Alan Shapiro remembers the winter of 1944–1945 as the coldest he’s ever felt. During the Battle of the Bulge, he was stranded in freezing weather after flying equipment to U.S. troops fighting to repel a German offensive.

When spring came and word arrived of Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945, Shapiro was at his airbase in Abbeville, France. Like many across Europe, North America, and elsewhere, Shapiro took to the streets to celebrate. As the party wore down, a French family took him in until the next day.

“They couldn’t have been kinder and more attentive to me,” Shapiro — now 100 — says, admitting he may have had too much to drink. Eighty years after Victory Day for World War II, Shapiro remembers fondly the real appreciation French people showed for the sacrifices he and others made to defeat the Nazis.

He has enjoyed returning to France to commemorate D-Day  or the Battle of the Bulge and seeing American and French flags flying together. After he retired, having worked 63 years in the Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, advertising firm that he owned, Shapiro visited France for a D-Day anniversary and visited schools and retirement homes to talk about history.

He was greeted repeatedly by French civilians who had lived under Nazi control. “I couldn’t begin to imagine the thankfulness the people of Normandy still retain for what we did,” he says.

“As they put it, ‘to give them their liberty.’” In April, the French government recognized Shapiro with the country’s Legion of Honor award, created by Napoleon for those who serve France or its ideals.

“I was just another American boy who did his job,” Shapiro says. “That the French felt that I deserved this award was just something I couldn’t believe.”

World War II veteran Alan Kinder also received the Legion of Honor in April, at a ceremony in Smyrna, Georgia. “Eight decades ago you risked your life in the name of freedom to liberate my country,” French Consul-General in Atlanta Anne-Laure Desjonquères said upon bestowing the honour.

When Kinder had visited Normandy a year earlier — in June 2024 for the 80th anniversary of D-Day — French people who had been children when he had helped their country as a young soldier gave him hugs and kisses. The visit made him realize “how much it means to so many,” Kinder told Georgia Public Broadcasting.

“Thanks to you and your brothers in arms, democracy prevailed over barbarism,” Desjonquères told him. Shapiro and Kinder, also 100, have now joined the ranks of thousands of U.S. World War II veterans who have received the French honour.

Of the 16 million Americans who fought in World War II, fewer than 50,000 are still alive. The French government will continue to award the Legion of Honor to these American heroes as long as a single one remains to be so honoured.