La Poste France D-Day Commemoratives - 1969 & 1974

LA POSTE FRANCE in 1969 issued a set of seven first day cover stamps to commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the Liberation of France. Each stamp had a special cancellation postmark.

Stamps included:
- The Normandy Landing
- The Liberation of Paris with General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque
- The Liberation of Strasbourg with General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque

- Bataille du Garigliano - Mai 1944
- Paratroops of S.A.S. and Commandos of F.F.I.
- National Monument

LA POSTE FRANCE issued on 10 May 1969 a 25th anniversary First Day Cover stamp marking the Garigliano victory on 13 May 1944. Marshal Alphonse Juin, head of the French Expeditionary Force (CEFI) or 'Goumiers' or 'Goums' helped form and lead this army in Italy.  The stamp shown on this maxim card (postcard) was designed by Pierre Gandon and engraved by Claude Haley. 

The CEFI -- French Expeditionary Force of the 2nd Moroccan division and the 3rd Algerian-Tunisian division -- opened a 25km wide breach whereby the Germans abandoned Cassino, breaking the Germans' Gustav and Hitler lines. This allowed Allied Armies to advance and reach Rome on 4 June. 

Despite the Goumiers (CEFI) success in battle, appalling violence outside combat made them notorious. The military achievements of the Goumiers in Italy were accompanied by widespread reports of war crimes: "...exceptional numbers of Moroccans were executed—many without trial—for allegedly murdering, raping, and pillaging their way across the Italian countryside. The French authorities sought to defuse the problem by importing numbers of Berber women to serve as "camp followers" in rear areas set aside exclusively for the Goumiers."

According to Italian sources, more than 7,000 people were raped by Goumiers. Those rapes, later known in Italy as 'Marocchinate', were against women, children and men, including some priests. The mayor of Esperia (a comune in the Province of Frosinone) reported that in his town, 700 women out of 2,500 inhabitants were raped and that some had died as a result. In northern Latium and southern Tuscany, it is alleged that the Goumiers raped and occasionally killed women and young men after the Germans retreated, including members of partisan formations.

The CEFI executed 15 soldiers by firing squad and sentenced 54 others to hard labor in military prisons for acts of rape or murder. In 2015, the Italian state recognised compensation for a victim of these events.

In the 1960 film, "Two Women (La Ciociara)" starring Sophia Loren, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Eleonora Brown and Raf Vallone,  a mother ,(Loren) tries to protect her young daughter (Brown) from the horrors of war. While the story is fictional, it is based on actual events of 1944 in Rome and rural Lazio, during the Marocchinate (the Goumiers). In the end, the mother can neither prevent the rape of her daughter nor herself by the Marocchinate. 

Also shown, on 30th Anniversary, General Diego Brosset, liberator of Lyon on 3 September 1944. In the background is the Notre-Dame de Fourvière basilica in Lyon. Le Poste France issued in 1971.

 

La Poste France issued this 40th D-Day Anniversary setent in 1984.