In the Shadow of D-Day - Operation Dragoon

"Provence is free - August 1944"
A 70-year old newspaper kept by Jackie Gow

It was precisely seventy years ago that Marseille was freed from German occupation, August 28, 1944. Mademoiselle Jacqueline (Roux) Gow, now of North Attleborough, remembers. A young teen at the time, Jackie and her family had dealt with the Germans since November, 1942, when Marseille was first taken.

The oldest of six and daughter of two physicians, Jackie remembers the smoke and thunder of the Allied landings. Long lines of trucks, British and American and Canadian troops, the sheer joy of liberation. And the horror of a German aircraft, shot from the sky, the pilot perishing in the burning wreckage.

This was war, but with glimmers of hope. It was the end of an occupation that had included the confiscation of homes, brutality, arrests, and the deportation of Jews to German death camps. It is no wonder that the Allied troops were welcomed with celebration and joy.

Operation Dragoon, renamed for obscure reasons from its original “Anvil,” was Supreme Commander Eisenhower’s drive to open up the ports of southern France. Following close on the heels of the much better known Operation Overlord, the Normandy D-day landings, Dragoon solved the problem of landing huge amounts of troops and materiel needed to support the Allied drive into the heartland of Germany.

But this liberation of southern France had not been guaranteed in Allied planning. Indeed, Eisenhower said, Dragoon sparked “one of the longest sustained arguments I had with Prime Minister Churchill throughout the period of the war.” Churchill preferred to focus allied troops on the Balkans, the immediate goal to deny the Germans petroleum from that region. But longer term, the canny Churchill wanted troops in Romania and Greece to withstand a post-war takeover by the Russian bear, Stalin.

Eisenhower countered that the capture of the ports of southern France would speed the landing of American divisions from the homeland, protect the flank of the hard-earned Normandy landings, and get the Free French army quickly engaged in the fray. Churchill reluctantly concurred and preparations for Dragoon gathered speed.   

The ports of Toulon and Marseille were treasured prizes and the Germans were expected to fight fiercely to retain them. Allied planning was complex and detailed, including massive bombing raids, airborne troops landing inland, and an amphibious assault on the beaches, Alpha, Delta, Camel, and the saucily named Garbo. In a prelude, German artillery outposts on outlying islands were to be taken. The synchronization and secrecy demanded of this operation was an enormous challenge, and German defenses considerable.

But the Allied battle-hardened troops, fresh from Anzio, were not to be denied. On August 15, the assault began with commandos landing on the Hyeres islands under cover of darkness. This was followed by an orchestrated assault on the mainland beginning at first light with nearly 1,300 bombers from Italy, Sardinia, and Corsica. By 0800 the amphibious troops began their landings and the airborne troops, by parachute and glider, were inserted inland. Importantly, both strategically and for French morale, a division of the Free French Army joined the fray.

The fighting was hard, and it took nearly two weeks before Marseille was liberated. Good news emerged that the Germans, in their retreat, had not totally demolished the ports. The operation became one of a long, fighting pursuit, as the Germans slowly withdrew to the Vosges Mountains. In addition to the organized American, British, Canadian, and Free French troops, French resistance fighters, maquisards, kept up enormous pressure on the retreating Germans. Nothing was easy, and success was gained in fits and starts. The American  117^th Cavalry Squadron was nearly annihilated by the 11^th German Panzer Division, proof that the Germans were dangerous in retreat.

On September 10, elements of the Dragoon force met General George Patton’s Third Army, fresh from the liberation of Paris. The Allies now had a continuous front in eastern France, from the English Channel to the Mediterranean. While there was a lot of hard fighting to come (remember the Battle of the Bulge), the handwriting was now on the wall.

Operation Dragoon was a vital part of the Allied war strategy, but it is overshadowed by the earlier D-day landings in Normandy. The D-day veterans deserve every bit of recognition that they get, but so, too, do those who fought in the south. In Dragoon, the Allies suffered losses of 17,000 killed and wounded with the Germans having similar casualties. The very few veterans who remain remember.

As does Jackie Gow, who through the horror of war, still remembers the intense joy of liberation. And in her heart is compassion, not just for the foot soldiers on both sides, but for the countless mothers and wives and families who lent their treasured sons.

Let’s remember them all.