100-Year-Old World War II Vet to Get Married in France 80 Years After D-Day

Harold Terens and his fiancée, Jeanne Swerlin, plan to tie the knot in Carentan-les-Marais in June

A 100-year-old World War II veteran is getting married at a liberation site in France after getting an unexpected second chance at love!

Harold Terens and his fiancée, Jeanne Swerlin, plan to tie the knot in Carentan-les-Marais this summer 80 years after D-Day, when the Allies invaded the beaches of Normandy, the Associated Press reported.

According to the outlet, Terens was married to his late wife, Thelma, for 70 years when she died in 2018. He wasn't interested in finding love again when he met Swerlin through a family his grandchildren went to camp with in 2021.

Swerlin, meanwhile, had married at 21 and was widowed in her 40s. She then lived with a long-term partner, Sol Katz, for 25 years until he died in 2019. The couple met through Katz's daughter.

"I didn’t even look at her. I didn’t even talk to her," Terens told the AP of their initial meeting.

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Terens' friend, Stanley Eisenberg, took the pair to dinner the next night, convinced the pair had been introduced for a reason. Sparks flew so fast over dinner that night that Eisenberg told the AP his friend couldn't eat.

The rest, as they say, is history.

"Being in love is not just for the young. We get butterflies just like everybody else," Swerlin said, per the AP, adding that Terens was introducing her as "my sweetheart" within days of dating.

The couple got engaged "a few months ago," when the veteran got down on his knee and proposed.

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Terens enlisted with the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1942 and first served as a radio repair technician for a four-pilot P-47 Thunderbolt fighter squadron, the AP reported.

On June 6, 1944, Teren helped repair planes so that they could fight in the battle at Normandy. Nearly two weeks later, he returned to France to help transport captured Germans and freed American POWs to England.

After being deployed on other missions, Terens once again helped bring freed Allied prisoners to England following the Nazis' surrender in 1945. The AP added that he then returned to the U.S. a month later.

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Terens' trip back to France in early June coincides with his fourth D-Day celebration in the country. Five years prior, he received a medal for his service from President Emmanuel Macron.

After the celebration of the country's liberation, the New York City natives and their families will go to Carentan-les-Marais, which is near the beaches where U.S. troops landed.

They're planning to be married by the town's mayor, Mayor Jean-Pierre Lhonneur, in a chapel built in the 1600s, the AP reported.

"I love this girl — she is quite special," Terens told the AP. "He loves me so much and he says it," Swerlin said of her fiancé, adding, "And my god, he's the greatest kisser."

Between them, the couple has three children, 15 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren.

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