Frank Agogolia, 101-year-old Deer Park vet who jumped behind enemy lines on D-Day gets the French Legion of Honor

To the Purple Heart and the bevy of other military decorations Frank Agoglia already earned after crash landing a rickety wooden glider in France on D-Day 80 years ago, he added on Friday one more that was unusual for an American.

It was the French Legion of Honor, described by that nation’s government as the "highest French distinction and one of the best known in the world," bestowed since the time of Napoleon, usually on people who are themselves French.

On Friday it was Myriam Gil, France’s Deputy Consul General for New York City, who did the bestowing at the Long Island State Veterans Home at Stony Brook University, where the 101-year-old Agoglia, who lived much of his adult life in Deer Park, has lived for the last year.

Elected officials, veterans advocates and members of Agoglia’s family attended the ceremony. National anthems from both countries were played. Champagne was served. Agoglia, who said little during the ceremony, drank his with gusto.

"Great," Agoglia said, when asked how it felt to be a member of a group whose American membership includes the inventors of the telephone and light bulb and Agoglia’s onetime boss, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The child of Italian immigrants was 19 when enlisted to fight along with all five of his brothers. He joined the 82nd Airborne and dropped in June 1944 along with 4,000 others behind the heavily fortified Normandy coast to prepare the ground for D-Day’s much larger landing force. It was the largest amphibious assault in history, opening a critical second front against Germany.

"I knew we were going into combat, but I never realized what we were about to go through, and there was no turning back," Agoglia told Newsday in a 2013 interview. "We were under fire day and night. When you were able to, you dug a foxhole to get away from the shrapnel. But if your name was on it, that was it."

Close to 9,000 allied troops died on the first day of the invasion. Afterward, Agoglia returned stateside to work as an NYPD officer, retiring in 1980.

The guests at Friday’s ceremony added detail to Agoglia's prior accounts of that day. Roger Kilfoil, a Marine who befriended Agoglia in recent years, said Agoglia and his comrades fought for days in one of the largest small arms combat engagements in U.S. history, securing a bridge that was key to expanding the allied beachhead.

In her remarks, Gil said that battle had been fought with rifles, pistols and hand grenades. Agoglia developed trench foot from the cold, wet conditions and has lived with knee and leg trouble, she said.

"France is really honored today to be here for you," she said. "We owe you our freedom and we will always remember that."