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BOCA RATON, Fla. (AP) – Harold Terrence and his fiancée, Jeanne Swalin, kissed and held hands like high school sweethearts as they discussed their wedding in France. It was the first country the World War II veteran visited as a 20-year-old American. An Army Air Corps corporal immediately after D-Day.
Terence, an outgoing and energetic 100-year-old, will be honored by the French in June as part of the 80th anniversary of his country’s liberation from the Nazis. And she plans to marry Mr. Swarin, a lively 96-year-old, in a town near the coast where American troops landed.
Terens, who has been dating Swarin since 2021, said: “I love this girl. She’s so special.” To show that she loves dancing, she had Siri play “Uptown Funk” by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars, making her jump, twist, and dance. She whirled around like a teenager on homecoming.
“He’s a great guy, great. He loves me so much and that’s what he says,” Swarin said.
“And my God, he’s the best kisser,” she said.
The couple, each widowed, grew up in New York City, she in Brooklyn and he in the Bronx. They laugh at how different the experience of World War II was. Since she was in high school, she had been dating soldiers and they were trying to impress her by giving her war memorabilia like dog tags, knives, and even guns.
Terens enlisted in 1942 and was sent to England the following year, where he was assigned to a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron as a radio repair technician. Terens said all of the original pilots died in the war.
“I loved all those guys. Young people. The average age was 26,” he said.
On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Terence helped repair planes returning from France so they could return to combat. He said half of the company’s pilots died that day.
Terence went to France 12 days later and helped transport newly captured Germans and recently released American prisoners of war to England. To him, the Germans seemed happy to have survived the war. However, Americans were subjected to brutal treatment by their Nazi captors for months or even years.
“They were stunned,” he said.
Then he went on a secret mission – he himself did not even know the destination. His plane hopscotched across North Africa and eventually landed in Tehran. There, he survived a robbery and was left naked in the desert, fearing death until the American military police patrolled him.
He learned the details of the secret mission when he was deposited at a Soviet airfield in Ukraine. As part of the new strategy, American bombers will be flown in from Britain to attack Axis targets in Eastern Europe. They did not have enough fuel to return home, so they ended up flying to the Soviet Union. Terence’s job was to feed his crew and treat the wounded before returning home in a refueled plane.
Terens soon contracted dysentery and almost died. In another close call, a British bartender refused to serve him past closing time despite his pleas for just one more drink. Shortly after he was forced out, German rockets destroyed the pub.
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He married his wife Thelma in 1948 and they had two daughters and a son. He became the US vice president of a British conglomerate. They moved from New York to Florida in 2006 after Thelma retired from teaching French. She passed away in 2018 after 70 years of marriage. He has his eight grandchildren and his ten great-grandchildren.
Swarin married at 21 and was a full-time mother of two girls and a boy until she became a widow in her 40s. Her second husband died 18 years after her marriage. She then lived with Sol Katz for 25 years until he passed away in 2019. She has her seven grandchildren and her seven great-grandchildren.
It was Katz’s daughter, Joanne Shoshheim, who introduced her to Terrence in 2021.
She met Terens many years ago when her children were attending camp with her grandchildren, and they remained friends ever since. She and her friend thought the two might hit it off and invited him to lunch.
“She brought so much joy to my dad, and I didn’t want her to be alone,” Schosheim said of Swarin.
However, after Thelma’s death, Terens showed no interest in other women and was barely aware of Swarin’s existence.
“I didn’t even look at her. I didn’t even talk to her,” he said.
“I looked at him. He looked at me,” Swalin said, “and it was like nothing had happened.”
Still, the next night Terence’s friend Stanley Eisenberg took them out to dinner. Eisenberg wanted to know who his friend had fired.
It was love at first sight.
“I’ve never seen him shine like that,” Eisenberg said.
Terens couldn’t speak or eat, but that wasn’t like him.
“I said, ‘You’re in love,'” Eisenberg said. “He said, ‘I don’t know.’ I’ve never felt anything like this before.”
Swarin said that after that date, Terrence turned him down and “didn’t give me a chance.” At 94 years old, she was also in love.
“He introduced me to the whole world saying, ‘I want you to meet my girlfriend, my love.’ I had known him for less than two days,” she says with a laugh. Told. “Falling in love is not just for young people. We have butterflies just like everyone else.”
A few months ago, Terens got down on one knee and proposed to Swarin, giving her a ring.
“She went into hysterics,” he said happily.
“I thought I had to help him, but he’s so muscular,” she said.
The couple and their families will head to Paris in late May, where Terrence and several other World War II veterans will be remembered. The government says that of the 16 million American veterans of World War II, only 120,000 remain.
This is Terrence’s fourth time celebrating D-Day in France. He received the medal from President Emmanuel Macron five years ago.
The family will then head to the town of Carentin-les-Marais, where they will be married on June 8 in a chapel built in the 1600s by Mayor Jean-Pierre Ronneur. Ronneur said there are more American flags than French flags in the area because of the sacrifices of American troops on D-Day.
“Normandy is the 51st state,” he said.
Lonneur explained that legally he is only allowed to marry someone from the town, but he thinks the district attorney will make an exception.
“That’s a good thing for us,” the mayor said.
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Associated Press writer John Lester in Le Pecque, France, contributed to this report.
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