[massgopguy]

French Combat Deaths for the Battle of Normandy = ZIP ZERO NADA!!!!! Look it up!!!!

[ShadowAce]

When I was first reading this, I was expecting the “I flew in here in 1945, but I didn’t stop” line

[hometoroost]

Not to mention the French firing on our landing in Africa.

[hometoroost]

Not to mention the French firing on our landing in Africa.

[Tallguy]

"81 Free French SAS (Special Air Service) were killed and another 195 wounded from 6 June to the beginning of August in Brittany.[68][69] For Allied tank losses there are no direct number. Estimations are that around 4,000 tanks were destroyed, of which 2,000 were fighting in American units.[70]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Overlord#Cherbourg

While this does not come close to the other allied losses in absolute terms, you also have to remember that the USAAF plastered the heck out of the Normandy region, focusing on railyards & bridges and this created a lot of French civilian casualties.

There was also a large Free French Army that landed alongside US forces in Southern France in August 1944 (Operation Dragoon).

The French can be bothersome but they did participate in their own liberation.

[RinaseaofDs]

You’re right, there were no French regulars, but the resistance did much to prepare for the invasion. I’m not a giant historical fan of the French, but without the French we wouldn’t have been a country, and of late, the French President seems to have assumed the ‘Leader of the Free World’ mantle.

[John S Mosby]

In uniform, this is so and it was arranged to be so by SHAEF, for propaganda purposes with DeGaulle at the lead.

However, the Resistance (some commies, some not) provided incomparable support and force protection for the Allies. And, they did this upon activation by coded message (”Wounds my heart with monotonous langour”) announcing D-Day in all areas of France including the pro Nazi Vichy controlled South.

The Maquis were an exceptional example. And the people paid with their lives. About which see: Nancy Wake link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wake

The town that was no more... Oradur-sur-Glane. Link:http://www.oradour.info/

The entire town (642) was wiped out by Waffen-SS in reprisal for their having Maquis elements who had kidnapped (following pre-arranged D-Day orders from the OSS) General Kampfe (whom they quickly killed when the Germans began to kill off other villages in their search.

The town is now a museum, left just as it was.

I would not generally say the “French” are or were, chickens, but they have been generally poorly lead and have had much to recover from over the last 140 years.