🇫🇷WWII uncovered: A Salute to Commando Kieffer: Honouring the Service of Count Guy de Montlaur.

"As the gray dawn spread over the coast of Normandy on June 6, 1944, revealing the legions of Allied ships staged to begin the D-Day invasion, a 25-year-old French aristocrat-turned-commando named Count Guy de Montlaur was told his squad would be one of the very first to splash onto the beach. Their mission was to take a seaside casino that held a German stronghold.'

'The young count, his green beret pulled low over one eye, replied to his commander that attacking the casino “would be a pleasure. I have lost several fortunes in that place.”

'By the end of the battle, only 40 of the 177 French Kieffer Commandos who landed on the beach were still standing. Commando Kieffer was the common name given to the 1st Battalion Marine Commando Fusiliers.

Montlaur survived and eventually became a hero of the French liberation" - Excerpt from NY Times article, June, 2019

'In November 1944, he took part in the Allied landings of Flushing on the Isle of Walcheren in Holland where he was wounded when his barge was hit by a German shell.

The operation was led against an enemy ten times greater in numbers than the Allies, and was a total success. It opened the Scheldt River to the Allied troops and allowed them access to the port of Antwerp and northern Germany, opening the road to Berlin and leading to the end of the war.

By the age of 25 he had received seven citations for valour in battle ("Croix de Guerre") and the French Légion d’Honneur.'

"After the war Guy and his wife immigrated to the United States where he studied art. After a 2-year period he returned to Fontainebleau, a district of Paris.

During the next phase of his career he revealed his military memories on canvas, being a well-respected artist in the Abstract Expressionists Era.

His artistic works express the tremendous loss of the Allied victory. Many of his works centered around his own experience with Battlefield trauma."

Guy de Montlaur passed away on August 10, 1977 at the age of 58. He lies in rest at Ranville War Cemetery in Ranville, France.

He wished to be buried next to his comrades fallen 33 years earlier, in Ranville, near Caen, the first village to be liberated in France.

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