I got word from France, from a family friend, Jerome Dupouvoir who lives in Normandy, that we lost the gift to the world that Leon Gautier was, right up until this week when we lost him at the age of 100.
Leon, a French commando hero of World War II, died just before the 4th of July, 2023, our Independence Day being the event that tied the United States and France to one another as forever friends for more than 250 years.
The venerable Gautier lived in the Normandy town of Ouistreham. Ouistreham is nearest where the British 6th Airborne Division glided in to take a bridge later dubbed “Pegasus Bridge” for the glider man who captured it, and the British paratrooper who helped them guard it with their lives, repelling Nazi counterattacks through D-Day. There’s a great movie version of this assault in “The Longest Day.”
Our ranks of World War II heroes were earlier diminished on June 23 with the death at 98 of Clifford Stump of Grapevine, Texas. I do not know if these men knew each other, but they were in the fight together on the “Day of Days” 1944, and they were both at ceremonies in Normandy on June 6, 2023 – less than a month ago.
Clifford Stump rode a glider in on D-Day with the 82nd Airborne Division. Leon Gautier waded ashore with Commando Kieffer, a tough Free French commando force running onto the Normandy beaches under heavy fire. Gautier was the last of its 177 original members.
By the time Paris was liberated Aug. 24, 1944, only 23 of Gautier’s comrades from Commando Kieffer were still ambulatory, all others being dead or wounded.
Now, like knights from the mists of Avalon, or the old Knight Templar in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” they are gone.
Gautier joined up with the Free French forces of Gen. Charles DeGaulle a couple of years before D-Day. There was a falling out between French forces who surrendered to Nazi Germany and other soldiers of France who decided, very personally, to fight on against Hitler.
Before D-Day, Gautier fought with the Free French in the Congo, Syria and Lebanon, before shipping out to join the commandos in England led by Capt. Phillipe Kieffer.
Do you remember the line at the end of “Casablanca” in the final scene? It was the snappy banter between Humphrey Bogart, who played “Rick” the American adventurer, and the droll French policeman, “Inspector Louis” played by Claude Raines.
The line went from Louis, “Ricky, I hear there’s a Free French garrison in Brazzaville,” enticing his friend to join up in the fight against fascism. Bogey takes him up on the prospect, and responds, “Louis, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
The two cynical Hollywood rogues then committed fully to the fight for freedom, letting Elsa fly away with her husband, and they walk off together, the epitome of Hollywood wartime “bromance.” It was that kind of optimism that helped the Allies win history’s biggest war.
Leon Gautier was one of those Free French in the Brazzaville garrison, but he was the real-life version. Cliff Stump was the real deal also too.
Cliff, along with Leon, was in Normandy for the 79th D-Day anniversary less than a month ago, before he went airborne for eternity.
He told my Liberty Jump Team buddies that he wanted to get back to Normandy one last time – and he made it, joking with veterans, rejoicing with the French, and kidding around with active-duty troops young enough to be his great grand kids.
Last year, I jumped with paratrooper vets of the Liberty Jump Team at Normandy, and plan to try it again next year to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the crusade in Europe to liberate a suffering humanity.
Our vet paratrooper teammates who drop from vintage C-47 Dakotas and Skytrains are the sons and daughters, and grandsons and granddaughters of the troops that waged that fight that began the final chapter of World War II.
Some of us on the team are parents of grown children who tried to save Afghanistan from a new dark-age and Iraq from a bloody-handed dictator after 9/11. Some of our offspring are serving on freedom’s frontiers right now, near the borders with Ukraine, North Korea, and other contested real estate.
Last year, at D-Day’s 78th anniversary my friend from Army days, retired Col. Stu Watkins joined me in a walk along Utah Beach. Our patient spouses, Julia and Katy, watched us read inscriptions on monuments that line the beach.
We discovered two monuments that were unfamiliar to us. One was to the Free French who came ashore with American and British allies to liberate their homeland nearly 80 years ago.
The second monument stunned us. About 50 years ago when Stu was a captain in his twenties, and I a slightly younger sergeant, we served together as paratroopers in the 8th Infantry Division, a keystone NATO unit, with the motto “These Are My Credentials.”
During World War II, the motto stuck to our outfit when a Nazi general demanded the credentials of the 8th Infantry assistant division commander. Brig Gen. Charles D.W. Canham pointed to his heavily armed and unshaven G.I.s and said “These are my credentials.”
Next, Canham demanded the Nazi’s side arm, and the surrender of his troops. And he got both. They were beat.
So, 79 years later Stu and I stood next to the monument stone with the “Crazy 8” and its Golden Arrow insignia.
In French and English, the stone said, “In memory of the Brave Soldiers of the 8th Infantry Division Who Landed Here on July 4, 1944.”
It was a tough fighting division in World War II, and essential to Western Europe’s defense during the long Cold War.
The 8th Division troops landed in France less than a month after D-Day and fought until the end of the war in Europe, D-Day all the way to VE-Day, Victory in Europe.
Along with so many others, they paid in blood for this year’s 4th of July, 2023. They earned their credentials. And Leon Gautier and Cliff Stump joined all the others who earned their heavenly wings.
Editor’s note: Dennis Anderson is a licensed clinical social worker at High Desert Medical Group. An Army paratrooper veteran, he deployed to Iraq to cover the war for Editor & Publisher Magazine and regional press. He serves as Supervisor Kathryn Barger’s appointee on the Los Angeles County Veterans Advisory Commission.
