The other D-Day: France remembers WWII Provence landings

France on Thursday remembers the 1944 Allied landings in Provence, an event overshadowed by the Normandy landings two months earlier, but still key to the World War II endgame in Europe.

Six African leaders were to join official events, and President Emmanuel Macron was expected to single out the contribution of soldiers recruited -- often forcibly -- in French overseas colonies, notably in Africa.

It took decades for France to highlight the crucial role of non-white soldiers in the fighting.

Macron will lead the commemorations first at the Boulouris necropolis near Saint-Raphael, then off the coast of the port of Toulon, which were at the heart of fighting on August 15, 1944, when 100,000 American, British and Canadian troops landed on the beaches of the Var region on the French Riviera.

They were followed by 250,000 Free French soldiers, recruited mostly from  overseas colonies in Africa, with the aim of recapturing the key ports of Marseille and Toulon from the German occupiers.

They succeeded within two weeks, having encountered only limited resistance from an exhausted German army.

- 'Operation Dragoon' -

The lack of wartime drama comparable to the bitter prolonged fighting when the Allies landed in Normandy weeks earlier explains why the southern French invasion never captured the collective imagination, historians say.

Nor did it inspire Hollywood's D-Day recreations such as "Saving Private Ryan" or "The Longest Day".

Efforts to mark the Provence landings with major events like those seen for D-Day anniversaries have been hampered by the presence of holidaymakers on Riviera beaches in August who are rarely in the mood for solemn commemorations.

The Provence landings gave French fighters a chance to prove their worth, and added weight to France's subsequent claim to a seat at the table of World War II victors, despite its lightning-fast defeat in 1940.

"The invasion of southern France on August 15, 1944, is one of the least celebrated yet most important combat operations by the Allies in the summer of 1944," author Steven J. Zaloga wrote in a 2009 book about the invasion codenamed "Operation Dragoon".

The attack "succeeded far beyond the wildest dreams of its advocates", he wrote.

- 'Not forgotten' -

African leaders were first invited to commemorate the landings only half a century after the war.

Six African leaders were to attend Thursday's commemorations, including Paul Biya of Cameroon, Faure Gnassingbe of Togo and Faustin-Archange Touadera of the Central African Republic.

Officials from Niger, Mali and Algeria were not expected to be present, highlighting France's strained ties with those countries.

Burkina Faso will be represented by a chargé d'affaires.

The army, commanded by general Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, included 84,000 French settlers from Algeria, 12,000 Free French troops and 12,000 Corsicans, but also 130,000 soldiers from Algeria and Morocco, and 12,000 from Senegal and France's Pacific and Caribbean possessions.

Macron's 2019 call to name streets in France after African combatants has largely gone unheeded, although some French towns remember the African contributions on monuments and memorial sites.

"At the local level they are not forgotten," historian Jean-Marie Guillon told AFP.

Relations between France and its African recruits were fraught. A December 1, 1944 showdown when French forces opened fire on African troops who demanded backpay long cast a shadow over ties. More than 35 were killed.

Among Thursday's military displays will be a beach landing of parachutists in honour of 5,000 Britons who landed there in the night of August 14-15, 1944.

Overall, Allied forces suffered some 1,000 deaths that day, compared to more than 4,400 Allied deaths in Normandy.

On Wednesday, a statue of Robert Tryon Frederick, the US commander of  airborne troops in Operation Dragoon, was unveiled in La Motte, the first Provence village to be liberated.