Déclaration de Mme Alice Rufo, ministre déléguée auprès de la ministre des armées et des anciens combattants, en hommage aux combattants américains du Débarquement de Provence en août 1944, à Draguignan le 16 août 2026.

Monsieur le député, Madame la sénatrice,Monsieur le vice-président du Conseil régional, Monsieur le maire,Monsieur le consul général des États-Unis, Monsieur le général,Officiers, sous-officiers, militaires du rang,Mesdames et Messieurs les représentants du monde combattant,Mesdames et Messieurs les membres des associations patriotiques franco-américaines, Mesdames et Messieurs les porte-drapeaux,Mesdames et Messieurs, en vos grades et qualités, Merci de votre présence ce matin. Merci beaucoup, monsieur le maire, pour les mots que vous nous avez donnés à entendre. Vous avez raison, il est extrêmement important dans la période actuelle de se rappeler ce qu'est une alliance. Ce qu'on voit aujourd'hui depuis cette terre de Provence. J'espère avec un message qui arrivera, monsieur le consul,jusqu'à Washington, c'est celui de notre reconnaissance et celui de notre engagement dans cette alliance au nom de ceux qui reposent ici et qui sont tombés pour la liberté. Je voudrais, pour adresser ce message, et puisque le maire a par définition tout dit en français, passer à l'anglais si vous m'y autorisez. This cemetery is as old as the battlefield on which the soldiers it shelters fell. As old as the fighting that freed the first inches of Provence. ln the very first days after the landings, while the battle still raged toward Toulon and the Rhône Valley, the U.S. 7th Army buried here its first dead in this place. Draguignan was barely free, and already she was receiving those who had fallen for her. Yesterday, at Le Dramont, we looked out at the sea they came from. Today, we stand before the ground where they lie. These graves, aligned at the foot of the Malmont among cypresses and olive trees, and on the wall of the memorial, these names, the missing, those whose bodies the sea, the mountains, or the fire never returned. Some headstones bear no name, only these moving words inspired, and finally, I think, by the words of the poet Rudyard Kipling, I quote : « Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known known but Gad... but to Gad. » No one on this earth knows their names, but France has never forgotten their faces and the meaning of their sacrifice. They were infantry of the 3rd, the 36th, the 45th Division, sailors and airmen, paratroopers of the 1st Airborne Task Force dropped over Le Muy in the night of August 14, who entered Draguignan at the night of August 16, 82 years aga to the day, alongside the resistance fighters of the Var. They were the vanguard of one of the greatest operations of the Second World War : 11 Allied divisions, two of them armored and one airborne, 350,000 men. Alongside the American 3rd Division, elements of the French 1st Armored Division were already deployed. That second landing, whose success completed that of Normandy, gave our country the chance to take part with its with its own forces in its own deliverance. The President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, recalled it on these very shores for the 80th anniversary. He said, and I quote : « Our American allies wanted to leave them the honor of reconquering their homeland. » Thank you for that. They came from Ohio and Virginia, from Texas and Colorado. They were 20 years old, with the distinct accent of their home states and photographs oftheir loved ones in their pockets, or against their hearts. They died thousands of miles from home, from villages whose names they could even not pronounce. After the war, America let every family choose to bring their son back home, or to entrust him to the land he freed. The family ofthose who rest here chose France. We have never forgotten what that trust means. This cemetery, kept by the American Battle Monuments Commission with exemplary devotion, is hosted by our land as one keeps a promise. Just as we have kept, for 250 years, the promise of dawn that binds our two nations. For this year is also the year when the United States celebrate the 250th anniversary of Declaration of lndependence. That commemorative circle opened fast December, the very day Benjamin Franklin arrived in France. This was no accident of the calendar : the first alliance the United States ever concluded was concluded with France in in in two years later, basically. De Grasse, Rochambeau, Lafayette... French names forever woven into the birth of America. At Yorktown, Frenchmen fell so that Americans would be barn free. ln Provence, Americans fell so that France would be free again. 163 years separate these two moments, I quote. They are the expressions of a dedication to liberty, and they continue to inspire us. Every man, Jefferson is said to have once remarked, has two countries : his own, and France. The soldiers who rest here gave those words their meaning, their very meaning : their second country is the land of their everlasting rest. En 1951, le maréchal Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, qui parlait de sa fierté d'avoir eu plus de 100 000 soldats américains sous son commandement dans la 1ère armée française, mettait en garde contre ce qu'il appelait déjà, je cite : " les multiples puissances du mensonge ". Et il écrivait que la culture donne aux hommes des raisons de vivre, de vivre libres, et donc le devoir de lutter contre la servitude. Ce devoir n'a pas d'âge. La guerre est revenue sur le sol européen. La logique de la puissance prétend à nouveau dicter sa loi, et la question que ces jeunes hommes ont répondue en 1944 nous est posée à nouveau : ce que vaut la liberté, et ce que nous sommes prêts à donner pour elle. C'est notre devoir d'y répondre. C'est notre devoir d'être là pour commémorer, et c'est la première réponse à ce que notre alliance signifie aujourd'hui, exactement la même chose qu'auparavant. Longue vie à l'amitié des peuples libres ! Longue vie aux États-Unis d'Amérique ! Vive la République et vive la France ! source https://www.defense.gouv.fr, le 22 septembre 2026