Jacques Lewis, French Veteran of U.S. Landing on D-Day, Dies at 105

Europe|Jacques Lewis, French Veteran of U.S. Landing on D-Day, Dies at 105

Jacques Lewis, who was believed to be the last surviving French soldier to clamber ashore with U.S. forces at Normandy on D-Day in 1944, died on July 25 in Paris. He was 105.

His death, in a hospital and care center at the Invalides military complex, was announced in a statement by the office of President Emmanuel Macron of France.

On June 8, less than two months before he died, Mr. Lewis insisted to his caregivers that he be taken in his wheelchair to greet President Biden and President Emmanuel Macron of France at a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Mr. Biden thanked him for his work with American forces as they had moved inland from Utah Beach to drive the Germans out of France.

In 1944, Mr. Lewis was a member of the Free French Forces, the army that Gen. Charles de Gaulle had assembled in exile in London after Germany invaded and occupied France in 1940. Fluent in English, he was assigned as a liaison officer attached to the U.S. Army’s 70th Tank Battalion as the D-Day landings approached.

Mr. Lewis was not just an interpreter; he was a soldier, and thus well-suited to take on a vital role after the invasion. The Americans needed someone with military experience to link up with French villagers and French guerrilla resistance fighters known as the Maquis to help guide U.S. troops past German positions inland to reach the small rural town of Carentan and relieve members of the U.S. 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions, who had earlier parachuted in, behind enemy lines.

In an interview with the French television channel TF1 in 2019 on the 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings, he recalled approaching Utah Beach on the morning of June 6, 1944. It was the first time he had spoken about the war, even to his family, he said.