NEW YORK – Last year KT Robbins, 97, had found his French girlfriend of ’44, Jeannine, had held her face in his hands and whispered: “I have always loved you.” July 20, 2021 Jack Hamlin, 99, returned to France, took the hands of a 40-year-old woman in his hands and told her: «Your grandmother Jacqueline was a great lady. I have never forgotten her ». Veterans of war and love, of half-blossomed and never-ending stories.
The latest in chronological order is that of former US Navy coastguard Hamlin, of Springfield, Missouri, who after 77 years met the family of his French girlfriend in Bretteville-l’Orgueilleuse, Normandy. Hamlin, who will turn 100 in October, had received a lot from his travels to France in all this time to participate in the D-Day celebrations.
He had reviewed the sea in front of Omaha Beach, met Queen Elizabeth, received the Legion of Honor, took pictures with unknown young people. But in the end, one thing was always missing, locked away for a lifetime in his desk drawer: a black and white photo of a young woman, named Jacqueline, whose surname the veteran could not remember. Three years ago, after having recounted for the umpteenth time his experience as an officer in the recovery of wounded soldiers in the landing, he took aside a French girl who took care of memory recovery, Alice Fernandez and showed her the photo: ” I would like to find it again ».
There were a name and two places: Cherbourg, lower Normandy, where she had met her, and Courbevoie, in the Paris region, where she was born. Nothing else. Alice got busy, she contacted the mayor of Courbevoie. In the municipal registers he had found a name that could have been a first trace: Jacqueline Mariette.
After three years of research, she managed to track down her daughter, Catherine Le Tirant, 72, a retired doctor, who lives in Paris. In February he called her and told her about Hamlin. The woman was surprised and confused. Her mother, who disappeared in 2005, had never told the story with an American sailor, and it was mysterious that she had gone to Cherbourg. But everything else returned: the description, the character, her way of speaking, the dream, fulfilled, of becoming a model.
And then there was that photo. The thread, 77 years later, had been re-knotted. «When I met him – he tells the LePoint journalist today – it was moving. The thrill of seeing this 99-year-old man looking at my mother’s photos … welcomed me and my two daughters as heroines, but the real heroes were him and his companions who had freed us from the Nazis ».
156,000 soldiers, including Americans, Canadians and British, attended the landing in Normandy at dawn on 6 June 1944. The dead had been more than 10 thousand. That day Hamlin had saved about sixty wounded. In all, about 1500 soldiers were rescued.
Six months later, in December 1944, Jacqueline arrived. The meeting, along with another girl, had been organized by a friend of Hamlin’s. They dated for six months. Moreover, as a gentleman, Hamlin does not say. Once back in the United States, they never saw each other again, a common epilogue to many veterans, whose stories have been lost over the years. This time, thanks to the work of a researcher, the ending was different.
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