CARENTAN-LES-MARAIS, France โ Together, the collective age of the bride and groom was nearly 200. But World War II veteran Harold Terens and his sweetheart Jeanne Swerlin proved love is eternal as they tied the knot Saturday inland of the D-Day beaches in Normandy, France.
Their respective ages โ he's 100, she's a youngster of just 96 โ made their nuptials an almost double-century celebration.
Terens called it "the best day of my life."
On her way into the nuptials, the bubbly bride-to-be said: "It's not just for young people, love, you know? We get butterflies. And we get a little action, also."
US WWII veteran Harold Terens, 100, left, and Jeanne Swerlin, 96, arrive to celebrate their wedding Saturday at the Carentan-les-Marais Town Hall in Normandy, France.
The location was the elegant stone-worked Town Hall of Carentan, a key initial D-Day objective that saw ferocious fighting after the June 6, 1944, Allied landings that helped rid Europe of German Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's tyranny.
Like other towns and villages across the Normandy coast where nearly 160,000 Allied troops came ashore under fire on five code-named beaches, it's an effervescent hub of remembrance and celebration on the 80th anniversary of the D-Day deeds and sacrifices of young men and women, festooned with flags and bunting and with veterans feted like rock stars.
As the swing of Glenn Miller and other period tunes rang out on the streets, well-wishers โ some in WWII-period clothes โ lined up a good hour before the wedding behind barriers outside the Town Hall, with a rousing pipe and drum band also on hand to serenade the happy couple.
After both declaring "oui" to vows read by Carentan's mayor in English, the couple exchanged rings.
"With this ring, I thee wed," Terens said.
She giggled and gasped, "Really?"
U.S. WWII veteran Harold Terens, 100, left, and Jeanne Swerlin, 96, smile from a window Saturday after their wedding atย the Carentan-les-Maraisย Town Hall in Normandy, France.
With Champagne flutes in hand, they waved through an open window to the adoring crowds outside.
"To everybody's good health. And to peace in the world and the preservation of democracy all over the world and the end of the war in Ukraine and Gaza," Terens said. He and his bride then clinked glasses and drank.
The crowd yelledย "la mariรฉe!"ย โ the bride! โ to Swerlin, who wore a long flowing dress of vibrant pink. Terens looked dapper in a light blue suit and matching pink kerchief in his breast pocket.
They were promised a very special wedding-night party: They were invited to the state dinner at the Elysee Palace on Saturday night with French President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. President Joe Biden, the mayor said.
"Congratulations to the newlyweds," Macron said at the dinner, prompting cheers and a standing ovation from other guests during the toast praising French-American friendship. โCarentan was happy to host your wedding, and us, your wedding dinner,โ he told the couple.
The wedding was symbolic, not binding in law. Mayor Jean-Pierre Lhonneur's office said he wasn't empowered to wed foreigners who aren't residents of Carentan, and the American couple hadn't requested legally binding vows.
However, they could always complete those formalities back in Florida if they wish.
Lhonneur likes to say Normandy is practically the 51st state of the U.S., given its reverence and gratitude for Allied soldiers and the sacrifices of tens of thousands who never made it home from the Battle of Normandy.
"Love is eternal, yes, maybe," the mayor said, referring to the newlyweds, though his comments also fittingly describe the feelings of many Normans for veterans.
He added, "I hope for them the best happiness together."
U.S. WWII veteran Harold Terens, 100, left, and Jeanne Swerlin, 96, celebrate their wedding Saturday at the Carentan-les-Marais Town Hallย in Normandy, France.
Terensย first visited France as a 20-year-old U.S. Army Air Forces corporal shortly after D-Day. He enlisted in 1942 and, after shipping to Britain, was attached to a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter unit as their radio repair technician.
On D-Day, Terens helped repair planes returning from France so they could rejoin the battle. He said half his company's pilots died that day.
Terens himself went to France 12 days later, helping transport freshly captured Germans and just-freed American POWs to England.
Following the Nazi surrender in May 1945, Terens again helped transport freed Allied prisoners to England before he shipped back to the U.S. a month later.
