Seventy three years ago a 20-year-old French printing apprentice named Francois Andriot cycled out of his home town of Chaumont in eastern France.

If you’d seen him, you might have thought he didn’t have much with him - just a bike and a few provisions - but the young Frenchman was carrying a lot more than that: he had the pride of his country on his shoulders.

Fortunately he carried it well - all the way via Spain, Glasgow and London, then across the channel to the beaches of Normandy where he helped liberate his homeland as part of Commando Kieffer, an elite unit of 177 French marines fighting with British 4 Commando.

And this week the French came to give their thanks.

One of just ten surviving French commandos from 1944, Mr Andriot of Chart Place, Wigmore, has lived in England since he returned after the war to marry his English sweetheart Marie, but was too frail to attend the 70th anniversary ceremony at Ouistreum in July, where he would have been presented to the Queen and promoted to the rank of officer in France’s prestigious Legion of Honour.

Determined he should get the honour, the French president Francois Holland wrote to 93-year-old Mr Andriot to confirm it would be presented in England - and on Wednesday a delegation from France performed the ceremony at Chatham’s Bridgewood Manor Hotel.

“We are very honoured to be here because for us you are an example,” said Commander Amaury Desrivieres of Commando Kieffer - the French equivalent of the British SBS - which takes its name from Francois Andriot’s commando unit in World War Two. “We are trying to do our best but we are very far away from what you did on June 6 1944.”

Fresh from operations in Africa, Commander Desrivieres explained the ties between his unit and that of 1944 were still strong, and evident right down to the way the Kieffer commandos wear their berets in the British fashion.

Addressing Mr Andriot, he said: “We know exactly what you did 70 years ago, so for us it’s a great honour.”

The honour itself was conferred by Admiral Henri Schricke, who afterwards spoke of the importance of men like Mr Andriot.

“These were young men and women,” he said, also referring to women who served in Special Operations Executive, supporting the French Resistance. “You have French men and women who decided to take their chance and not just wait for things to happen. They risked their lives for the country they loved - for the country they believed in."

Admiral Schricke said 10 of the original 177 commandos were still alive today, adding: “we are lucky to know these people.”

Mr Andriot thanked the Admiral for the award before his son John addressed the crowd gathered at the hotel.

“I would like to thank the Captain, Admiral and commandos that have come here today,” he said. “These commandos have the same name as the commandos my father was in, so it’s great privilege for them to come.”

He explained how his father was among the first of the French to liberate his own country, and had specifically chosen to be in the commandos, knowing the unit would be in the thick of the most dangerous front line action.

Last week John told the Medway Messenger how his father’s epic Second World War adventure began when he was living in Nazi-occupied France in 1942, and approaching his 21st birthday.

“When the French turned 21 the Germans packed them off to work in factories in forced labour,” he said. “Knowing this was coming up, he and a friend from college decided they would cross France and Spain and try to get to Gibraltar.

“Put yourself in his place – to be 21, knowing you will be marched off forcibly to work. To get on your bike and cycle to a country where you don’t know the language. It was very courageous.”

After a perilous bicycle journey across France and over the Pyrenees, Francois and his friend Charles Husson made it to Madrid, where staff at the British Embassy supplied them with food, train tickets to Gibraltar, newspapers, and the best of luck they could offer.

The luck didn’t last long. They were arrested by Spanish police during the train journey and sent to the concentration camp at Miranda de Ebro, where they were kept in filthy, cramped conditions for three months.

Eventually, the Spanish sent them, half-starved, to Gibraltar and the duo managed to get on an American cruise ship to Glasgow, before travelling to London where they signed up to the war effort.

Charles joined the paratroopers while Francois joined Commando Kieffer - which on June 6 advanced on Ouistreham and took out 45 gun positions before progressing to Pegasus Bridge.

“June 6 was D-Day but June 12 was the worst day, when the Germans put the Panzers on to them,” said his son. “He said D-Day was a walk in the park compared to the 12th, which was horrible.”

After returning to Britain, the unit regrouped before invading the Dutch coast at Flushing.

“My father said that episode was very hard – the hardest fighting – almost hand to hand, street by street, island by island. After that they were presented to the Dutch queen.”

At the end of the war he was given a pass to go back to France, and after getting the 6.30am train from Paris, Francois turned up on the doorstep of his family home and knocked on the door.

“They were flabbergasted to see him,” said his son. “By then he was three years older, about 24-25, and was a commando in uniform. My grandfather was so proud he spent the whole day parading him around town, taking him to his friends, taking him to bars.”

His friend Charles was less fortunate, killed five or six weeks after D Day - yet he too died knowing he had carried French pride back to his homeland.

Ironically, it was arguably French pride that meant the bravery of such men was not recognised for many years - official French ambivalence over D Day meant Mr Andriot and his fellow commandos were not promoted to the Legion of Honour until 2004.

But official ambivalence should not be confused with the true feelings of the French - people like Francois Andriot's father, who paraded his son around his home town, and the men of Commando Kieffer, who built their identity on the French exploits of D Day.

Now the officialdom has put that right, but perhaps there's a need to revise some stereotypical British views of the war as well - and Francois' son John believes it’s important to not let pride descend into arrogance when remembering the Second World War.

“My younger relatives say ‘we beat the Germans’ but they don’t understand," he said. "They have a macho idea that we beat the Germans, but if we didn’t have a strip called the English Channel we would have been invaded in 1940 too.

"We should recognise everyone that played their part."