A 96-year-old World War II veteran hailed as an American D-Day war hero after surviving a fierce battle against the Germans on the cliffs of Normandy has admitted he was actually in northern Ireland at the time, according to a French nonprofit organization.

George G. Klein was treated as “one of the great celebrities” during the 73rd anniversary of the Normandy battle during a ceremony there last month, where he was honored as one of the 90 surviving members of the elite 2nd Ranger Battalion that battled the Germans on the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc on June 6, 1944.

“His good humor and smiles were not feigned: George expressed his joy of returning to Normandy for the second time and meeting the Normans, explaining: ‘I am not a hero. The real heroes are those who have lost life here,’” according to Marc Laurenceau, who runs D-Day Overlord, a French organization dedicated to the Battle of Normandy.

Klein’s return to Europe at a cost of more than $5,000 was paid for by “dozens of donors” and was arranged by the volunteers connected to the group.

“But only weeks after his return to the United States, the extraordinary news is made public: George Klein is not the one he claims to be,” according to Laurenceau’s account, which was posted online Monday. “On June 6, 1944, the American veteran was not among the 2nd Ranger Battalion to attack the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, this formidable German artillery position threatening the landing beaches.”

Klein was nowhere near the beaches of Normandy. Instead, he was in northern Ireland with the B battery of his artillery regiment, the 46th Field Artillery Battalion, 5th Infantry Division.

The discovery is the work of several historians, Laurenceau said, including Marty Morgan and Gary Sterne, who owns a museum dedicated to D-Day and the Battle of Normandy in the French town of Grandcamp-Maisy.

Klein, over the course of two decades, claimed to have been one of the officers within F Company of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, recounting three days he spent fighting German soldiers at Pointe du Hoc and scaling 100-foot cliffs.

“His story had every reason to be plausible: with a (real) experience in the Rangers’ unit, the artilleryman had [broken] his ankle during a climbing training during the year 1943 and had to give up any hope of remaining in this elite unit,” Laurenceau said. “Back in his artillery regiment, he accepts this failure with difficulty.”

Klein then reimagined his story and explained his absence from the list of 225 Rangers who participated in the assault by claiming to be a “supernumerary” lieutenant who replaced a platoon leader who was unable to continue fighting.

“He knows the operation in the smallest detail for having read it in different books,” Laurenceau’s account continued. “George explains that he was wounded on 6 June 1944 by the blade of a German bayonet, and that he was only evacuated to England on 8 June 1944, the date of the end of the fighting at Pointe du Hoc.”

But Klein, of Glenview, Ill., should not be “ashamed of his real contribution” to the liberation of Europe during World War II, Laurenceau said, noting that he was deployed from July 1944 to July 1945 with the 46th Field Artillery Battalion and was seriously wounded during combat in the Moselle region of France in November 1944.

Klein was later awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart medals by the United States and the prestigious Legion of Honour, France’s highest military award.

“Trapped into a lie of that shaped him in the eyes of his entourage and from which he could no longer escape, he finally resolved to tell the truth to his family, his relatives and the organizations that supported him for several years,” Laurenceau’s account continued.

Klein’s tale is not entirely unique, said Laurenceau, noting that two other US soldiers who “transformed the truth” claim they participated in the Battle of Normandy as airborne troops. Howard Manoian and Eugene A. Cook Jr. were “unmasked” in 2009 and 2017, respectively, Laurenceau said, after participating in several commemorative ceremonies while wearing insignia of units in which they did not serve.

“I am in touch with his family with whom I became a friend,” Laurenceau told French newspaper La Renaissance Le Bessin. “They are devastated! We too, because we believed his story. A great deal of effort was made to enable him to come to Normandy.”