René Rossey | 1926-2016
Section K Gun
1er bataillon de Fusiliers Marins Commando
Commando N°4
1st Special Service Brigade
Lying about his age, René Rossey enlisted in the army at the age of 17 and a half. Living in Tunisia, he left Africa in 1942 with the British Eighth Army for Haifa in Palestine. From there, he went to Beirut, Lebanon, where he joined the ranks of General Catroux of the Free French Forces. “Two months later, I was at the Patriotic School in England. This time, I couldn’t lie about my age. I signed a contract with de Gaulle for the duration of the war, plus three months.”
René Rossey first set foot in mainland France on June 6, 1944, when he landed with Commando No. 4 (“Kieffer Commando”) near Colleville-sur-Mer (now Colleville-Montgomery). The youngest of the group, he “fought through the entire Normandy campaign, then the Holland campaign”—”I was lucky,” he comments modestly.
He left the military at 19. “I wanted to go home,” he says, “I wasn’t interested in the rank.” “During my teenage years, I thought, ‘Hey, I’m going to defend France,’ and I did. That’s all, it’s as simple as that.”
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