Harold Terens, a 100-year-old American World War II veteran, is set to marry his 96-year-old fiancée Jeanne Swerlin near the beaches of Normandy, France, where he first arrived as a 20-year-old corporal shortly after D-Day. The couple, both widowed, have been dating since 2021 and will tie the knot in a town close to the historic landing sites.
Terens, who served as a radio repair technician for a P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron, played a role in repairing planes on D-Day and later transported German prisoners and freed American POWs back to England. He also undertook a secret mission that took him across North Africa to Tehran, where he was robbed and left naked in the desert before being rescued by an American military police patrol.
The mission eventually led him to a Soviet airfield in Ukraine, where he helped refuel and care for American bomber crews flying from Britain to attack Axis targets in Eastern Europe. After the war, Terens returned home, married his late wife Thelma, and raised three children.
Jeanne Swerlin, a Brooklyn native, experienced the war from home as a high school student dating soldiers. She was widowed twice before meeting Terens through his daughter Joanne Schoscheim in 2021. The couple, who describe their relationship as youthful and affectionate, will be honored by France during the 80th anniversary of the country's liberation from the Nazis in June.
