French Expeditionary Corps
The Oxford Companion to World War II
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2001
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© The Oxford Companion to World War II 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001. (Hide copyright information)
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French Expeditionary Corps (Corps Expéditionaire Français), which fought with the Allies during the
Italian campaign, was formed by amalgamating Frenchmen who had rallied to
de Gaulle and the Free French with the officers and men of the French regular army who had been stationed in North Africa when France collapsed in 1940; with volunteers from the French colonial empire; and with conscripts just called up. They had a further stiffening, as well, of men who had managed to escape from France. Not much time had been given to weld them into a single fighting force, from such disparate military origins, but they had a forceful
commander-in-chief in Juin, who reported no troubles over morale.
The corps included among its infantry
TirailleursSpahis, and
Goums from France's Armée d'Afrique (see
France, 6(b)). The Americans provided a good deal of their equipment, including artillery. Most of the non-Caucasian troops, who composed over half the force, came from peasant families and were used to hardship; this made them the more formidable as soldiers through an Italian winter.
Juin was senior to the American
General Clark, but was prepared to serve under his orders; the French corps, which had an average strength of 110,000, formed part of Clark's Fifth US Army, of which it normally formed the right wing, adjoining the British Eighth Army. It took a prominent part in the fighting round
Monte Cassino, and the strong German position there was eventually turned with critical help from part of the French force, the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division; experience in the Atlas Mountains turned out to be useful for war in the Apennines. The French also captured Siena, the Tuscan capital, in July 1944.
Most of the corps was withdrawn from Italy, reinforced by a further 50,000 men, and, as Armée B, placed under a new commander,
de Lattre de Tassigny, to take part in the
French Riviera landings in August 1944.
M. R. D. Foot
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