Paris (AFP)
Emmanuel Macron will open the commemorative events for the De Gaulle year by going to the Aisne on May 17 at the site of the battle of Montcornet, the Élysée announced on Friday.
The year 2020 marks a triple anniversary for General de Gaulle, that of his birth 130 years ago, his death 50 years ago and the appeal of June 18, 1940.
Last November, the Élysée Palace announced that President Macron would mark the occasion with "three events intended to celebrate, through de Gaulle, the spirit of resistance, the spirit of the Republic and the spirit of the Nation", a message more relevant than ever in the current context of the coronavirus epidemic.
A visit to Colombey-les-deux-Églises, the home of the de Gaulle in Haute-Marne, was already scheduled for next November.
Friday, the 75th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, the presidency unveiled another of these memorial events, which will ultimately launch the sequence devoted to the general.
Sunday May 17, the Head of State will thus travel to Montcornet, Dizy and to the town of La-Ville-aux-bois-les-Dizy, in Aisne, eighty years to the day after the battle of Montcornet in which took part Colonel de Gaulle, commanding the 4th battleship division.
The French army, which had launched a counter-offensive, had taken several strategic points before operating a retreat against the German Wehrmacht.
"This little-known episode of the Battle of France, the 80th anniversary of which we are commemorating this year, is a military weapon of the future General de Gaulle, theoretician of the autonomous use of battle tanks since the mid-1930s", said the Élysée.
© 2020 AFP