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D-day veteran ‘Papa Jake’, who passed away last week at the age of 102, had made it his life’s goal to commemorate fellow soldiers. In recent years, the American had found a new audience on TikTok. He called himself “the luckiest man in the world”.
“What the hell is TikTok?” That was Jake Larson’s first reaction when his granddaughter suggested he share videos via social media during the corona pandemic. The then almost centenarian veteran could tell very fascinating stories about his time as a soldier in Europe. According to his granddaughter, he deserved a larger audience.
At the time of his death, Larson had 1.2 million followers on TikTok. Sometimes he told them anecdotes from his home in Lafayette, California. Occasionally, the veteran still appeared at commemorations. And despite his old age, he traveled to the beaches of Normandy every year, the scene of D-day in World War II. Followers affectionately called him ‘Papa Jake’.
Larson was born in 1922 in the state of Minnesota. His parental home had no running water or electricity. “I’m just a simple country boy,” he often said of his background. Larson knew early on that he wanted to join the army. At the age of fifteen, he lied about his age to join the National Guard. At the age of twenty, he was sent to Europe.
Because he could type, Larson was first stationed in Northern Ireland in 1942. There he had to put the plans for D-day on paper. “All the names of the soldiers who landed on Omaha Beach were typed by these fingers,” the American said in an interview, while extending his hands towards the camera. “The typewriter changed my life.”
Six offensives without a scratch
Two years later, Larson himself was in one of the boats that brought 160,000 Allied troops ashore in Normandy. Unlike thousands of others, he didn’t get a scratch. Later in the war, Larson also came out of five other offensives unscathed, including the Battle of the Bulge.
“I was one of the lucky ones,” he reflected decades later. “It’s unimaginable. Every person who was there then is no longer there now. I am the last man.” Larson owed his survival of World War II to the sacrifice of others. “I’m not a hero. It is the others who must be remembered,” he said. The American saw himself as “the messenger” who had to honor their legacy.
Yet he only started telling stories about the war at the age of eighty, his granddaughter tells an American television station. “He felt good about it and others were really interested.”
‘Almost 102 years old, without a care in the world’
Although he had been a widower since 1991, the veteran often emphasized how lucky he was. “See me sitting here, almost 102 years old and without a care in the world,” he said last year. He was only happy with the attention on TikTok. “I’m a legend, but I didn’t plan it at all! This all happened to me,” Larson said of his success. Three weeks ago he received an Emmy Award for an interview about D-day on CNN.
Yet ‘Papa Jake’ also felt the end approaching. He already called his visit to France in 2024 his last. At that time it was exactly eighty years since Larson himself had landed on Omaha Beach. “All my comrades up there are waiting for me,” he said then. According to his granddaughter, Larson joked until the end and died in peace.