France remembers WWII Provence landings

FRANCE 24 English

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00:00On August 15th 1944 hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers landed

00:05between Toulon and Caen on the French Riviera. Their objective was to recapture

00:10the strategic port cities of Toulon and Marseille which had been occupied by the

00:14Nazis and to back up the Allied troops that had landed in Normandy 70 days

00:19earlier. Herbert Robb remembers the day 80 years ago he set foot on this square in

00:24St. Raphael. The landing was a thing of noise of the cries advance advance

00:32everyone was shouting it had to be quick. On board the boats the soldiers had

00:39headed towards the unknown with the terrible losses of the Normandy beach

00:43landings hanging over their heads. During this period of waiting on the boat

00:49the head starts thinking it asks the question will I last? Some 350,000

00:58troops landed along approximately a hundred kilometers of coastline. The

01:02Germans were quickly overwhelmed by the scale of the attack. To carry out the

01:08landings the troops had learned from the failures in Normandy. They were going to

01:11rely more on the information provided by the resistance which had been somewhat

01:14neglected in Normandy. Most of the soldiers were unfamiliar with the area

01:19they were part of the free French soldiers and came from overseas colonies

01:23in Africa. An aspect that is little known to many who visit this memorial museum

01:28in Toulon. It is in fact quite moving to see that the Senegalese, Tunisians,

01:34Moroccans and Algerians sacrificed themselves for the cause. Toulon and

01:41Marseille were liberated earlier than planned on the 26th and 28th of August

01:45and France was finally among the victors thanks to its African soldiers.

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