Hundred-year-old World War II veteran Harold Terens was to marry his 96-year-old fiancee yesterday in the French town of Carentan-les-Marais, just days after being honored on the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings that took place a few kilometers away.
Terens’ 11am wedding to Jeanne Swerlin was to be followed by a celebration “with his loved ones, in a small group,” said Sarah Pasquier, the town hall’s representative for D-Day commemorations.
“We are very honored that Mr Terens has chosen to get married here, in Carentan, where in June 1944 the meeting of Allied troops from the landings at Utah and Omaha beaches took place,” Mayor Jean-Pierre Lhonneur said. “We will offer him Champagne, of course, but also a gift to thank him for having participated in the liberation of France.”
Photo: AFP
After the ceremony, “depending on his possible fatigue,” Terens might join in a parade of veterans in the center of Carentan in the afternoon, Pasquier said.
A liberation ball was also to be held in the evening as part of the D-Day commemorations, she said, with attendees “invited to dress in the 1940s theme, and soldiers from the nearby American base welcome.”
Terens, who lives with Swerlin in Boca Raton, Florida, was awarded the French Legion of Honour by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2019.
After the war, Terens married his first wife, Thelma, with whom he spent 70 years and raised three children until her death in 2018.
In 2021, a friend introduced him to Swerlin, a charismatic woman who had also been widowed, and the two have been inseparable practically ever since.
“She lights up my life, she makes everything beautiful,” Terens said in an interview last month in Florida. “She makes life worth living.”
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