normandy from Nazi control, has died at the age of 100. .
The death was announced on Monday by Romain Bail, mayor of Ouistreham, an English Channel coastal community where Allied forces landed on June 6, 1944 and where Mr. life. He was hospitalized for lung disease, Mr. Bail said.
Mr Gautier, a nationally known figure, met with President Emmanuel Macron last month as part of celebrations of the 79th anniversary of D-Day.
In France, he was the voice of the memory of the Second World War and of the warning. “The younger generations have to be told – they need to know,” he told The Associated Press in 2019. “War is terrible. War is suffering – suffering is everywhere.”
Gautier spent much of his post-war life giving interviews, participating in celebrations and helping to build a museum in Ouistreham in memory of the French commandos who helped liberate Normandy.
“He was a father to us, a grandfather to us, an important figure in everyday life,” the mayor said. “He’s the hero of 1944, the hero of June 6, but also the little old man everyone knows.”
Léon Gautier was born on October 27, 1922, in Fougères, a village in Brittany, and grew up amid bitter memories of World War I. He joined the French navy in 1940 at the age of 17. When France fell in June of that year to the German blitzkrieg, he sailed for England, where General Charles de Gaulle of France was rallying his countrymen. .
On D-Day, Gautier and his comrades in the Kieffer commando unit were among the first waves of Allied troops to storm the heavily defended beaches of occupied northern France, beginning Western European liberation. In a massive invasion force consisting mostly of American, British and Canadian troops, Captain Philippe Kieffer’s commandos ensured that France, too, had feats to be proud of, after the disgrace of the occupation. of Nazi Germany, of which some chose to collaborate with Adolf Hitler’s forces.
“For us, it was special,” recalls Mr. Gautier in the 2019 article. “We were delighted to be back home. We are at the beginning of the wharf. The British let us go a few meters ahead.” He added, “For us, it was the liberation of France, the return to the family.”
The commandos disembarked at what was code-named Sword Beach, carrying four days’ worth of rations and ammunition. As they sprinted to the beach, they cut through the barbed wire under a hail of bullets. They spent 78 days on the front lines, with numbers decreasing. Of the 177 people who waded ashore, only two dozen survived or were injured.
Their initial target was a fortified bunker a few miles away, and it took the commandos four hours of fighting to get there and capture it. Gautier recalls: “As we approached the wall of the bunker, we threw grenades through the openings. He then injured his left ankle while jumping off a train and was sidelined for most of the rest of the fight. His ankle remained swollen and painful for the rest of his life.
Gautier met his wife, Dorothy, while he was stationed in England, and they have been married for more than 70 years. After the war, he worked as a car bodybuilder and later trained as a mechanic, living in England, Nigeria and Cameroon before returning to France.
Mr. Gautier said he did not like to talk about war. “The older you get, the more you think maybe you killed your father, turned a woman into a widow,” he said, adding, “Living together isn’t easy.”
He developed a close friendship with Johannes Borner, a former German soldier who had settled in Normandy, and the two often talked about the horrors they witnessed. In a statement, Mr Macron said Mr Gautier had “combined the qualities of a warrior and of a peacemaker.”
Mr. Gautier is survived by many descendants, including a great-grandchild born on June 6, 2017 – exactly 73 years after D-Day.
