WAR AND PEACE
Leon was born in Fougeres in Brittany. It was a town that had bitter memories of the First World War and its catastrophic consequences on the community, and Leon grew up with the effects of war being ever present.
640 men from Fougeres were killed in the Great War and there was a military hospital based in the town, so another 148 names are mentioned on the war memorial that did not originate from there.
Leon was working as an apprentice car body maker when the Nazis invaded France in 1940.
He immediately enlisted in the French Navy. Leon was just seventeen years old.
He participated in the defense of Cherbourg before being transferred to the battleship ‘Corbet’, defending the mouth of the River Vire in Normandy.
As France fell, Leon fled to England. He was on the last boat to sail from his country and subsequently became a gunner protecting Portsmouth Harbour.
Leon signed up with the Free French, who were based in London, and were run by Charles de Gaulle.
Leon was one of the men (and women) who paraded through London on Bastille Day 1940, as an act of defiance to the Nazis.
Leon was initially attached to the merchant vessel ‘Gallios’, sailing in the Atlantic convoys.
On one journey, the convoy was attacked by U-Boats and a few ships were sunk. He remembered watching men drowning and being helpless. It gave him nightmares for years to come.
Leon went on to become a rifleman on the submarine ‘Sourcouf’, patrolling the seas of Africa and the Middle East.
Then, he heard that Number Four Commando Unit were recruiting, and he successfully applied. Leon was trained in Scotland.
One day, on guard duty, he found a woman rootling around in the headquarters. Leon challenged her and demanded to know her name. “Dorothy Banks”, was the immediate reply, “Working for the Postal Telegraph Service. And what is your name?”
Leon immediately invited her to dinner, and she became his girlfriend.
Soon afterwards, Dorothy was knocked unconscious in a German bombing raid and was in a coma for sixteen days. When she recovered, they immediately got engaged.
Leon was attached to the Batallion de Fusiliers Marins Commandos, and fought in the Congo, Syria and Lebanon.
The commandos were transferred back to Europe to take part in D-Day. There were 177 men in his unit, all wearing green berets.
They landed on Sword Beach, at Colville-sur-Orne, fighting alongside British, Canadian and American troops. Leon remembered how the British fully appreciated how much this operation meant to the French soldiers.
“For us it was special. We were happy to come home. We were at the head of the landing. The British let us go a few metres in front- ‘Your move – after you’. For us it was the liberation of France, the return into the family.”
They were the only Free French unit to land on the beaches and fight on D-Day.
Each man carried four days’ rations.
Once on the beach, their objective was to capture a heavily fortified German bunker which was surrounded by barbed wire. Whilst cutting the wire, Leon found himself facing a hail of bullets. “We were being shot at, but we shot at them too. When we arrived near the walls of the bunker, we threw grenades in through the slits.”
Leon’s unit fought for 78 consecutive days, moving down through France (even going over Pegasus Bridge under fire). Out of the 177 men who started on D-Day, just 24 (including Leon) survived.
Shortly after the Battle of Normandy, Leon was injured in the ankle when he jumped from a train. His war was over. He suffered a swollen and very painful ankle for the rest of his life.
His commando unit went on to fight in the Netherlands, without him.
At the end of the war, Leon married Dorothy. They would have two daughters, Jacqueline and Jeannette.
Leon became a campaigner for peace. “War is a misery that ends with widows and orphans.”
He became a panel beater in the UK for seven years before moving to Africa, working for the French West African Company. There, Leon and his family lived in both Cameroon and then Nigeria.
Eventually, they moved to France, living in the Normandy town of Ouistreham.
Leon took law studies and eventually became an expert in patents.
In 1982, Leon attended a D-Day exhibition run by the Ouistreham Tourist Board. He was so moved, that he was determined to create a permanent museum.
He became the driving force behind the Number Four Commando Museum in Ouistreham. His daughter, Jacqueline, ran it and his wife, Dorothy, mended all the uniforms.
Throughout this time, he had started and maintained a close friendship with former German soldier Johannes Borner, who had fought in the Battle of Normandy and who moved to Ouistreham in 1969. The two men became almost inseparable.
Leon became President of the French branch of the Association of Commandos.
He was awarded the OBE, the Legion d’Honneur, the Croix de Guerre, the Resistance Medal and the Free French medal – amongst many other awards.
Leon also wrote an autobiography entitled ‘Mon Debarquement’.
Dorothy died in 2016, aged 93.
As he aged, Leon reflected on his war experiences. “Perhaps you find this silly, but I think perhaps I killed a young lad. Perhaps I orphaned children, perhaps I widowed a woman or made a mother cry. I didn’t want that. I’m not a bad man. You kill a man who’s done nothing to you. That’s war, and you do it for your country.”
Leon also insisted, “I am not a hero.”
Leon’s final public duty, aged 100, was at the Marines Training School. He attended the passing out ceremony and presented each new marine with a green beret (whilst wearing his own).
Shortly afterwards, Leon developed a lung infection and was taken to hospital in Caen. It was there that he died.
Leon was buried with full military honours. The ceremony took place on the very beach where he had landed, all those years ago. Six marines carried his coffin and President Emmanuel Macron attended.
Macron paid tribute to Leon. “He united the values of a warrior and those of a peacemaker.”
The President also said, “We will not forget him. He was a hero of the liberation.”
Leon was the last living French commando from D-Day.
RIP -Repeatedly In Peril
