French President Emmanuel Macron celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Provence on Thursday, reports Euronews.
Operation Dragoon took place in 1944, just two months after the famous Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6th, known as D-Day.
"Le Chant des Africains", the unofficial anthem of the Pied-Noir community in France, kicked off the anniversary of this "second D-Day" attended by Alassane Ouattara, the president of the Ivory Coast and Alpha Condé, the President of Guinea.
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was also present.
The ceremony took place at a military cemetery in Saint-Raphaël, in southern France, which was inaugurated by former French President, General Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s. It holds the remains of 464 soldiers who were killed during the invasion of Provence.
The forces that landed in the region helped to liberate France, meeting with those who landed in June in Normandy by mid-September, according to the UK's National Archives.
The invasion involved 400,000 troops from France (including from former colonies), Britain, Canada and the US, according to the French defence ministry.
Their goal was to secure the strategic National Road 7 up to the city of Lyon as quickly as possible. The road — the longest in the country at the time — stretched nearly 1,000 km from Marseille to Paris.
The assault was launched at 7.15 p.m. on August 14th with coded messages broadcast on the BBC including "Nancy has a stiff neck", "Gaby sleeps in the grass" and "the hunter is hungry" alerting allied forces and French Resistance fighters.
Paratroopers and Resistance fighters started clearing the way and by midnight were engaging with German troops in Hyeres.
At the sun rose on August 15th, more than 2,000 vessels including 800 battleships were crossing the Mediterranean. By the time night fell, about 100,000 men had landed on the French coast.
General de Lattre de Tassigny's First French Army — also known as Army B — which counted 260,000 soldiers who were mainly from north and subsaharan Africa was decisive in quickly liberating key cities including Toulon and Marseille, which was the country's second-biggest at the time.
See more of this report from Euronews, with video and archive photos.