U.S. WWII veteran Harold Terens, 100, left, and Jeanne Swerlin, 96, kiss Saturday as they arrive for their wedding at theย Carentan-les-Maraisย Town Hall in Normandy, France.
"He's the greatest kisser ever, you know?" Swerlinย proudly declared before they embraced enthusiastically for TV cameras.
"All right! That's it for now!" Terens said as he came up for air.
To which she quickly quipped: "You mean there's more later?"
Dressed in a 1940s dress that belonged to her mother, Louise, and a red beret, 73-year-old Jane Ollier was among spectators who waited for a glimpse of the lovebirds.ย
The couple, both widowed, grew up in New York City: she in Brooklyn, he in the Bronx.
"It's so touching to get married at that age," Ollier said. "If it can bring them happiness in the last years of their lives, that's fantastic."
Rangers led the way in the D-Day landings 80 years ago
Rangers led the way in the D-Day landings 80 years ago
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Among the 150,000 soldiers who landed on and fought across the hostile beaches of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, were 1,000 members of a new, specially trained unit โ the U.S. Army Rangers.
(pictured above: United States Rangers from E Company, 5th Ranger Battalion, on board a landing craft assault vessel (LCA) in Weymouth harbour, Dorset, 4th June 1944 bound for the D-Day landing on Omaha Beach in Normandy).
Most of them fought across the German beachfront defenses, supported by nearly 7,000 naval vessels and 11,000 Allied aircraft. More than 200 Rangers fought vertically โ up the sheer cliff face of Pointe du Hoc, a craggy outcropping overlooking the two American landing beaches โ in an effort to capture what was thought to be a key location of German artillery.
For an in-depth look at the American Ranger tradition, The Conversation tapped the expertise of military historian James Sandy, assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Arlington. The Rangers' pathway to Normandy and their exploits that fateful morning represent a core component of the modern U.S. Army's culture and evolution in the decades since.
Ranger rebirth
The idea for the U.S. Army Rangers was inspired by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's idea for what he called a "butcher and bolt" force โ small teams that would conduct surprise attacks, kill or destroy key enemy targets, and escape undetected. The Commandos, as these British units were called, conducted high-profile and daring raids into occupied Europe from 1940 to the end of the war. Their sudden and shocking assaults along the French and Norwegian coastlines provided a boost in British morale during the dark early days of the war.
In spring 1942, Gen. George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army's chief of staff, agreed to send a small detachment of Americans to train with the British commandos to gain combat experience. These American troops were then supposed to be sent to units across the United States' rapidly growing army to share their expertise as new recruits prepared to go to war.
Gen. Lucian Truscott Jr., who had made the initial pitch to Marshall, believed the term "commando" was too British and instead argued that these men should be called "Rangers." Truscott recalled the tenacity, flexibility and aggressive nature of colonial forces like Rogers' Rangers, famous for daring raids during the French and Indian War in the 1750s and 1760s. Truscott believed that "few words have a more glamorous connotation in American military history" than the word "ranger."
The 1st Ranger Battalion was trained by the British Commandos. A select few of them joined the British and Canadians in an August 1942 raid across the English Channel into Dieppe, France, which resulted in catastrophic losses and hard-learned lessons for the eventual landings at Normandy. Those Rangers were the first U.S. troops to fight in Europe during World War II.
In November 1942, the 1st Ranger Battalion took part in Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of northern Africa. They captured the port town of Arzew, Algeria, without firing a shot during the invasion's opening hours. They conducted daring nighttime raids, like the one on the Italian military outpost at the Sened Station in Tunisia, and were essential to Gen. George Patton's breakout at Tunisia's Djebel el Ank in 1943.
The unit was so successful that the Army created additional Ranger battalions for the invasions of Italy and France, which were still being planned and would be undertaken in 1943 and 1944, respectively.
As these new battalions were forming and training, two in Africa and two in Tennessee, there was some confusion among Army commanders about how they would be used in combat. Were they specialized raiding forces like the commandos, or elite infantry meant to spearhead beach landings and other large-scale offensives? The 1st Rangers had done both in Africa, and these new Rangers would be asked to do so as well.
