The first time Robert Vannatter saw France, he was staring out the door of an airplane 12,000 feet over Normandy.

It was 2:30 a.m., June 6, 1944. D-Day. Vannatter was a 150-pound coal miner from West Virginia with a parachute on his back, preparing to leap into German territory at the pivotal moment of World War II.

"I wasn't afraid. I don't know why I wasn't afraid. Dumb, I guess," said Vannatter, 90, during a cigarette break at his Pleasanton apartment.

The last time he saw France was nine months later, when he was among the first Americans to cross the Rhine into Germany.

Vannatter won two Bronze Stars for his heroism in helping liberate France. To thank him, the French government on June 3 is poised to award him the country's highest honor, a knighthood, or chevalier, in the French Legion of Honor.

"It's a great honor for us to convey this to him," said Jacques De Noray, deputy consul at the French Consulate in San Francisco. "These veterans are getting older, and we're probably in the last years of being able to thank them and honor them."

Only a few dozen American veterans have received the French honor. Elsewhere in the Bay Area, honorees include Irvin Roth and Manuel Loera, both of Oakland, and Floyd Carley of Burlingame.

Vannatter, a retired engineer who never lost his Appalachian drawl, is unfazed.

A Frenchwoman's thanks

"I'm very honored, but to be honest, it doesn't mean that much to me," he said. "I don't think of myself as a hero."

What meant more, he said, was the gratitude of a French woman he met a few years ago who thanked him and other American paratroopers for helping rescue her father from a concentration camp.

"She was crying, and, well, she got me crying," he said. "It was just very emotional. I don't feel too impressed with all these presentations and awards, but that meant a lot to me."

Vannatter was a high school dropout, working in coal mines and Civilian Conservation Corps camps to support his family, when the United States entered World War II in 1941. He enlisted, volunteered for paratrooper duty, and was eventually shipped to Europe to join the D-Day forces.

Fast-forward to the airplane. Amid a barrage of anti-aircraft fire from below, he jumped into the darkness, landing in 2 feet of water in the Merderet River.

While helping his regiment capture a bridge from the Germans, Vannatter noticed his colonel was missing.

"I circled around, but then found him 3 feet from where I'd last left him. A guy said, 'I think the colonel is dead.' " Vannatter said.

The colonel was lying in the water, apparently shot.

"An officer shouted, 'Don't bother - he's dead.' But we tried to rescue him anyway," Vannatter said, pausing, his blue eyes watering. "God, it's your duty to do that sort of thing."

With gunfire exploding around them, Vannatter and another soldier pulled the colonel from the water and carried him 20 feet to a small brick building for shelter.

The next morning, medics took the colonel to a hospital, where he recovered only to die in the next campaign.

Vannatter won a Bronze Star for his efforts.

His second Bronze Star was from Operation Varsity, in which he jumped from a Douglas C-47 across the Rhine. In the ensuing battle, he took two German prisoners, probably saving the lives of several colleagues.

It was the closest Vannatter had ever been to a German, and the first time he set foot on German soil.

"I looked at the trees, I picked up the dirt, and I said, 'This looks like home,' " he said quietly. "The German looked like me. He looked scared."

War over, life goes on

The war ended and Vannatter returned to West Virginia, having survived D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge and countless skirmishes. He finished school, married, had three children and worked for 30 years or so as an electrical engineer.

In 2002 he moved from Oregon to Pleasanton to be near his family. He spends his days tinkering with bicycles, corresponding with friends and smoking Marlboro reds, although, since his heart attack in January, he tries to limit his cigarettes to one every two hours.

"He's always been extremely humble," his daughter, Susan Prang of El Dorado Hills, said. "He's good-hearted, very honest. He always does the right thing without making a big deal of it."

With six decades to reflect on his war experiences, Vannatter said his appreciation for the French has only grown.

"Beyond hand-shakes and hugs, amidst German infested areas, citizens sheltered, fed, hid lost troopers ... at a great risk to their own lives," Vannatter wrote in a short memoir. "They did all that was within their power to help."