79 years ago, on June 6, 1944, Léon Gautier landed on the beaches of Normandy with 176 other Frenchmen from the Kieffer commando. This Friday, July 7, four days after the death of the veteran at the age of 100, it is on this historic site that Emmanuel Macron went to pay tribute to him, saluting his spirit of resistance “so republican”. “His whole destiny shows us the way to salvation for our homeland”, launched the head of state, a few days after violent riots which set many towns in France ablaze.
On the sand of Ouistreham, in Calvados, under a summer sky without a shadow of a cloud, he evoked “the legend of an ordinary man becoming a hero”, “embodiment of this spirit of “decided” resistance that they would not re-embark.
It is “in accordance with his wishes and those of his family” that this tribute open to the public took “the form of military honors” on the beach of Ouistreham, according to the Élysée. The ceremony took place in the presence of the head of government, Élisabeth Borne, and numerous ministers, including those of the Interior and Defence, Gérald Darmanin and Sébastien Lecornu.
On June 6, Léon Gautier, “with his bushy eyebrows, his fatigues, and his eternal green commando beret”, in the words of Emmanuel Macron, had again been surrounded by the Head of State and the Prime Minister on the nearby beach of Colleville-Montgomery for the 79th anniversary of D-Day. Echoing his journey, his coffin, covered with the French flag, was carried on Friday by other green berets on the Normandy beach.
Born in 1922 in Rennes, he joined London and General de Gaulle in July 1940. He had lived in Ouistreham since the 1990s where he continued, “driven by a burning thirst to transmit”, to tell his five years of war to college and high school students, had recalled the Elysée Monday in a tribute.
“With each of their steps the Republic progressed, that which unites our destinies in the same momentum. With each step, France advanced, which never renounces being true to itself,” he added.
