The tricolor flag, tricolor flags everywhere.
On the walls, on the windows, atop buildings—tricolor flags fluttered in the wind.
Those were the French national flags.
France had been liberated.
On Tuesday, August 15th, Napoleon's birthday, the Allies launched Operation Dragoon, landing in southern France.
By the 23rd, although all 121 docks in Marseille had been destroyed by the Germans and none could be used, and explosives and thousands of landmines had turned every dock and warehouse into a ruin of steel, concrete, and cables; although eleven large ships—including transatlantic liners—had been wrecked to block the harbor entrance, and 257 cranes had been dumped into the water,
Pierre's task force still managed to enter Marseille by boat. To avoid naval mines, everyone had to take landing craft and come ashore on beaches far from the city. With only two landing craft for a force of over three thousand, it took them three full days to disembark.
