American D-Day veteran and TikTok star dies aged 102
Larson was one of around 160,000 American soldiers who took part in the D-Day landings in northern France in 1944, landing on Omaha beach.
His grand-daughter McKaela Larson announced that he had died aged 102 on July 17th, adding that he was "making jokes until the end".
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Born on December 20th 1922 in Owatonna, Minnesota, Jake Larson joined the National Guard in 1938, lying about his age as he was only 15 at the time. In 1942, he was sent overseas and became an operations sergeant, later preparing plans for the Normandy landings.
After D-Day he took part in the continued Allied campaign to liberate France and participated in the Battle of Ardennes.
He regularly travelled to France to take part in the commemorations of the landings on June 6th, and had been awarded the Légion d'honneur by the French government.
In recent years he began sharing his war stories, often told with humour, on a TikTok account which had 1.2 million followers.
In 2023 he told Associated Press "I'm just a country boy. Now I'm a star on TikTok. I'm a legend! I didn't plan this, it just happened."
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