Leon Gautier RIP

Leon Gautier, the last surviving French D-day commando, died last Monday. He was 100 years old.

Gautier was one of 177 green berets in the Kieffer unit which stormed the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944.

Leon Gautier, 1942

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.