FRANCE: President Jacques Chirac attempted to redress a historical injustice yesterday by paying special tribute to 120,000 Arab and African soldiers from France's former colonial empire who participated in the Provence landings of August 15th and 16th, 1944. Lara Marlowe reports from Paris
The soldiers from French colonies, who were then referred to as "natives", were placed in the most dangerous frontline positions of Operation Anvil-Dragoon.
Nearly a fifth of them died in Provence or in the subsequent push north to Lyons.
Americans comprised the majority of the 500,000 men who participated in the Provence landings, 10 weeks after D-Day in Normandy.
Fewer than half of the 230,000 soldiers in Gen de Lattre de Tassigny's Army of Africa were from mainland France, but the operation marked the first time that French troops fought alongside other Allied forces.
President George W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth declined Mr Chirac's invitation to yesterday's ceremonies on the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier off the coast of Toulon. Mr Bush angered the French in June by comparing the Normandy landings to the invasion of Iraq. The US and Britain were represented by their ministers for veterans' affairs.
Although the official ceremony was dedicated to the Arab and African troops, Mr Chirac nonetheless started his speech by honouring the US and Britain.
"As I said at Arromanches [in Normandy in June], France will never forget the blood spilt by your children for our freedom," he said.
Mr Chirac said the combatants in Provence were united by "equality in the trial of fire . . . equality before fear, suffering and death . . . equality also in honour and glory." Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians joined France's Army of Africa in greatest numbers, sometimes under duress. Soldiers from western and equatorial Africa were referred to as Tirailleurs sénégalais, though not all were Senegalese.
The Germans were terrified of the black infantrymen because during the first World War, when they were drugged with ether to make them fight more fiercely, France's African soldiers cut off the ears of the men they captured.
French recruiters sought athletic young men in poor, isolated regions. Many signed up for the pay, and adventure. In Africa, the Arab and African troops were treated as equals, sleeping in the same quarters and eating with the French. But the equality Mr Chirac alluded to disappeared after the landings in Provence. Henceforward, they were billeted separately.
The romantic version prevailed in Mr Chirac's speech yesterday. "The fraternity of arms bound all these combatants of different origins under the French flag," the President said. "All proved themselves magnificently in combat. They paid a very heavy price for our liberation: Chasseurs d'Afrique, Goumiers, Tabors, Spahis, Tirailleurs, Zouaves," he said, listing the names of Arab and African regiments.
"Their names still resound in our memories. They were exemplary fighters, often the heirs of timeless traditions of warfare, admirably courageous, daring and loyal."
Yet the loyalty of former subjects who fought for France has been severely tested. In 1959 Gen de Gaulle's government passed a law known as "crystallisation", whereby military pensions were frozen when a colony gained independence. A French veteran of the landings in Provence is entitled to a pension 10 times greater than a Moroccan.
Following a case filed by a former sergeant-major named Amadou Diop, the French Council of State ruled in 2002 that former "native" soldiers should receive equal benefits. But it would cost €1.83 billion to give French pensions to the 85,000 eligible veterans in Africa. So Paris decided to index payments to the lower cost of living there. Arab and African veterans groups are continuing their battle for equal compensation.
Although they were pleased with yesterday's ceremony, the veterans still feel their role in the liberation of France is not sufficiently recognised. Abdoulaye Wade, the President of Senegal and one of 15 African heads of state on the aircraft carrier yesterday, will hold a day of tribute in Dakar on August 23rd "so as to right the injustice done to all of the Tirailleurs Sénégalais, whose history is absent from the schoolbooks."
Mr Wade said he wanted to draw attention to their ill-treatment, the "crystallisation" of pensions and the French government's refusal to pay pensions to widows.
Yesterday's commemoration was fraught with other tensions. Dozens of deputies from Mr Chirac's UMP party protested at the presence of the Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, because Mr Bouteflika has called the harkis - Algerians who fought with the French during the 1954-1962 war of independence - "collaborators".