D-Day veteran and TikTok star ‘Papa Jake’ Larson dies aged 102

Mr Larson was among the nearly 160,000 Allied troops who stormed the Normandy shore on June 6 1944, surviving machine-gun fire when he landed on Omaha Beach (Thomas Padilla/AP)

D-Day veteran “Papa Jake” Larson, who survived German gunfire in the June 1944 Normandy landings and went on to garner 1.2 million followers on TikTok late in life by sharing stories to commemorate the Second World War and his fallen comrades, has died at 102.

An animated speaker who charmed strangers young and old with his quick smile and generous hugs, the self-described country boy from Minnesota was “cracking jokes till the end”, his granddaughter wrote while announcing his death.