( NewsNation ) — Just 80 years after Harold Terens landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, as part of the D-Day operation , he made another memory at the site: marrying his fiancée, Jeanne Swerlin. The two tied the knot Saturday near the place he and nearly 160,000 others landed on June 6, 1944, in the fight against the Nazis. “I just love this place.
It has horrific memories for me,” Terens told NewsNation ahead of the ceremony. “And it has beautiful memories for me.” 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. It’s not the first time 100-year-old Terens has returned to the region.
He attended the 50th, 70th and 75th anniversary of D-Day not far away from their wedding venue, meeting U.S. presidents like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as well as French President Emmanuel Macron .
Macron gave him a French Legion of Honor for his service during World War II, an event Terens called “one of the most memorable moments” of his life. Terens said the idea for their destination wedding came about while he was out with lunch with a friend. “A year ago, we were having a lunch, and [my f.