The most outrageous, heartbreaking, impactful stories are the true ones.
Everyone has a story to tell, and those who are old enough to have seen and lived through the historical events that shaped our society have often experienced things that no feature film could ever recreate.
You really can’t make stuff like this up.
World War ll changed the way we look at humanity.
Citizens across the world experienced horrors on and off the battle field that people never thought were possible—horrors so unspeakable that those who lived through them didn’t really speak about them for decades.
So much death and destruction plagued everyday life that when families, lovers, and friends were separated, many of them never found their way back to one another.
One of the brave men who experienced such horrors is 98-year-old K.T. Robbins.
Robbins was stationed with his American regiment in Briey, in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in north-eastern France in 1944.
Though memories of Robbins’ time in World War ll still haunt him, he has been holding on to one particular memory of his time in France more than any other.
He met and fell in love with an 18-year-old French girl named Jeannine.
Unfortunately, their relationship only lasted two short months, as Robbins was forced to leave for the eastern front.
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When the war was over, Robbins returned to America and eventually got married to someone else, though he never forgot about Jeannine.
75 years later, Robbins was doing an interview for the anniversy of D-Day when a producer found his photo of Jeannine in an album.
Though Robbins said that he would like to go back to France in order to find her family, he was positive that his lover had not survived the war.
“I probably won’t see her,” he said. “She is no doubt dead.”
Miraculously, producers were able to find Jeannine, who is now 92-years-old.
When the two of them were finally reunited, the film crew was able to capture their first embrace in three quarters of a century. Members of the crew called it an “incredibly powerful moment.”
Robbins gave Jeannine the photograph of her that he had kept all these years.
“I always loved you. You never got out of my heart.”
The two of them spent a few touching hours together, and then it was time for Robbins to leave and head up to Normandy with the film crew.
“Jeannine,” he said, “I love you girl.”
The meeting was both beautiful and heartbreaking.
After decades of having no idea what had happened to the love of his life, Robbins was finally able to look into her eyes and make peace with that part of himself that left her so many years ago.
And what an incredible end to their story it was.
h/t: Ladbible
