The Italian campaign of the French Expeditionary Corps :CEF
t was in July 1943 that the creation of a new French army was proposed to the Allies by General de Gaulle and General Giraud. This army was first called up to serve in Italy, as the French Expeditionary Corps, under the command of General Juin, integrated into the 5th American army commanded by General Clark, before being assigned new missions within the framework of the liberation of Europe.
This expeditionary corps had a considerable strength: close to 130,000 men divided into four divisions - the 2nd Moroccan infantry division (2nd DIM), the 3rd Algerian infantry division (3rd DIA), the 4th Moroccan mountain division (4th DMM), and the 1st Free French division (1st DFL), backed up by Moroccan goums as well as artillery and medical service elements.
Avril 1944 - Progression du corps expéditionnaire français en Italie
In November 1943, the 2nd DIM and the 3rd DIA were dispatched to the Garigliano front, which cut across the peninsula in the north west of Naples and comprised two defence lines, Gustav and Hitler, which prevented the Allies from advancing further towards Rome. The keystone of this defensive device was the abbey of Monte Cassino, held by German parachutists. It took no time for CEF soldiers to score their first successes: going through hilly terrain, escorted by their muleteers, they bypassed all the obstacles and captured the various fortifications constituting the Gustav Line that blocked their way. But General Clark, opting for a front-cutting strategy, decided to unleash bombers and heavy artillery against the Monte Cassino fortress, destroying the superstructures of the abbey but refraining from forcing its garrison to surrender.
In the spring of 1944, after a series of discussions, General Juin succeeded to clear the series of objections raised by General Alexander and obtained General Clark’s approval to execute a plan considered to be rash. It entailed climbing, on foot and from the front side, the very rough and steep Aurunci chain of mountains, considered to be insurmountable. But having seen them prove their worth in Morocco and Tunisia under similar conditions, General Juin was confident his men would be up to the task.
It was on May 11, 1944, that the major assault against Cassino was launched with the participation of American, English and Polish units. The CEF played a central role in the operation. It took 48 hours of extremely fierce fighting for the French forces to succeed in destroying, at times using of blade weapons, the supposedly impregnable German defences. Battalions of native Moroccan and Algerian infantrymen, placed at the front of the attack column, cleared the summit defensive positions one after another. General Kesselring, commander of the overwhelmed German forces, realizing that the Allies had captured Monte Cassino, ordered for its evacuation.
In the weeks that followed, the CEF continued to comb the chain of mountains for enemies, pushing back and destroying German elite units by the day, leaving them with no option than withdrawing and conceding defeat before an opponent far more experienced and adapted to fighting on mountainous terrain. On June 5, 1944, they entered Rome and General Clark elegantly asked General Juin to flank him during the triumphal march in the Italian capital so that they could both share cheers from the crowd.
On July 3, 1944, native Algerian infantrymen entered Siena after having encircled it. The Allied forces continued progressing towards Tuscany where the French forces met with new resistance and scored new victories. It was only at the entrance into Florence that the Allied High Command ordered them to stop their advance.
Thanks to their exploits during the Italian Campaign, the French expeditionary corps won the admiration and respect of both the Allies and the Germans.
Several factors accounted for their brilliant performance:
The rather daring yet clairvoyant strategy of General Juin, the military valour and combat spirit of the Moroccan and Algerian troops which were in the majority among the forces engaged in the battle, and also the young Frenchmen’s rage to conquer following the humiliation of the 1940 defeat. For these valiant knights, the expression "victory or death" wasn’t a mere heroic literary slogan, but a real deep-rooted conviction which they nursed for several years, and which only left them after the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany.
The strength of the French expeditionary corps mobilized during the Italian Campaign stood at 130,000 men, including 80,000 combatants.
Out of this number, 11,500 were killed or reported missing, while 30,000 were wounded during this campaign alone. The survivors became the fundamental component of the force deployed during the French and German campaigns.
According to General Kesselring, commander in chief of the German forces, "Without the French expeditionary corps, the Allies would never have succeeded to break through the Cassino threshold".
The Italian campaign of the French Expeditionary Corps :CEF
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