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A World War II veteran has married his bride on the 80th anniversary of D-Day near the beaches of Normandy , France . Harold Terens – a 100-year-old US Army Air Force veteran living in Florida – tied the knot with 96-year-old Jeanne Swerlin on Saturday, June 8 during a ceremony in Carentan-les-Marais, in the Normandy region of northern France. The ceremony was officiated in English by Carentan’s mayor, Jean-Pierre L’Honneur, according to the AP .

The couple exchanged rings inside the town hall and waved through an open window to people outside who were commemorating the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France. “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 in a toast, per the AP.



The WWII veteran – originally from the Bronx, New York – visited France as an Air Force corporal shortly after D-Day, when he was just 20 years old. Terens had enlisted in 1942 and was stationed in England, where he worked as a radio repair technician for a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter unit. On D-Day, which took place on June 6, 1944, Terens helped repair planes returning from France to rejoin the battle.

That day, more than 150,000 troops from the US, UK and Canada stormed Normandy’s beaches, marking the start of Europe’s liberation from the Nazis. However, more than 4,000 Allied troops died during the invasion. Terens himself went to France 12 days later.

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