American veteran reunited with French woman he fell in love with during World War II after 75 years: 'You never got out of my heart'
An American soldier and a French woman who first met and fell in love during World War II but were separated because of the fighting in Europe have been reunited once again after 75 years.
According to the Daily Mail, KT Robbins was a 22-year-old fresh-eyed soldier in the 26th Infantry of the US Army when he locked eyes with an 18-year-old Jeannine Pierson née Ganaye in the northeastern French town of Briey where he was stationed in 1944.
Robbins met Pierson by chance after her mother agreed to wash his clothes and fell head over heels in love with her. But fast forward two months and Robbins was informed he had to leave the village and head to the Eastern Front to fight against the Axis Powers.
He promised he would come back for her after the war was over, and in anticipation, Pierson began learning basic English phrases. But that day never came, and when the war ended, Robbins found himself back on American shores.
"When he left in the truck I cried, of course, I was very sad," she said. "I wish, after the war, he hadn't returned to America."
Robbins met Lillian, the woman who would be his wife for 70 years before passing away in 2015 at the age of 92, and Pierson tied the knot in 1949 and went on to become a mother to five children.
Both had moved on with their lives, but neither forgot the other.
Earlier this year, when Robbins was approached by a group of French journalists for a report on World War II veterans in the United States, he showed them a black-and-white photo of Pierson that he had carefully preserved all those years.
It was a hail mary, and Robbins didn't expect anything to come from it as he thought Pierson was dead but little did he know she was still alive. The journalists tracked her down to a retirement home in Montigny-lès-Metz, Moselle, about 27 miles from where the pair first met, and arranged for a long-awaited reunion.
Now 97 and 92 respectively, Robbins and Pierson embraced each other immediately when they were reunited. "I always loved you. You never got out of my heart," Robbins told her. "He said he loves me. I understood that much," she exclaimed in response to one of the journalists.
Robbins then took out the photo of her to show and the pair talk about why the 97-year-old returned back for her. They spent a few hours together before he had to leave for the 75th-anniversary celebrations of D-Day in Normandy, and this time, he said he would keep the promise of coming back for her.