Romain Bail News Today

PARIS—Leon Gautier, the last surviving member of an elite French unit that joined US and other Allied forces in the D-Day invasion to wrest Normandy from Nazi control, has died. He was 100. The death was announced Monday by Romain Bail, the mayor of Ouistreham, an English Channel coastal community…

Gautier and his fellow commandos helped free France with the Allied invasion force, giving the French people more to be proud of.

PARIS — Leon 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,

The last surviving member of an elite French unit that joined U.S. and other Allied forces in the D-Day invasion has died. Leon Gautier was 100 years old. The death

Leon Gautier, a French icon who was the last surviving member of the nation's elite D-Day unit, died Monday. He was 100.Gautier's Kieffer Commando was among the first wave of Allied forces to storm the beaches at Normandy."We were being shot at, but we shot at them too," Gautier recalled of the watershed military operation.

“We were at the head of the landing,” he said. “The British let us go a few meters in front. For us it was the liberation of France, the return into the family.”

He and his comrades in Kieffer Commando Unit were among the first Allied troops to storm the beaches of Nazi-occupied northern France in June 1944.

Leon Gautier, the last surviving member of France's Kieffer Commando — one of the first to come ashore at Normandy on D-Day — has died after being treated for lung issues. He was 100.

Leon Gautier, the last surviving member of an elite French unit that joined U.S. and other Allied forces in the 1944 D-Day has died.

PARIS — Leon 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, has died. He was 100. The death was announced Monday by Romain Bail, the mayor of Ouistreham, an English Channel