Rangers on the front lines of Allied campaign
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These new Ranger battalions were less heavily armed than their conventional counterparts. While they fit under the same organizational framework, they lacked the heavier weapons and internal artillery capabilities of a standard American infantry battalion.
As the Allied campaign pushed across northern Africa and into Italy, the Rangers found themselves consistently on the front lines of the Allied advance, where they suffered disastrous casualties fighting in prolonged conventional battles they were neither designed nor equipped for.
Rangers for D-Day
Like the rest of the D-Day force, the Rangers prepared for the operation without knowing when or where it would take place.
The newly organized 2nd and 5th Ranger battalions arrived in England in January 1944 and, alongside the more than 2 million other Allied soldiers on the British Isles, started preparing for the Normandy landings. The Rangers (pictured training with British Commandos, above), completed the murderous Commando training course in Scotland, famous for its grueling hill runs and use of live ammunition, spent weeks practicing amphibious landings along the English coastline, and scaled the towering seaside cliffs near Swanage more times than they could count.
On the fateful morning of the Normandy landings, the Ranger battalions were split into three groups with two distinct assignments.
Task Force A, three companies led by Lt. Col. James Rudder, was assigned the most difficult mission: Pointe du Hoc. Using rocket-propelled grappling guns, rope and specialty fire ladders, the Rangers needed to climb 90 feet of sheer rock face under German fire, take the cliff top and destroy a group of 155 mm German guns overlooking the landing beaches.
Task Forces B and C, the remaining Rangers, were insurance. Depending on what happened at the cliffs, these Rangers had to land and fight across Omaha Beach and either rescue a faltering cliff assault or support the 29th Infantry Division in clearing the beach and taking the critical town of Vierville.
The fight at Pointe du Hoc
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Rudder's Task Force A had a rough start: A wrong turn in their landing craft put them 30 minutes behind schedule. The 225 Rangers finally started their climb well after sunrise and were met with intense German fire from above. Many of the first men to reach the top only did so with their hands and knives โ their ropes had been cut.
But 30 minutes after they started climbing, the Rangers had reached the craggy and blasted top of Pointe du Hoc. Numbering barely 70, they found no functional German guns, which had either been destroyed in pre-invasion bombardments or moved by the Germans just days before.
Landing on Omaha Beach
By the time the 800-plus Rangers of Task Forces B and C landed on Omaha Beach, they had not yet heard from the delayed cliff assault team amid the chaos of the morning's fight.
Within minutes, concentrated German machine gun fire devastated the men struggling up the beach. Nearly half of Lt. Col. Max Schneider's force were killed or wounded as they made their way onto the beach. The rest hid behind a low seawall. Brig. Gen. Norman Cota approached the gathered troops. After a short and heated discussion with Schneider, the Rangers heard Cota yell something about needing to get troops off the exposed beach.
His order became the current 75th Ranger Regiment's motto: "Rangers, Lead the Way!" Using explosives specially designed for clearing obstacles, the Rangers cleared a pathway through the German barbed wire, and the assault up the beach began anew.
Famously reenacted by Tom Hanks and his fellow on-screen Rangers in 1998's World War II epic "Saving Private Ryan," the Ranger attack kick-started one of the first major breakthroughs of the morning. Before long, American soldiers were face to face with German defenders and opening large gaps in the defenses on their way to taking the beach and pushing inland.
A few among many
Like most of the troops on D-Day, the men of the 2nd and 5th Rangers experienced combat for the first time on those beaches and cliffsides. They paid a heavy price for the Allied victory: Nearly 400 of the original 1,000 Rangers who set out for Normandy were killed, wounded or missing. Overall, 4,000-plus Allied soldiers were killed on the day of the invasion, with 5,000 more wounded.
The Rangers were a small part of the overall operation, but they epitomize the strength, adaptability and determination of every service member who stepped foot on those beaches, piloted those landing craft, flew air support or toiled on an off-shore warship.
Four decades after D-Day, U.S. President Ronald Reagan visited Pointe du Hoc and paid his respects to the 62 surviving members of the 2nd Rangers who had climbed the cliffs. He honored them โ and every other young man who stormed the beaches of Normandy:
"These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war."
This story was produced by The Conversation and reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media.
Rangers led the way in the D-Day landings 80 years ago
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