President Nicolas Sarkozy is about to invade Normandy, weather permitting.
The Elysee Palace says the celebration of France's victory over Germany in 1945 (with some Allied help) will not take place at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on Thursday, as tradition demands. Instead, Sarkozy will preside overan elaborate and expensive ceremony at the small town of Ouistreham.
Almost the entire French Government, the ambassadors of Allied nations and hundreds of war veterans will be moved the 210km to lower Normandy in a fleet of planes and a special train. Viewing platforms and a staircase have been constructed.
Why choose Ouistreham? The small town is the easternmost part of the D-Day landing beaches. An Allied force of 156,000 landed in France and of the soldiers who landed on D-Day, 177 - or 0.11 per cent - were French. They came ashore at Ouistreham. A small force of French commandos, led by Commandant Philippe Kieffer, successfully stormed a German strongpoint. By the end of the battle of Normandy in August, all but 33 of them had been killed or wounded.
Sarkozy will announce that a new unit of marines is to be named the "Kieffer Commando". It's part of his aim to reform the French collective mind by sweeping away defeatism and introspection and make France a proud and can-do nation once again. His approach comes close at times to reviving the heroic myths of wartime France with often unfortunate results.
