More than 80 years after war forged a friendship between a young GI and four French children who had lost nearly everything, descendants of those four children were treated as honored guests in Westport last week after flying here to say ‘Thank you.’

Maurice Dore was a 20-year-old Navy SeaBee from Fall River whose assignment proved pivotal in the planning and aftermath of D-Day, the allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. The SeaBees were charged with planning the landing’s logistics and building infrastructure — hospitals, camps, communications facilities and the like — needed by the invading forces as they fought the occupying Nazis. And he knew how to speak French.

Dore’s son, Maurice “Moe” Dore, said his dad never talked much about the war, but when he persisted mentioned years ago that days after the invasion he had befriended four children who had lost their mother and home in Allied bombings the night before the landing. The children — Genevieve Marie, 9, Auguste Marie, 5, Pierre Marie, 3 and Emilienne Marie, 7 — were traumatized after four years of German occupation and the loss of their home and mother, Dore recalled Friday.

“Genevieve, who had suffered a serious head wound, ushered her siblings out of the rubble past their mother’s corpse,” he said. “Their father had been sent to a work camp by the Nazis a year earlier, but would return to them after the war.”

During his months in Normandy, Dore and the children became close — “feeling bad that these children had suffered so much trauma, he took the children under his wing and helped them get food and supplies,” Dore recalled. “He’d bring them large cans of fruit cocktail, running through the fields with one can tucked under each arm.”

When he departed France months later, Dore lost touch with the children, and they lost touch with him. But neither ever forgot the other.

Reconnecting

Though his father never made it back to Normandy before his death in 2019 at age 95, Moe fulfilled a long-time dream by visiting in 2011. While there, he was able to track down and meet two of the children, who were then 74 and 76 years old.

“Emotions were high and they welcomed us with open arms,” he said, and said he'll never forget a conversation he had with Genevieve, when she reached across the table, squeezed his hand and spoke of her mother's death in 1944 and the death of her husband two days before the 2011 visit:

"During the worst two days of my life, when my mother was killed ... your father appeared in my life like an angel to provide me comfort.”

Since that first trip, the Dore family has returned twice more, though the original four children never made it to the States and Genevieve and Auguste have now passed.

But more than a year ago, Dore and Westport veterans began talking about financing a trip for the children’s family members. Veterans from the American Legion took up the cause and worked with Senator Michael Rodrigues while trying to raise funds for a visit. A major portion of the $8,5000 trip was covered by a $5,000 BayCoast Bank donation.

And that’s how seven French family members came to find themselves in the VFW Hall Friday morning, where they were treated like royalty during a breakfast and ceremony in their honor.

It capped off a busy week for the family and the Dores. They visited the Boston statehouse with Senator Rodriques, took a duck boat tour on the Charles, ate Italian in Boston’s north end, toured Battleship Cove in Fall River and saw much of Westport. They visited Westport Vineyards, Buzzards Bay Brewery, ate at the Bayside and even did some striper fishing on Buzzards Bay.

It was all capped off by a big party Saturday night that drew close to 100 people. Before they left Sunday, the visitors hung around the Dore residence and were introduced to cornhole — “they’d never played it before,” Moe said. “We had to explain the rules.”

They were dropped off at Logan airport Sunday evening.

Looking back on his father’s service, Dore said in his speech Friday that his dad’s act of kindness to four small kids tells a big truth, and he is proud of him:

“I guess the lesson we can all learn today is that being kind and compassionate can have a huge ripple effect that can have such a positive impact on people’s lives that will continue for generations to come.”