A 96-year-old American veteran decorated with the highest military honours for taking part in one of the most daring D-Day assaults on the Nazis has admitted he made it all up.
George G Klein was handed the Purple Heart and Bronze Star in the US and the French Légion d’honneur for his part in the assault on Pointe du Hoc where 225 men scaled 100ft cliffs before taking out German artillery positions.
Klein claimed to be among an elite group of 2nd Ranger Battalion soldiers asked to storm and secure the Normandy coast between Omaha and Utah beaches on June 6 1944.
This year he was a star of the 73rd anniversary celebrations where he signed hundreds of autographs and was photographed with his medals on the French cliffs he claimed to have climbed in 1944 having been flown there from America thanks to charitable donations.
But Second World War historians Gary Sterne and Marty Morgan were perplexed because they failed to find any trace of him at Pointe du Hoc and he was finally forced to admit his D-Day heroism was all a lie.
George G Klein on the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc this year where he claimed to spend D-Day – but he has been forced to admit he made it all up
Klein (pictured) was not in Normandy and instead he was in the 46th Field Artillery Battalion, 5th Infantry Division, in a field in Northern Ireland and would enter France a month after D-Day
225 men clambered up 100ft cliffs before taking out German artillery positions in one of the most daring and dangerous missions on June 6 1944 (pictured after it was successfully completed)
Marc Laurenceau, head of the Overlord D-Day association, told French newspaper La Renaissance Le Bessin: ‘George Klein arrived in Normandy in July 1944. I’m in contact with his family with whom I have become friends. They are devastated.
He added: ‘So are we, as we believed his story. We put in a lot of effort to get him to Normandy.’
This year the D-Day Overlord Association crowdfunded $4,000 (£3,120) to fly him from his Illinois home back to Pointe du Hoc where he was called ”one of the great celebrities’ of the 73rd anniversary celebrations.
He paid tribute to his comrades and said: ‘I’m not a hero. The real heroes are those who have lost life here’.
It was only when he got home to America that he admitted it was all a lie and he had been unable to be a Ranger having broken his ankle in 1943.
Instead he was in the 46th Field Artillery Battalion, 5th Infantry Division, in a field in Northern Ireland, and would enter France a month after D-Day.
Despite the shame of being outed as a liar the Overlord D-Day Association has still been supportive.
They said he should ‘not be ashamed of his real contribution to the liberation of Europe’ because he was wounded in action in Germany on November 17 1944.
‘Trapped into a lie that shaped him in the eyes of his entourage, and from which he could no longer escape, he finally resolved to tell the truth,’ they said.
The cliffs (pictured) were a point of attack by the United States Army Ranger Assault Group during Operation Overlord
He is not the first US veteran to be exposed in this way.
Until 2009 Howard Manoian was a local hero in the Normandy village that he had retired to – feted for his tales of sacrifice in liberating France from the Nazis and even had a plaque in his honour.
The American was happy to tell how he was wounded in action twice after parachuting into nearby Sainte-Mère-Eglise on D-Day in the fierce battle later depicted in John Wayne’s film The Longest Day.
Numerous admirers heard how he was shot in the hand and legs by a German machine gun during a fire fight and then again by a Messerschmitt which strafed the field hospital where he was recovering.
But it later emerged that he was only minding a supply dump in Northern France and providing showers for war-weary soldiers.