D-Day in Provence

Every American knows about D-Day, the bold, risky Allied landing in Normandy led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

But how many know about Operation Dragoon? That was the slightly smaller (350,000 troops) Allied landing in Provence on August 15, 1944, of the U.S. 7th Army led by General Bernard Patch and the Free French Amy B led by General Delattre de Tassigny.

The landings in the south of France took pressure off embattled troops in Normandy and ultimately paved the way for the liberation of Paris ten days later. They were planned in less than two months and drew air, land, and naval resources from across a 1500 mile-wide theater, from North Africa to the Balkans.

They were arguably the most successful campaign of the entire war, perhaps because they were planned by combat generals, not general staff.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of both landings. For the past three days, I have been attending commemoration ceremonies — as I do every year I am here — in Sainte Maxime, Le Plan de la Tour, and Draguignan, which hosts the Rhone American Cemetery.

This is my favorite time of the year in the south of France. It’s when we all get reminded that freedom is not free, and the French willingly and gratefully pay down their debts to America.

This year was special, because the Rotary Club in the village of La Motte had raised funds to commission a sculptor to immortalize in bronze the combat commander of the First Special  Forces, Major General Robert T. Frederick. General Frederick was the youngest general officer in the U.S. Army, and established the first paratroop units used in North Africa the year before the landing in Provence. Churchill called him the “best combat general” of all the Allied armies, and said if we had only had a dozen like him, we would have beaten Hitler in 1942.

General Frederick took off with his five thousand airborne troops in C47s from Italian airfields at 1 AM on the morning of August 15, to land behind enemy lines two hours later. As the naval task force with the bulk of the invasion force pretended to sail for Genoa to deceive the Germans, heavy fog rolled in over the landing areas in Provence. They had been cleared overnight by local French resistance fighters after they received to “Go” code-words via the BBC:

• Nancy has a stiff neck.
• The hunter is hungry.

Roughly half of General Frederick’s men landed in the drop zones in the vineyards outside of the village of La Motte, near Draguignan, but the general himself wound up 15 miles off course in Vidauban. He commandeered a car, and along with his aide, made his way to the Lavergne farm in the hamlet of Le Mitan, which had been selected as his campaign headquarters.

When they arrived at 10 AM, the general and his two men encountered a dozen German soldiers, whom they promptly took prisoner and locked up in the chicken coop. Another 4,000 airborne troops under his command landed without incident using gliders. Their task was to cut the main road so the Germans couldn’t send reinforcements down to the landing beaches.

General Frederick dispatched a staff officer on foot to the nearby village of La Motte, where he was greeted by the Mayor and the entire town council who had been deposed by the Nazi occupiers. Together, they declared La Motte liberated – the first village in Provence to be officially free of the Nazi scourge.

Americans from the beachhead in Sainte-Maxime reached the village of Le Plan de la Tour, six miles inland, by 1 PM and declared it liberated. As the Mayor of Le Plan de la Tour, Laurent Giubergia (see photo), said at the commemoration ceremony yesterday, among the first troops to arrive in the village were Navajo code-talkers from Oklahoma attached to the 157th infantry regiment.

“In this very square on the 15h of August 1944, a photo was taken that became an icon for the liberation, immortalizing the arrival of our liberators as they proudly posed atop a Sherman tank.” (Other sources tell me that the tank crew had a pet monkey as a mascot who was also in the photo…).

By evening on D-Day, Allied troops had pushed 20 miles inland to the “blue line” with just 320 casualties. They took over 2,000 Germans prisoner. The next morning, they met up with local resistance fighters in the city of Draguignan that just 24-hours earlier had been the German headquarters.

The major deep-water ports of Toulon and Marseille were liberated on 23 and 29 August respectively, forty days ahead of schedule.

As one French official said at the ceremony in Sainte Maxime – and many others repeated elsewhere – this is the forgotten landing in France. But without it, history could easily have turned out differently.

And another refrain heard repeatedly: “The French will never forget.”

Each year, they parade more than a hundred WWII vehicles – including two Sherman tanks – through the streets of towns and villages. Local Frenchmen dressed as resistance fighters, U.S. soldiers, and African and North African fighters of the Free French Army B, parade through the streets. It is a moving sight.

Absolutely my favorite time of year, and one I commemorate in my book, Raising Olives in Provence.

Photos:

• D-Day remembrance in Sainte Maxime, Le Plan de la Tour, and Draguignan
• French on WWII Sherman Tank
• Statue in bronze to immortalize the combat commander of the First Special  Forces, Major General Robert T. Frederick.
• An American tank arrives in Le Muy, Aug. 16, 1944 (museum photo)
• “FFI” — Forces Francaises de l’interior, the French resistance.
• Sherman tank engaged in the narrow turn at the bottom of the village of Le Plan de la Tour, Aug. 15, 2024
• Vehicles in the parade in Le Plan de la Tour.

I discuss this, as well as the ongoing Ukrainian incursion into Russia and Iran’s on-again, off-again plans to strike Israel, on this week’s Prophecy Today Weekend. As always, you can listen live at 1 PM on Saturday in the Jacksonville, Florida, area on 104.5 FM or 550 AM, or by using the Jacksonville Way Radio app, or listen to the podcast later.

Yours in freedom.

©2024. Kenneth R. Timmerman. All rights reserved.