WWII veteran returning to D-Day beaches, this time to wed
France will do honors as part of historical gala
BOCA RATON, Fla. — Harold Terens and his fiancee, Jeanne Swerlin, kissed and held hands like high school sweethearts as they discussed their upcoming wedding in France, a country the World War II veteran first visited as a 20-year-old Army Air Forces corporal shortly after D-Day.
Terens, a gregarious and energetic 100-year-old, will be honored in June by the French as part of the 80th anniversary celebration of their country’s liberation from the Nazis. Then he plans to marry the sprightly 96year-old Swerlin in a town near the beaches where Allied troops landed.
“I love this girl — she is quite special,” said Terens, who has been dating Swerlin since 2021.
“He’s an amazing guy, amazing,” Swerlin said. “He loves me so much and he says it.”
The couple, who are each widowed, grew up in New York City: her in Brooklyn, him in the Bronx. They laugh at how differently they experienced World War II. She was in high school and dated soldiers who gave her war souvenirs like dog tags, knives, and even a gun, trying to impress.
Terens enlisted in 1942 and shipped to Great Britain the following year, attached to a fourpilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron as their radio repair technician. Terens said his original pilots all died in the war.
“I loved all those guys. Young men. The average age was 26,” he said.
On D-Day — June 6, 1944 — Terens helped repair planes returning from France so they could rejoin the battle. He said half his company’s pilots died that day.
Terens went to France 12 days later, helping transport freshly captured Germans and just-freed American POWs back to England. To him, the Germans seemed happy because they would survive the war. The Americans, however, had been brutalized by their captors over months and even years. “They were in a stupor,” he said.