Centenarian’s bride is 96
ROMANTIC: ‘WE’RE BETTER THAN ROMEO AND JULIET’, SAYS GROOM-TO-BE
Couple set to exchange vows in France where man served during war.
Americans Harold Terens and Jeanne Swerlin promise their courtship is “better than Romeo and Juliet”: He is 100, she’s 96, and they marry next month in France, where the groom-to-be served during World War II.
US Air Force veteran Terens will be honoured on 6 June at a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy – the historic Allied operation that changed the course of the war.
Two days later Harold and Jeanne will exchange vows in Carentan-les-Marais, close to the beaches where thousands of soldiers waded ashore – and many died – that day in 1944. The town’s mayor will preside over the ceremony. “It’s a love story like you’ve never heard before,” Terens assures AFP.
During an interview at Swerlin’s home in Boca Raton, Florida, they exchange glances, hold
hands and smooch like teenagers.
“He’s an unbelievable guy, I love everything about him,” Swerlin says. “He’s handsome – and he’s a good kisser.”
The youthful centenarian is also cheerful, witty and gifted with a prodigious and vivid memory, recalling dates and locations and events without hesitation – a living history book of sorts.
Shortly after Terens turned 18, Japan bombed the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor.
He, like many young American men, was keen to enlist. By age 20, he was an expert in Morse code
and aboard a ship bound for England, where he was assigned to a squadron of four P-47 Thunderbolt fighters.
Terens was responsible for their ground-to-air communication. “We were losing the war by losing a lot of planes and a lot of pilots... These pilots became friends and they got killed. They were all young kids,” he laments.
His company lost half of its 60 planes during the Normandy operation. Soon after, Terens volunteered to travel to that region of northern France to help transport German prisoners of war and liberated Allied troops to England.
One day, Terens received an envelope with instructions not to open it until he reached a certain destination. Thus began a remarkable journey that took him to Soviet Ukraine via Casablanca, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Cairo, Baghdad and Tehran.
When he finally arrived in Poltava, a city east of Kyiv, a Russian officer informed him he was part of a secret mission. US B-17 aircraft were taking off from England bound for Romania, where they would bomb Axis oil fields controlled by Nazi Germany.
Terens was part of the resupply team in Ukraine that provided the Flying Fortresses with fuel and ordnance.
The operation lasted 24 hours until the Germans discovered the Allied base in Ukraine and attacked it.
Terens says he escaped but was left in no-man’s land. He contracted dysentery and only survived thanks to the help of a local farming family. Returning to England, he cheated death once more.
When a pub proprietor refused to serve him a drink because she was about to close, he shrugged and left. He had barely walked two blocks when a German rocket destroyed the establishment.
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