The
last surviving member of a French commando unit that helped to repel
Nazi Germany's invasion of western Europe has died aged 100.
Léon
Gautier was part of the D-Day landings in 1944 - when Allied forces
invaded Normandy in France during the biggest sea invasion in history.
He was among only a small number of French nationals to take part in the deadly eight-day battle.
Gautier later called war a "misery" that "ends with widows and orphans".
Regional Mayor Romain Bail described Gautier as "a local hero whom everybody knew" and who was "an ardent defender of freedom".
Gautier
was born in Rennes, in France's north-western Brittany region, and
enlisted in the French navy as a teenager soon after World War Two
began, as he was too young to enter the army.
He escaped to Britain in 1940 before Adolf Hitler's forces swept through much of western Europe, including France.
In
London, Gautier joined the Free France movement, which maintained a
government-in-exile and military that coordinated with the Allies
against Nazi Germany.
He
fought in Congo, Syria and Lebanon, before joining a unit of marine
riflemen known as the Kieffer commandos, which trained in the Scottish
Highlands.
They were the only French fighters to participate in D-Day.
During the Battle for Normandy, more than half of Gautier's unit of 177 Frenchmen were killed.
The
D-Day landings, which involved soldiers from many other Allied
countries, began an attack that lasted for 11 months. It eventually led
to the defeat of Nazi Germany and the liberation of occupied Europe.
Later in life, Gautier settled in the Normandy port town of Ouistreham, and became a campaigner for peace.
"Not
all that long ago... I would think perhaps I killed a young lad," he
said in an interview with Reuters news agency in 2019, when he was 96
years old.
"Perhaps I orphaned children, perhaps I widowed a woman or made a mother cry... I didn't want to do that. I'm not a bad man."
