Free French Forces retreat from Bir Hakeim after having successfully delayed the Axis advance.
Bir Hakeim (Arabic: , romanized: bir akm, lit.'Wise Well' pronounced [bir akim] (listen); sometimes written Bir Hacheim) is in the Libyan desert at 313600N 232900E and is the site of a former Ottoman Empire fort built around the site of an ancient Roman well, dating to the period when the oasis was part of Ottoman Tripolitania. It is about 160 kilometres (99 mi) west of Sollum on the Libyan coast and 80 kilometres (50 mi) south-east of Gazala. Bir Hakeim is best known for the battle of Bir Hakeim, which took place there during World War II.
The battle occurred during the Battle of Gazala (26 May 21 June 1942) when the 1st Free French Brigade of Gnral de brigade, future Marchal de France Marie-Pierre Knig defended the site from 26 May 11 June against much larger German and Italian forces, commanded by Generaloberst Erwin Rommel.
Capitaine Pierre Messmer was one of the French officers of the 13th half-brigade of the French Foreign Legion. Messmer had graduated from St Cyr Military School. He was commanding the 3rd battalion of the Legion. Plenty of his soldiers were from Spanish and German origin, and many of them jews. The Kaddish was said most evenings at Bir-Hakeim. The other half-brigade of the 1st Free French Division included units that did not belong to the French Foreign Legion, like the Bataillon de Marche n2 de l'Afrique quatoriale franaise (BM2), the Bataillon du Pacifique (French Polynesia, New Caledonia and New Hebrides), the 1st Bataillon of Infanterie de Marine, the 1st Regiment of Artillerie, the 1st Bataillon of Fusiliers Marins in association with the troop D of the 43st Battery of the 11th City of London Yeomanry Regiment, and the 22nd North-African French Armored Company.
Pierre Messmer was the first French Foreign Legion soldier to be elected to the Acadmie Franaise. He would later become Prime Minister of the French Republic under President Georges Pompidou.
During these 14 days, 3 700 French soldiers immobilized 40 000 Axis soldiers. Out of these 3 700, 800 died or went missing. This half-brigade had already fought the German Army at Narvik on 27 May 1940.
Although the Afrika Corps captured Tobruk ten days later, the delay imposed on the Axis offensive by the defence of Bir Hakeim influenced the cancellation of Operation Herkules, the planned German invasion of the Suez Canal and Malta. The stand by the Free French gave the defeated and retreating British Eighth Army enough time recover from its heavy losses, and to reorganize. The British then stopped the German advance at the First Battle of El Alamein. The Algerian and Moroccan units of the 1st Free French Division gave birth to the French Expeditionary Corps under the command of Gnral Alphonse Juin, future Marchal de France, and Gnral Joseph de Goislard de Monsabert. They were also instrumental in the Battle of Monte Cassino. There, the 3rd Division d'Infanterie Algrienne (3rd DIA), and the Groupement des Tabors Marocains of Gnral Augustin Guillaume were recognized in breaking through the German defences of the Gustav Line.
This battle would serve as the namesake for Bir-Hakeim (Paris Mtro), a station on the Paris Mtro, and Pont de Bir-Hakeim, a bridge.
Bir Hakeim was also the site of a daring rescue during World War I. On 14 March 1916, Major Hugh Grosvenor led an armoured car squadron, part of the Western Frontier Force, to Bir Hakeim after having traveled 120 miles across the desert from Sollum. There they rescued 91 British POWs from HMS Tara and HMT Moorina. German U-boats had captured the British sailors after torpedoing their vessels and had turned their prisoners over to the local Senussi, who were allied with the Germans.
As a result of the Italo-Turkish War (1911-1912), Italy captured the Ottoman Tripolitania Vilayet (province), which became known as Italian Libya. The Italian army stationed a unit of its Zapti Meharista at Bir Hakeim.
Free France (French: France Libre) was the government-in-exile led by French general Charles de Gaulle in the Second World War. Established in London in June 1940 after the Fall of France, it fought the Axis as an Allied nation with its Free French Forces (Forces françaises libres). Free France also organised and supported the resistance in occupied France, known as the French Forces of the Interior, and gained strategic footholds in several French colonies in Africa.
Following France's defeat by Germany, Marshal Philippe Pétain led efforts to negotiate an armistice, resulting in the German puppet state known as Vichy France. De Gaulle rejected surrender, fled to Britain, and from there broadcast the "Appeal of 18 June" (Appel du 18 juin) exhorting the French to resist the Nazis and join the Free French Forces. On 27 October 1940, the Empire Defense Council (Conseil de défense de l'Empire)—later the French National Committee (Comité national français or CNF)—formed to govern French territories in central Africa, Asia, and Oceania that had heeded the 18 June call.
Initially, with the exception of French possessions in the Pacific, India, and Equatorial Africa, all the territories of the French colonial empire rejected de Gaulle's appeal and reaffirmed their loyalty to Marshall Pétain and the Vichy government. It was only progressively, often with the decisive military intervention of the Allies, that Free France took over more Vichy possessions, securing the majority of colonies by November 1942.
The Free French fought both Axis and Vichy troops and served in almost every major campaign, from the Middle East to Indochina and North Africa. The Free French Navy operated as an auxiliary force to the Royal Navy and, in the North Atlantic, to the Royal Canadian Navy. Free French units also served in the Royal Air Force, Soviet Air Force, and British SAS, before larger commands were established directly under the control of the government-in-exile. On 13 July 1942, "Free France" was officially renamed Fighting France (France combattante) to mark the struggle against the Axis both externally and within occupied France. After the reconquest of North Africa, the French Committee of National Liberation (Comité français de Libération nationale, CFNL) was formed as the provisional government of all French. Exile officially ended with the liberation of Paris by the 2nd Armoured Free French Division and Resistance forces on 25 August 1944, ushering in the Provisional Government of the French Republic (gouvernement provisoire de la République française or GPRF). It ruled France until the end of the war and afterwards to 1946, when the Fourth Republic was established, thus ending the series of interim regimes that had succeeded the Third Republic after its fall in 1940.
On 1 August 1943, L'Armée d'Afrique formally united with the Free French Forces to form the French Liberation Army. By mid-1944, the forces of this army numbered more than 400,000, and they participated in the Normandy landings and the invasion of southern France, eventually leading the drive on Paris. Soon they were fighting in Alsace, the Alps and Brittany. By the end of the war, they were 1,300,000 strong—the fourth-largest Allied army in Europe—and took part in the Allied advance through France and invasion of Germany. The Free French government re-established a provisional republic after the liberation, preparing the ground for the Fourth Republic in 1946.