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Video length: 3 mins.
During the landing of June 6, 1944, the Kieffer commando, the only group formed by a few Frenchmen, opened the way for the Allied soldiers. Names that remained in the shadows for a while, of which Léon Gautier was the last representative.
They were all in their twenties, eyes determined. 177 men ready to take all the risks to drive out the occupying Nazis. Faces, names of men, today all disappeared. Philippe Kieffer, Guy Hattu, Léon Gautier. On June 6, 1944, at dawn, it was the only French people who landed in Normandy, on the beach at Colleville-Montgomery. They go down in history forever. The Kieffer commando left England on June 5, crammed into two barges. Until the last moment, the marines revise their plan. The sea is stormy to reach the French coast. The French will open the way for the 150,000 Allied soldiers. They must neutralize the German fortifications on the beach, and take the Ouistreham casino, the enemy command centre.
A belated recognition
On the evening of June 6, the toll was 10 dead among the French. The operation is a success that is not due to chance, it was prepared for two years in England and Scotland, at the formidable training camp of Achnacarry. Jean-Pascal Hattu’s father was one of the members of this commando, where there were no career soldiers. “There will be a butcher, a coachbuilder. Rather people who are of a fairly well-to-do social level”, he explains. His father and all the members of the commando have long remained heroes in the shadows. It was not until 1984, 40 years after their landing, that François Mitterrand inaugurated the flame which salutes their courage.