Remembrance of overseas operations in France
Since the end of the Algerian War, the French armed forces have been deployed to many foreign theatres on peacekeeping and protection operations or to combat terrorist groups. These new forms of military involvement give rise to a new combatant memory, which the State has a duty to preserve and pass on.
The memory of overseas operations stands out from that of other contemporary conflicts. Its singularity has to do with a number of characteristics: the deployment over several decades of many generations of service personnel, belonging to an army of professional volunteers; a memory still under construction, since the history of overseas operations is still in the process of being written; and the absence of any impact from these engagements on the French landscape.
As a result, the French authorities face some new challenges: promoting links between the armed forces and the nation to facilitate French citizens’ understanding and support of military involvement overseas; supporting families affected by deaths; and institutionalising the remembrance of overseas operations, when no single date or site seems to be able to represent this present-day history.
Fixing the memory of overseas operations in time and space
For decades, overseas operations remained in the shadows of remembrance. From 1963 to the present, France has sent its armed forces to different parts of the globe for a wide variety of reasons. In the past, following the two world wars and the wars of decolonisation, the local communes and veterans soon put in place a tribute to their dead, with an institutional calendar and a shared place of remembrance in the form of war memorials. But with overseas operations, the initiatives were a long time coming.
The memory of the servicemen and women killed in the wars of the 20th century up to 1962 is present primarily in national cemeteries, local military plots and local war memorials, sites accessible to all, located across the country. Until the opening of the Parc André Citroën memorial in 2019, the memory of the service personnel killed in overseas operations was far more discreet: only five of these soldiers are buried in war graves (in national cemeteries, military plots of local cemeteries or French military cemeteries overseas), since their loved ones usually prefer to have them buried in the family tomb. Until recently, there were only regimental memorials and a small number of memorials erected by veterans’ associations in public places, together with the inscription of names on the war memorials of some communes.
For a number of years now, mainly due to the repercussions of the war in Afghanistan, which brought a sharp rise in awareness within French society, a genuine memory of overseas operations has developed, structured around honouring service personnel killed in combat. The change came about in the early 2010s, with initiatives in communes such as Saint-Aupre, in Isère: the inscription of the name of Clément Chamarier on the village war memorial, with the words “killed in Afghanistan”, was unveiled on 11 November 2011.
A first step to assert the importance of overseas operations in the national memory and the commemorative calender came with the law of 28 February 2012. This new law required the communes of birth or last residence of service personnel to inscribe on or near their war memorials the names of those whose death certificates bore the words “died for France”. From then on, all service personnel who lost their lives on overseas operations and obtained that declaration had their names inscribed on their commune’s war memorial.
The same law made 11 November the day of remembrance of all those who died for France, whatever the conflict. This national day became a kind of catalyst for the remembrance of all those killed in combat, enabling overseas operations to become incorporated into the collective memory. The remembrance of overseas operations is now fixed in time, with communes across France marking it on 11 November every year. It is also rooted in space, through the Memorial to French soldiers killed in overseas operations, in Parc André Citroën, Paris, unveiled on 11 November 2019.
The Memorial, located close to the headquarters of the Ministry of the Armed Forces, reaffirms the nation’s tribute to all those who have “died for France” in overseas operations, while also serving as a reminder of how much the military are “makers of history”. Nearly 600 names are inscribed on it today.
Remembering overseas operations
The challenge now is to ensure that this memorial succeeds in encompassing all overseas operations, without giving more importance to some than others or obscuring their distinctiveness. While the commemorative event of 11 November 2019 (a “traditional” ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe, followed by a special ceremony for overseas operations at the Parc André Citroën memorial in Jardin Eugénie Djendi) showed all its relevance, other remembrance events took place at the memorial on important dates in 2020 and 2021. For instance, a ceremony was held there on 27 May 2020 to mark the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Vrbanja Bridge, an episode in the Bosnian War involving French Blue Helmets from the UN peacekeeping force. In another example, on 27 February 2021, the 30th anniversary of Operation Daguet was marked by a ceremony in honour of the French service personnel who fought in the Gulf War, also at the memorial. The site therefore brings together the memories of recent overseas operations, while at the same time spotlighting specific theatres of operations on key anniversaries.
The question remains as to what date will be chosen for the joint remembrance of overseas operations, which will mean something to all generations of service personnel. Belgium, for instance, has since 1998 chosen the anniversary of the air crash that killed ten Belgian Blue Helmets in Rwanda on 7 April 1994, to pay tribute to its 252 servicemen and women killed in operations since the Second World War.
Some French veterans’ associations campaigned for France to do the same, choosing the date of the suicide bomb attack on the Drakkar barracks in Beirut, on 28 October 1983, in which 58 French paratroopers were killed – still the bloodiest day for the French armed forces – as the commemorative date for overseas operations. However, the risk of such a choice is to diminish the scale of the sacrifice in other theatres (90 servicemen killed in Afghanistan, 140 in Lebanon and 154 in Chad). 11 November has the advantage of uniting all generations of service personnel since the Great War.
Finally, commemorating overseas operations is closely linked to the challenge of passing on that memory to the general public, in particular to young people. Therefore, the Ministry of the Armed Forces has redoubled its efforts to make resources available to teachers and students, in particular via the defence education platform Educ@def on the Chemins de Mémoire website, and to encourage them to focus on these issues with the launch, in September 2021, of a call for educational projects entitled “Overseas operations: fight, support, honour”, in partnership with the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports, or through programmes run jointly by the Armed Forces and Education ministries, such as defence and global security classes, “defence and citizenship” days, and Universal National Service.