Jean de Lattre de Tassigny

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Jean de Lattre de Tassigny (February 2, 1889 – January 11, 1952) was a French military hero of World War II.

Baton of a modern Marshal of France

Born at Mouilleron-en-Pareds (during the time of Georges Clemenceau, who was also born there), he graduated from school in 1911, and fought in World War I. He specialized in cavalry, and was made head of the French War College in 1935. When war was declared in 1939, he commanded the French 14th Infantry Division until the armistice with the Axis troops.

He remained on active duty, commanding Vichy French forces in Tunisia in 1941. He took charge of the 16th Division in 1942, but began organizing an anti-German force, which led to his arrest and 10-year jail sentence. He escaped, though, to Algiers, where he took command of the French Army B. French Army B were one of two armies of the Southern Group of Armies otherwise known as the U.S. 6th Army Group which was set up to organise the invasion of Southern France in Operation Dragoon. The other army was the US Seventh Army commanded by Alexander M. Patch. De Lattre landed in Provence, southern France on August 16, 1944, and his troops began marching through France liberating the country as they went. On September 25, 1944 French Army B was redesignated French First Army.

Under General Charles de Gaulle's encouragement those French Resistance members who wished to continue fighting were incorporated into the French First Army by General de Lattre. Once France had been liberated, as part of the Alliance, his army crossed the Rhine and invaded Germany. De Lattre represented France at the German unconditional surrender at SHAEF in Rheims on May 7, 1945.

After World War II he commanded French troops in Indochina during the First Indochina War. His only son, a young lieutenant, was killed in action during the war.^[1] In 1951, illness forced de Lattre de Taissigny to return to Paris where he later died of cancer; he was posthumously made Maréchal de France.