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70 years ago, on 25 August 1944, Paris was celebrating its liberation from the German occupants, but in Marseille the Germans were still occupying Notre Dame de la Garde, also known locally as La Bonne Mère. The highest point of town was considered a strategic point, but how do you attack a church built as a fortress?
A purely practical problem was to get the tanks up the hill. The streets are steep and narrow, so an attempt to access La Bonne Mère via rue Vauvenague had to be abandoned, and the street now known as Bd Andre Aune was chosen as access for the five tanks. One tank broke down and ended in a shop window but the others arrived at Place Sancta Maria.
At 9 am on 25 August a battle took place to liberate La Bonne Mère from its German occupants. Three of the five occupants of the tank Jeanne d'Arc were killed, and in toal 20 Frenchmen lost their lives that day at La Bonne Mère. By 3 pm the battle was over, and the Germans had raised the white flag (which can now be seen at the Musée d'Histoire in the Centre Bourse).
A year later the tank Jeanne d'Arc had been restored and a memorial was opened on the one year anniversary of the battle of La Bonne Mère. 70 years after the battle the tank is still there to remind us of the events of 25 August 1944.
La Bonne Mère is like in my backyard, so yesterday I climbed the rock to pay my tribute to the people who fought for the liberation of Marseille. I walked around to the tank Jeanne d'Arc which was covered in flowers, I found the narrow passage way that the Algerian troops had used to fool the Germans, and I sat on the rock looking over Marseille and the sea and thought about life and death and some more earthy things.
A little story in English about the tank Jeanne d'Arc
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La libération de Notre Dame de la Garde le 25 août 1944
La Délivrance Cette longue page rapporte les six jours durant lesquels Notre Dame de la Garde a vu son existence en grand danger, pendant la libération d' août 1944. Mercredi 23 août 1944 H30. ...
http://viergedelagarde.free.fr/choix/histo/bataille/bataille.htm
Here is a description in French about the events at Notre Dame de la Garde with some good photos
70 years later