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The Fortress of Bir Hakeim served as one of the most important strongholds of the Free French Army against General Erwin Rommel’s Panzerarmee Afrika. In May 1942 around 3700 soldiers of the 1st Free French Brigade faced over 10 times the amount of Axis troops, besieging the fortress. It was crucial that the French hold the fortress long enough to slow down the advance of the Panzer Korps, which goal was to capture British-held Tobruk, the strategic port to the north east.
What followed was a true David versus Goliath battle, with the Free French desperately holding out against the Axis troops. Eventually they saw no other option but to break out of the fortress in night-time and quite literally making an incredibly dangerous dash for it.
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During the early summer of 1940, the French had suffered a humiliating defeat as the battle of France had lasted for a mere 6 weeks before the Germans marched into Paris. As the war progressed, French operations in theatres outside of Europe continued. A brigade from the Free French Legion was deployed to the British 8th Army in North Africa.
2 years after the taking of France, the War theatre in North Africa reached a critical point. The 13th First Free French Demi-Brigade, under the command of General Marie-Pierre Koenig, held themselves up in the fortress of Bir Hakeim, in the Libyan desert. Now, a German and Italian offensive against the British army in the area led to the Battle of Gazala. The so-called Gazala Line consisted of a series of dense minefields linking a number of fortresses that were designed to withstand large enemy attacks for multiple days.
The goal of the Axis powers was to capture the strategically located port of Tobruk. General Erwin Rommel figured that instead of doing the obvious, namely attacking the northern line of defence, he would launch a decoy attack in the north and instead concentrate his main attack on the southern line, against the Fortress of Bir Hakeim, manned by Koenig’s troops.
The 3700 men stationed in the fortress were going to have to fight off the much larger Afrika Korps. The defenders of the fortress weren’t all native Frenchmen by the way. There were many soldiers from French Equatorial Africa, a battalion from Tahiti and Syria, and even some German political refugees that decided to join the French foreign legion in the wake of the Nazi party overtaking Germany.
Besides Koenig, another noteworthy commander was the emigré Russian prince, Lieutenant-Colonel Amilakvari. He was a Georgian that had fled the Russian Revolution of 1917, eventually joining the French foreign legion in 1924. A true mixed bunch.
Manning the ruined fortress, located at the southernmost point of the British 8th Army’s defensive line in the Western Desert, the Legion was facing a force nearly 10 times the size of their own.
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Photos, paintings and imagery: Public Domain, Wikicommons
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21 ноя 2019
