France's last surviving D-Day veteran dies

France is mourning the death of Leon Gautier, the last of 177 French green berets who stormed the Normandy beaches defended by Hitler's forces on June 6, 1944.

Gautier, who was 100 when he died early Monday, was a nationally known figure in France and was a guest of honor at multiple D-Day commemorations.

Romain Bail, the mayor of Ouistreham, announced the death. Gautier had lived out his last years in the coastal community where he and his comrades made their landing.

Who were the French fighters?

Gautier had belonged to the Kieffer commando, a group of French servicemen who carried on their battle with the Nazis alongside the US, Britain, and other Allied forces even after the surrender of the French government to Germany in 1940.

The group — led by French Captain Philippe Kieffer — was among the first waves of Allied troops to storm the heavily defended beaches of northern France, to gain a foothold from which to liberate Western Europe.

While the US, British and Canadian troops made up the largest part of the Allied forces at D-Day, there were also Australian, Belgian, Czechoslovakian, Dutch, French, Greek, New Zealand, Norwegian, Rhodesian, South African and Polish troops.

Some 18,000 paratroopers were dropped into the invasion area, with thousands of naval vessels carrying more than 130,000 ground troops.

Gautier and his commandos spent 78 days on the front lines, during which they lost many comrades.

President Emmanuel Macron described Gautier, who he met on several occasions, and his comrades as "heroes of the Liberation."

"We will not forget it," Macron wrote on Twitter.

Who was Leon Gautier?

Born in the French city of Rennes, Gautier had been too young to join the army when Hitler's forces occupied France in World War Two, so he enrolled in the navy.

As the Germans swept across the northern half of France in 1940, he sailed on one of the last French warships to head for Britain.

In London, Gautier joined the Free French Forces of General Charles de Gaulle.

Decades on, he recounted that the French unit had been the first by a matter of seconds to wade ashore at Sword Beach, in a "symbolic gesture."

Gautier admitted that he had been haunted by the realities of war long after victory was declared.

"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."

Source: DW