D-Day Hero Warned the Young

'War is misery,' said Leon Gautier, who landed with commandos on D-Day to liberate France
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jul 3, 2023 4:45 PM CDT
French Commando Helped Liberate His Country on D-Day
French President Emmanuel Macron speaks with Leon Gautier last month during a ceremony in Normandy.   (Ludovic Marin, Pool via AP, File)

Leon Gautier, the last surviving member of an elite French unit that joined US and other Allied forces in the D-Day invasion to wrest Normandy from Nazi control, has died. He was 100. The death was announced Monday by Romain Bail, the mayor of Ouistreham, an English Channel coastal community where Allies landed on June 6, 1944, and where Gautier lived out his final decades. He had been hospitalized with lung trouble, Bail said. Gautier was a nationally known figure and met with President Emmanuel Macron as part of commemorations for the 79th anniversary of D-Day last month. He was also an important voice of memory of World War II, and of warning, the AP reports.

"The younger generations have to be told, they need to know," Gautier told the AP in 2019. "War is ugly. War is misery, misery everywhere." He devoted much of his life after the war making sure that lessons from the war aren't forgotten by giving interviews, taking part in commemorations, providing testimonials at schools, and helping put together the museum in Ouistreham that commemorates the French commandos who helped liberate Normandy. 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 Nazi-occupied northern France, beginning the liberation of western Europe.

In the huge invasion force made up largely of American, British, and Canadian soldiers, Capt. Philippe Kieffer's commandos ensured that France had feats to be proud of too, after the dishonor of its Nazi occupation, when some collaborated with Adolf Hitler's forces. "We were at the head of the landing. The British let us go a few meters in front, 'Your move, the French,' 'After you,'" Gautier recalled. "For us it was the liberation of France, the return into the family." Of the 177 commandos who landed, two dozen escaped death or injury, Gautier among them. Years later, he did not like reflecting on the actual fighting. "The older you get, you think that maybe you killed a father, made a widow of a woman," he said. "It's not easy to live with."

(More obituary stories.)

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