President Francois Hollande leads ceremonies on Friday to mark 70 years since the Allied invasion of southern France which, two months after D-Day, pushed the exhausted Nazi army back towards Germany and hastened the end of World War II in Europe, reports Yahoo! News.
Joining Hollande will be 15 leaders from France's former African colonies, in recognition of the key role troops from these countries played in liberating France from the scourge of Adolf Hitler's Nazis.
They and representatives of the other 13 countries that took part in the landings will attend an international ceremony on board the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, anchored off the southern city of Toulon.
After the success of the Normandy beach landings, the Allies needed to open up a second front in France to squeeze the demoralised German army and retake the ports of Marseille and Toulon to resupply forces pouring into the hole smashed into the line on D-Day.
The result was "Operation Dragoon", launched on the beaches near Marseille on August 15, 1944, with a total force of 450,000 men.
In contrast to the Normandy landings, where there was only a token French army presence, more than half (250,000) of the invading force was French.
In turn, this French force had a large number of troops from France's then colonies, mainly from Algeria and Morocco, but also infantry from Senegal and soldiers from Pacific islands.
The invasion "succeeded much more quickly than expected", historian Jean-Marie Guillon told AFP.
Read more of this AFP report published by Yahoo! News.