Sword Beach, located at Ouistreham, was one of the 5 beaches used during the D-Day, on 6th June 1944, near 30 000 men landed there whose the 177 French commandos of the No.4 Commando, 8 and 1 Troops, commanded, in order, by the Brigadier Lord Lovat and by the Commandant Philippe Kieffer.

The Frenchmen of the 'Commando Kieffer' were the only French soldiers to participate to the D-Day, the were on the first soldiers who landed on Sword Beach and had the mission to secure the beach, when the men 8 Troop had for mission to secure the bunkers on the beach, the men of the 1 Troop had to secure the Ouistreham's Casino, transformed as a giant bunker equipped of a 20mm canon, a 50mm canon and of several machine guns by Germans during the occupation. The 4 Commando had for mission to take Ouistreham.
On 6th June 1944, a little bit before 7.25am, the skiffs were taking as target by the German artillery, one of the skiffs, one of the two used by the French, were reached at the bow by a shell, the officers were wounded and one of the landing access was unusable. At 7.25am, the first troops landed on Sword, the Green Berets of the Commando Kieffer known its first deads, Commandos Jean Rousseau and Raymond Flesch, Second-Maître Raymond Dumanoir and Quartier-Maître Josephe Letang. Later, in the current Boulevard Winston Churchill, two other French soldiers are killed, Commando Marcel Labas and Lieutenant Augustin Hubert. And then, the 8 Section leaded by Commandant Kieffer, was jammed by the machine guns and the 20mm gun located in the casino, there, Commandos Paul Rollin and Emile Renault, Quartier-Maître Jean Lemoigne and Médecin de 1ère Classe Robert Lion were, at their turn, been killed, one of them received a 20mm shell in the head, next of him was another solider who survived to the 20th century.
Wounded and seeing his troops jammed, Commandant Philippe Kieffer came back on the beach and returned in front of the casino, standing on a DD Firefly tank, his revolver in the hand.
At the end of the day, Ouistreham was under the Allied control, Sword Beach and Juno Beach were linked and the No.4 Commando crossed Bénouville under the Bill Millin's bagpipes song until few meters after they crossed Pegasus Bridge, when schrapnels pierced the Millin's bagpipes, making it unusable. After they joined the 6th British Airborne Division, the men of the 4 Commando will know the fights until the 27th August 1944, when they were repatriated in the UK, at this date, only 24 of the 177 men of the 1er Bataillon de Fusiliers Marins Commando were not reached by any bullet or schrapnel, Commandant Kieffer himself was rapatriated before his men because of an infection on one of his injury, he was wounded twice only on 6 June 44.

At few kilometers of the No.4 Commando, the men of the 41th Royal Marines Commando were jammed at Lion sur Mer because of the heavy German defenses in the sector.

At the end of the day, 630 allied soldiers were unable to fight, either killed or wounded, one of them, a French commando, wounded, passed out on the beach and woke up only when a DD Firefly was in way for swating him, he yelled and the tank commander ordered to the pilot to stop.