European Theater · Operation Dragoon · Chapter 9 of 9 · 1944 – today
The Cost and the Memory: France’s Second D-Day
What the campaign won and cost, the argument over whether it was worth it, the Carolinas connections, and the cemeteries and memorials of Provence today.
Operation DRAGOON is sometimes called the forgotten D-Day. It cost far fewer lives than Normandy and is far less remembered, but it liberated most of southern France in a month, captured two great ports, destroyed much of a German army and brought the French Army home. This chapter weighs what it won and what it cost, the argument over whether it was needed, the North and South Carolina connections, and the memorials of Provence today.
Key facts
The reckoning
By the American Battle Monuments Commission’s count, the Seventh Army advanced 400 miles in three weeks, liberated 10,000 square miles of France and inflicted 143,250 casualties on the Germans. The official history counts about 131,250 Germans captured or cut off when the Atlantic garrisons are included. Against that, D-Day itself cost the Allies about 95 killed and 385 wounded, the airborne task force about a hundred dead on the first day, the battle of Montélimar 1,575 American casualties, and the French more than 4,500 casualties in the battles for Toulon and Marseille.
Was it worth it?
The argument that began at Quebec never quite ended. Critics, many of them British, have argued that the divisions taken from Italy in the summer of 1944 might have broken the German front there and reached the Po valley or beyond, and that the Riviera landing came too late to help Normandy. Defenders reply that the Germans had already lost Normandy by the time DRAGOON landed, that Italy offered no road into Germany through the Alps, and that the southern ports carried a large share of the supplies for the Allied armies through the autumn of 1944, when the northern ports were wrecked or not yet open. They point too to the French Army, which in DRAGOON fought its way home and became a major force in the final campaigns.
Myth or fact · open each card
Four things people get wrong about DRAGOON
It was an easy landing.
The beaches were lightly held compared with Normandy, but the campaign that followed cost thousands of casualties, and Camel Red was too strong to assault (see Chapter 5).
It was an American operation.
It was led by the Americans, but the French Army supplied most of the troops who took Toulon and Marseille, and the British and Canadians fought in the airborne task force, the Special Service Force and the fleet.
The Champagne Campaign was a holiday.
The airborne task force fought a steady small war in the Maritime Alps until November 1944 (see Chapter 8).
The Germans were trapped in the Rhône valley.
Many were captured, but most of the Nineteenth Army escaped at Montélimar to fight again in the Vosges (see Chapter 7).
The Carolinas connections
The Sandhills of North Carolina trained some of the men who jumped into Provence. The 551st Parachute Infantry Battalion trained at Camp Mackall from August 1943 to March 1944, and two battalions of the 517th Parachute Infantry trained there before the regiment sailed for Italy. William P. Yarborough, who led the 509th Parachute Infantry Battalion into southern France, had designed the Army’s parachutist badge and jump boots as a young officer; in 1961, as commander of the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, he arranged the visit by President Kennedy that led to the Green Beret.
Among the faces in the photographs of DRAGOON are Pharmacist’s Mate First Class Nelson E. Hood Jr. of Rock Hill, South Carolina, aboard a Coast Guard transport off the beaches (see Chapter 3), and two South Carolina military policemen who later guarded the Rhine bridges in Germany. The North Carolina State Archives keep the portrait of Private Jesse R. Stancil of Raleigh, who served in the 45th Division’s 157th Infantry and was killed in France on 21 October 1944.
The Carolinas connection
Camp Mackall, Fort Bragg and Rock Hill
If someone in your family trained at Camp Mackall in 1943 or 1944, there is a good chance they were with the 517th or the 551st, and that they jumped into Provence on 15 August 1944. Both units are profiled in our Special Units pages, and both went on to fight in the Battle of the Bulge.
What became of them
The 1st Airborne Task Force was disbanded on 23 November 1944. The 517th fought in the Battle of the Bulge. The 551st Parachute Infantry Battalion was nearly destroyed at Rochelinval in Belgium in January 1945, where its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Wood G. Joerg, was killed, and it was disbanded later that month. The 3rd, 36th and 45th Divisions fought on through the Vosges and Alsace into Germany. The French First Army fought to the Rhine and the Danube.
Gallery · 2 photographs · select to enlarge
The paratroopers after Provence
Provence remembers
The Rhône American Cemetery and Memorial stands at Draguignan, the town the paratroopers freed on 16 August 1944. It holds 860 American dead, most of them killed in the landings and the campaign that followed, and the names of 294 missing are carved on its walls. Near Saint-Raphaël, the French national cemetery at Boulouris holds 464 French soldiers who died in the landings. Every August the towns of the coast mark the anniversary, with American and French troops, veterans’ families and reenactors in the streets of Saint-Tropez, Sainte-Maxime, Saint-Raphaël and Montélimar.
Gallery · 7 photographs · select to enlarge
The Rhône American Cemetery and Boulouris
Gallery · 6 photographs · select to enlarge
Remembering on the coast
People, places and pages in this chapter
Sources and further reading
- American Battle Monuments Commission, “France’s Second D-Day: Operation Dragoon and the Invasion of Southern France” — the link-up, results and the Rhône American Cemetery
- Clarke and Smith, Riviera to the Rhine, ch. X, “Pursuit to the North” — Lyon, Besançon, distances and prisoners
- Wikipedia, “Operation Dragoon” — a general summary with references, used to cross-check dates and figures
- Wikipedia, “517th Parachute Regimental Combat Team” — the 517th’s training, Dragoon losses and later service
- US Airborne in Belgium, “551st Parachute Infantry Battalion” — the 551st’s training at Camp Mackall, Draguignan and its end in the Ardennes
- Wikipedia, “William P. Yarborough” — the 509th’s commander and his later career at Fort Bragg
- American Battle Monuments Commission, “Rhône American Cemetery” — the cemetery at Draguignan
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