Word: tricolors
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...with gunfire from other vessels. They saw some which had slipped their moorings make for the harbor entrance; at least one blew up there on the German mines.* In the glare of explosions and searchlights the Germans saw the French masters, at rigid attention on their bridges, saluting the Tricolor as they went down...
First a lone British destroyer, then heavier fleet units moved into the city's anchorage. The Union Jack was the first Allied flag up over Algiers' docks. (At first the Tricolor continued to fly over Governor Yves Charles Chatel's residence. The warships did not long have the harbor in peace: the afternoon after Algiers' surrender, German Stukas (presumably from Sicily or Sardinia) attacked. Twelve miles offshore Axis, British and U.S. planes mixed in the first of many battles which will be fought before the Allies have unquestioned command of the Mediterranean...
...Unknown Soldier's tomb. In Lyons processions swarmed through the city singing the Marseillaise. In Marseille a crowd of 5,000 denounced Laval, demonstrated outside the military prison, cheered the U.S. Consulate. Police unlimbered their submachine guns, killed at least five. In Vichy 300 people made a tricolor showing before the Third Republic Memorial...
Then, a few moments before noon, something happened. At third-floor level, a plane roared defiantly up the Champs-Elysées. Before the Arc de Triomphe it zoomed, then dipped in salute to the Unknown Soldier, dropped a huge, weighted tricolor. Circling, the plane thundered back down the Champs-Elysées. At the Place de la Concorde it swerved toward the Rue Royale and sent shell after cannon shell smashing into German military headquarters (once the French Ministry of Marine). The plane vanished to the northwest, followed only by a few feeble tracer bullets...
...some it was a matter of question able honor but material gain. The "Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism," endorsed by Vichy, offered recruits a tidy 40 francs a day (against the ten francs paid by France's "Armistice Army"). In German uniforms and tricolor brassards, they swore fealty to the Reichsführer and were exhorted to avenge Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. Men with families in concentration camps learned that joining the legion would free them...