France's Last D-Day Veterans Command Troops Receive Award From President Macron

JAKARTA - President Emmanuel Macron awarded one of France's highest honors to Leon Gautier, the last member of the French commando unit to take part in the June 6, 1944 D-Day landings with Allied forces in Normandy, during World War II.

Gautier, 98, got out of his wheelchair to stand, leaning on two sticks, as Macron pinned a medallion to his chest. The President then kissed her on both cheeks and hugged her. Gautier was awarded one of France's highest honors Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour on Friday 18 June.

Gautier, who fled to England when Nazi Germany invaded France, was one of 177 French marine commandos selected to help spearhead the first wave of D-Day landings in Normandy.

The death of Hubert Faure, a member of the unit in April, makes Gautier now the only member of the commando unit who participated in World War II who is still alive.

Recalling the D-Day landings in a 2019 interview with Reuters, Gautier recalled how a British commander let a French unit off their landing craft first, as a symbolic acknowledgment that they were reclaiming their Motherland.

Gautier ran to the beach as bullets sizzled overhead, tasked with securing a German bunker that aimed fire at the beach. "At the end of the day I didn't have many bullets left," Gautier recalled.

His house today is located just a few hundred meters from the site of the same German bunker, the location where he fought together with the Allies against Nazi Germany.

"War is misery. You kill a man who did nothing to you, that's war and you do it for your country," he muttered.

To note, President Macron presented the medals to Gautier, and other service personnel, at a ceremony outside Paris to mark the anniversary of the June 18, 1940 radio address by exiled leader General Charles to Gaulle, calling on the French people to rise up against Nazi occupation.