By François-Damien BourgeryPosted on 15-08-2019Modified on 15-08-2019 at 05:52
From August 15, 1944, 230,000 soldiers of the French forces landed in Provence to participate in the liberation of France. More than half are African soldiers. Story.
"Nancy has the torticollis" ... "The hunter is hungry" ... This 14 August 1944 in the early evening, as it has been for almost three years, Radio London broadcast his personal messages to the French resistance. In the south of the country, these have a particular resonance: they announce the beginning of the landing of Provence . Shortly after midnight, the men of the US 1st Special Service Force and African commandos set foot on French soil. The former neutralize the German batteries of the islands of Hyeres, the second those of Cape Negro. The Dragoon operation is launched.
It was validated at the Tehran conference in November 1943, at the same time as the landing in Normandy . The British opposed it, preferring the liberation of Europe from Italy. Originally named Anvil (anvil, in English) and Sledgehammer (mass), both offensives were to take place at the same time to take the German army in pincers. Repulsed by lack of landing craft and to ensure the capture of Rome, the operation of Provence was still maintained, against the advice of Churchill.
A mosaic of free France
Some 350,000 combatants have been mobilized, including more than 230,000 men under the command of General de Lattre de Tassigny in Army B. They are mostly soldiers from the Maghreb. There are also French escaped from the metropolis, troops from sub-Saharan Africa, Indochina, New Caledonia, the Levant ... " This is the mosaic of free France, all these territories that have rallied to General de Gaulle, which is joined by the Maghreb bloc and French West Africa , "says the historian Julien Fargettas, author of The Senegalese tirailleurs. Black soldiers between legends and realities 1939-1945 .
Among the soldiers from Africa, few have volunteered to join. They are often conscripts or men that the army went to look for in their villages. " At home there were no volunteers. People were forcibly recruited from their villages, confirms Burkina Faso corporal Bouakal Lourba at RFI's microphone in 2014 . Before going to war, we were shown how to use a rifle. How to dismantle it, how to reassemble it. But it's all alone that we learned to protect ourselves during the fighting. When they land in Provence, many already have the experience of fire. Most of those from North Africa participated in the Italian campaign, those of the 9th Colonial Infantry Division at the landing of the island of Elba a few weeks earlier. The oldest, they have to their credit a multitude of operations: Eritrea, Chad, Libya, Tunisia ...
This August 15th at 8am, the first waves of assault allied break on the beaches Alpha, Camel and Delta, between Cavalaire and Saint-Raphael. Thousands of paratroopers dropped overnight in the interior were responsible for blocking the access roads with the help of the French Forces Interior (FFI), before ships and planes crush the German defenses under a deluge of bombs.
Army B disembarks the next day. Alloua Mokrane, 21 years old at the time, remembers the violence of the fighting and the panic that then wins the soldiers. " Half were thrown into the sea. It was the swim, " says the Algerian veteran in 2014 at RFI. The liberators are progressing fast. They now occupy a pocket of more than 30 km deep. On August 17, Hitler ordered the nineteenth German army to retreat to the north. Only the divisions installed in Toulon and Marseille must hold whatever the cost.
Marseille and Toulon
It is up to the French troops to carry out the heavy task of liberating the two big port cities, while the American forces will go back to the Isère and the Rhône valley. The initial plan provides for the outbreak of the attack against Toulon only fifteen days after the landing, once enough men, equipment and ammunition have been routed. " But from August 18 (...) must be decided, writes General de Lattre de Tassigny . Toulon will be attacked immediately, galloping load, with the only available means. Sixteen thousand fighters are at work with thirty tanks and some batteries. Opposite, the Germans have the order of 25,000 soldiers and sailors, solidly entrenched in the powerful works, bristling with automatic weapons and filled with 250 guns, our largest port of war. "
The Battle of Toulon begins August 19th. It will last a week. The fighting is tough. " We found resistance, and there was a little breakage ", euphemised the Algerian veteran Alloua Mokrane when he testifies in 2014. " In Toulon, there were many German deaths. It took three days to remove the corpses, "remembers the Senegalese veteran Issa Cisse in a webdocumentary published on RFI the same year.
The Marseille attack, which was to begin only once Toulon fell, was also advanced to surprise the enemy. General de Monsabert led the offensive by relying on Algerian riflemen and Moroccan gumiers. On the 21st, they blew Aubagne's lock and reached the outskirts of the Phocean City the next day. On the 23rd, the Algerian riflemen are in the city alongside the FFIs. The German positions yielded one after the other, and on the 28th, the commander of the 244th German Division handed General de Monsabert the act of capitulation. On the same day, at Toulon, Admiral Ruhfus went to the commander of the 9th Colonial Infantry Division. The capture of the two cities was done more than a month ahead of forecasts.
Wherever they pass, colonial troops receive an enthusiastic welcome from the liberated population. A little too much, moreover, to the taste of the French command. " There is always the taboo of the connection between the colonial individual and the French woman, " notes the historian Julien Fargettas. While a part of the Allied forces continues the fight in the Maritime Alps, the other goes north: Grenoble, Lyon, Burgundy and the Vosges where the German army stops their advance.
The "laundering" of the army
The fighting gets bogged down. And during the fall and winter of 1944, the Black soldiers of Army B - now called 1st Army - are gradually being replaced by white fighters from the resistance or newly engaged. A year earlier, a similar "laundering" was practiced among the troops of General Leclerc. " When he arrives in Tunisia, after crossing Chad and Libya, General de Gaulle's ambition is to take the lead of a modern armored unit. To equip him, he turns to the United States and Great Britain. But Washington refuses that this new unit welcomes African soldiers, reports Julien Fargettas. There is undeniably a desire to dismiss black soldiers. But the Americans also believe that in a modern and therefore technical armored unit, African soldiers who are for the majority of them illiterate have no place. "
This time, the reasons are quite different. First of all, there are the deplorable climatic conditions to which the troops are subjected, which particularly affect the African soldiers, but also a will to involve the young French in the liberation of France and finally a worry about the influence of the ideas. propagated by communist circles on the morale of African troops. The French army is so destitute that African soldiers must surrender their uniform to those who replace them. In exchange, they are given old frusks or German army uniforms.
" But the war never stops for Africans. Even if they were removed from the front in 1944-45, they are found in the Constantinois in 1945, in Damascus against the Syrian nationalists and in Madagascar to suppress the insurgency in Indochina, Algeria ... ", Says the historian Julien Fargettas. African independence is the death knell of tirailleurs. For those soldiers who have never stopped serving France then begins a new fight: the recognition of their rights.
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