I ALWAYS LOVED YOU
D-Day veteran’s tender words to his French sweetheart... after 75 years of separation
HE was a dashing GI, she a pretty French teenager from the village where his regiment was stationed.
Despite not speaking the same language, Kara Troy Robbins, then 24, and Jeannine Ganaye, 18, fell in love as war raged and the Allies advanced on Hitler’s forces.
But after just a few intense weeks in 1944 came heartbreak when he had to leave abruptly with his American comrades for the Eastern front. Yet Mr Robbins, known as KT, never forgot the sweetheart who had meant so much to him.
Returning to France for the commemorative events marking the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, little did the 98-year-old American imagine that she was still alive, let alone that they might meet again, as he packed a photo of her, which he had kept, in his suitcase.
Yet to his astonishment, after more than seven decades without contact, Mr Robbins was finally able to embrace her again thanks to the help of French journalists.
He told her the words he so longed to say and which she had waited to hear: ‘I always loved you, always. You never got out of my heart.’
The old flames, who both went on to marry, have families in their respective countries and become widowed after the war, hugged and kissed at the retirement home where she, now Jeannine Pierson, lives in Montigny-les-Metz, in Moselle.
‘ It’s wonderful to see you again… I have tears in my eyes,’ he said in English as she reached out to hug him before showering him with kisses.
Speaking in French, Mrs Pierson, 92, said: ‘He said he loves me. That, I understood. Me too – I always thought about him, saying to myself maybe he’s there, maybe he’ll come back.’
When he showed her the old picture of her wearing shorts, she said: ‘Wow!’ They clasped hands as they reminisced about the two months they had previously spent together in Briey, north-east France, 17 miles from her current home. Mrs Pierson, a mother of five, recalled: ‘When he left in the truck, I cried, of course, I was very sad. I wish after the war he hadn’t returned to America.’ Asked why he hadn’t visited sooner, Mr Robbins, from Olive Branch, Mississippi, said: ‘You know, when you get married, after that you can’t do it anymore.’
The pair enjoyed a few hours together before Mr Robbins had to travel to Normandy. As he got in his car, with tears welling, he said: ‘Jeannine, I love you, my darling.’ They have promised to meet again soon.
Mr Robbins was making his first return to Normandy since the war, where he served in a bakery battalion, supplying troops with fresh bread – around 3,000lb of it every day. Recalling the D-Day landings, he said: ‘We lost a lot of people, but it had to be done. You might say we changed the world.’