From Here to Hell

Operation Dragoon was the code name for the invasion of France by way of its Mediterranean coastline. