Enter the Cuirassiers
80 years ago this week. 11 September 1944 – Dijon (Côte-d’Or). Troops of the French Army of the South (l’armée française du Sud) and the French Forces of the Interior parade between Place Darcy and the Hôtel de Ville (located in the Palais des Ducs), today’s Rue de la Liberté, in front of a large crowd that came to cheer their liberators.
ECPAD Ref.: TERRE 313-7497
Note the FFI armbands on the parade liners and a few old Lebel rifles, likely squirreled away in 1940. The track, No. 437068, is a Fisher-made M4A2 Sherman. I’m reasonably sure the armor is from the recently re-equipped 2e Régiment de Cuirassiers (2e RC), which had been disbanded in June 1940 and reformed in September 1943 in Oran by cadre carved from the 2e Régiment de Chasseurs d’Afrique (2e RCA)– which would preceded them back to France by landing at Normandy.
The storied French 2nd Cuirassiers rode horses from their inception in the 17th century through the 1920s.
Equipped by the Americans with a squadron of Stuarts and three of Shermans, they landed at La Nartelle in Saint-Tropez as part of Operation Dragoon on 16 August 1944. They were the armored fist of Maj. Gen. Jean Touzet du Vigier’s 1re Division Blindée (1re DB). After several days of fighting, they would enter Marseille, cross the Rhone, liberate Lyon and Chalon-sur-Saône, and roll into Dijon on 11 September before liberating Langres two days after a fierce battle.
Remember that the straight-line distance from Marseille to Dijon is 278 miles, which is probably closer to 400 road miles, in under a month, while facing off with several German rearguards. Not bad.
Moving towards the Vosges, the 2e RC entered Alsace in November and would go on to capture Altkirch, Illfurth, and Mulhouse. Then came weeks of hard service reducing the Colmar pocket and the push into Southern Germany, ending at the Danube fortress city of Ulm in April 1945.
Postwar, 2e RC would remain a tank unit, swapping its Shermans first for M47s, then AMX-13s, and finally AMX-30s. It would also remain in Germany, garrisoned in Reutlingen outside of Stuttgart until 1991 when it was disbanded.
The banners of 2e RC, which traces its lineage to 1635, have been in storage at Saumur for the past 33 years. Covered with decorations, it includes battle honors for Marengo 1800, Austerlitz 1805, La Moskova 1812, Vauchamps 1814, l’Ourcq 1914, L’Avre 1918, Marseille 1944, and Ulm 1945.
