Léon Gautier, the last surviving member of an elite French unit that joined U.S. and other Allied forces in the D-Day invasion to wrest Normandy from Nazi control, died July 3 at 100.
The death was announced by Romain Bail, the mayor of Ouistreham, an English Channel coastal community where Allies landed on June 6, 1944, and where Mr. Gautier lived out his final decades. He had been hospitalized for the past week with lung trouble, Bail said.
Mr. Gautier 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 younger generations have to be told, they need to know,” Mr. Gautier told the Associated Press 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 are 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.
Mr. Gautier was born on Oct. 27, 1922, in the Brittany village Fougeres. He joined the French navy in 1940 and, when France fell in June that year to the Nazis, he went to England and joined the government in exile of French Gen. Charles de Gaulle.
On D-Day, Mr. 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 that France had feats to be proud of, too, after the dishonor of its Nazi occupation, when some chose to collaborate with Adolf Hitler’s forces.
They came ashore carrying four days’ worth of rations and ammunition and sprinted up the beach with their heavy sacks.
The commandos spent 78 days straight on the front lines, in ever-dwindling numbers. Of the 177 who waded ashore on the morning of June 6, just two dozen escaped death or injury, Mr. Gautier among them.
Their initial target was a heavily fortified bunker. Although the strongpoint was just a few miles 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.
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.
After the war, Mr. Gautier worked building car bodies and then training mechanics, living in England, Nigeria and Cameroon before returning to France.
Mr. Gautier said he didn’t like talking about the war: “The older you get, you think that maybe you killed a father, made a widow of a woman. … It’s not easy to live with.”
But his testimonies to schools were a crucial part of Normandy’s efforts to remember the war. He also built a close friendship with a former German soldier who settled in Normandy, Johannes Borner, and the two often spoke together about the horrors they saw.
Mr. Gautier met his wife, Dorothy Banks, when he was stationed in England and they were married for more than 70 years until her death in 2016. Survivors include a great-great-grandson, born on June 6, 2017 — exactly 73 years after D-Day.
