Leon Gautier, the last surviving member of the French commando unit that waded ashore on D-day alongside allied troops to begin the liberation of France, died on Monday. He was 100 years old.
Gautier was one of 177 French green berets who stormed the Normandy beaches defended by Hitler’s forces in 1944.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, described Gautier and his comrades as “heroes of the liberation”.
“We will not forget him,” Macron wrote on Twitter.
Last month, Gautier presented a student marine commando with his green beret at a passing-out parade at Colleville-Montgomery, near the spot where he had landed on Sword Beach in a hail of enemy fire at the age of 21. In a poignant moment during that ceremony, the young marine knelt on one knee to allow Gautier to straighten his beret.
Gautier was born on 27 October 1922 in the Brittany village of Fougères, and grew up amid bitter memories of the first world war.
He was onboard one of the last French warships to sail for Britain to join the Free French Forces of General Charles de Gaulle as the Germans swept across the northern half of France in 1940.
On D-day, 6 June 1944, 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, French Capt Philippe Kieffer’s commandos ensured France had feats to be proud of too, after the dishonour of its Nazi occupation.
“For us it was special. We were happy to come home. We were at the head of the landing. The British let us go a few metres in front, ‘your move, the French,’ ‘after you,’” Gautier recalled. “For us it was the liberation of France, the return into the family.”
The commandos came ashore carrying four days’ worth of rations and ammunition, 30kg (nearly 70lbs) in all. They sprinted up the beach with their heavy sacks and spent 78 days straight on the frontlines, in ever-dwindling numbers. Of the 177 who waded ashore on the morning of 6 June, just two dozen escaped death or injury, Gautier among them.
Their initial objective was a heavily fortified bunker. Although the strongpoint was just a few kilometres away, it took them four hours of fighting to get there and take it. On the beach, they cut through barbed wire under a hail of bullets.
“We were being shot at, but we shot at them too,” Gautier remembered. “When we arrived near the walls of the bunkers, we threw grenades in through the slits.”
He later injured his left ankle jumping off a train and was forced to sit out much of the rest of the war. His ankle remained painfully swollen for the rest of his long life.
Gautier devoted much of his life after the war making sure lessons from it were not forgotten by giving interviews, taking part in commemorations, and helping put together the museum in Ouistreham that commemorates the French commandos who helped liberate Normandy. Decades later he still grappled with the violence of war.
“War is a misery. Not all that long ago, and perhaps you find this silly, but I would think ‘perhaps I killed a young lad, perhaps I orphaned children, perhaps I widowed a woman or made a mother cry’,” he said. “I didn’t want that. I’m not a bad man. You kill a man who’s done nothing to you. That’s war and you do it for your country.”
