MIRABEAU ON 1944 AUGUST 20 Claude MESNIL
2013
The population lived in a relative tranquillity during the ten months of a rather lax Italian occupation of the region. The German troops came to replace them from the surrender of the facist regime, end of 1943… Two of their planes were shot down in the Basses-Alpes department at the war time (1/221 and 8/162). Many could not fly for lack of spare parts on August 15 1944 while the landing in Provence progressed3. THE SITUATION TO MIRABEAU Controling the sky, the allied aviation aimed immediately at its bridge. A bomb bored it on 17, another one stucked between the roadman's home and an old gantry. None exploded (below). Partisans then came to sabotage a part of the apron and some hangers at night. The bridge resisted although weakened. Then they blew up an extremity of the nearby tunnel of the railroad Marseille-Briançon. The castle hosted 200 « Marines » since the scuttling of the Fleet at Toulon4 on November 27 1942. Rearmed by the local Maquis, they helped them to keep the north bank of the Durance river where small enemy groups fleeing the Allies tried to rejoin. Two were wounded, about sixty Germans uncovered in the riverbed were killed. The others one renounced and ebbed to Mallemort village on the left bank, 29 miles further west.
THE 45th U.S. INFANTRY DIVISION Based in Oklahoma, it sailed to Morocco in June 1943 and trained. In Italy, it landed in Sicily on july, at Salerno on september and at Anzio on january 1944. In France, it did it again on August 15 near Sainte-Maxime. It crossed the Var department, unveiled the pontoon bridge opened by its Engineering on the Durance river near Mirabeau on 21, went to Pertuis, Apt, Sisteron, Aspres-sur-Buëch on 23, Vif on 28, Grenoble on 29 (freed on 22). Then began the tough fights. This troop saw Bourg-en-Bresse on september 4, Épinal on 24, crossed the Moselle river, then battled in the Vosges massif over the winter. It entered Germany on march 17 1945, was in the capture of Hamburg on 21, Nuremberg on April 20, Munich on 30. It had freed the eve 32,000 survivors in the Dachau concentration camp where it forced neighboring residents to dig decent graves for the corpses. THE 157th REGIMENT5 OF THE 45th DIVISION ON AUGUST 20 Greated by the 191st Tank Battalion and the 120th Engineer Battalion, it rallied the bridge of Mirabeau via Saint-Paul-lès-Durance after a bivouac near Rians on 19. The general staff had planned 51 days… The Marine on the lookout from the castle saw them approaching. Alerted, the villagers decorated their streets with flags and joined the Durance river to welcome their Liberators. While the Engineers deployed a pontoon bridge 900 yd upstream, some tanks forded the river : Sherman tanks stayed in front of the near « De Clapier » farm to secure the road arriving from the Alps. The lieutenants James R. Long and Lawrence R. Tucker met there the leaders of the local Partisans. 3 « Tanks Destroyers » (below right), the first one towing an antitank gun, left towards Pertuis at 10 miles west where 7 panzers prowled. There was no fight, but a young french tracking them by motorbike managed in throwing a grenade in the last one, killing its crew. He was later decorated in the town of Avignon.
A wooden footbridge that the Engineers fixed on the cut apron allowed to fill trucks brought by the Partisans with of which to hit a panzer located to Mirabeau (above left). The article describing this day by an inhabitant of this village is silent on this matter…
TODAY 37 years of works allowed to control the river6. A classical bridge [A] relieved in 1988 that of 1935 [B]. south : a motorway [C] and a canal [D] crosse a hill. A vague print of the pontoon bridge exists [E]. north : it is difficult to join in the cliff the German bunker and the fire stands guarding the bridge and its valley [F]. A track below passes impacts of projectiles on the pillar of a bridge of 1845, a base of a cannon, a stele devoted to two young Jewish brothers killed there by the Gestapo, and an arms cache of Partisans. The path on a dike used by the troops is feasible [G]. The farm produces the wine « Château de Clapier » [H], its owner of 1944 unveiled in 1989 the memorial erected by the municipality of Mirabeau [I]. In this place the allied troops came to liberate France have set foot on the territory of Vaucluse on August 20, 1944. Tribute to our dead and our liberators
1
by the escort of the flying fortresses going to bombard Salon-de-Provence and Istres airfields in Provence.
2
after a forced landing near Valensole.
4
order of the Admiralty of the Vichy regime to prevent its capture by the Germans and to avoid it to rally Allies in North Africa.
5
about 3,500 men.
6
3
the Luftwaffe could mobilize only 200 aircrafts the D day, against 1,500 for the Allies.
Durance-Verdon rivers works for regulate the flow and limit the devastating floods of theses two rivers.
