Team Blitz India
WORLD War II veteran Harold Terens, aged 100, tied the knot with his sweetheart Jeanne Swerlin, aged 96, on Saturday inland of the D-Day beaches in Normandy, France. Terens called it ″the best day of my life.″
The location was the elegant stoneworked town hall of Carentan, a key initial D-Day objective that saw ferocious fighting after the June 6, 1944, Allied landings that helped rid Europe of Adolf Hitler’s tyranny.
Their well-wishers – some in WWIIperiod clothes – were already lined up a good hour before the wedding, behind barriers outside the town hall, with a rousing pipe and drum band on hand to serenade the happy couple.
The WWII veteran first visited France as a 20-year-old US Army Air Forces corporal. Terens enlisted in 1942 and after shipping to Britain was attached to a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter unit as their radio repair technician. Terens married his first wife, Thelma, in 1948. Their marriage lasted 70 years until her death in 2018. Together they had three children.
Terens and Swerlin enjoyed a very special wedding-night party. They were invited to the state dinner at the Élysée Palace on Saturday night with President Emmanuel Macron and US President Joe Biden. They were flown to France courtesy of Delta for both the wedding and D-Day 80th anniversary celebrations.
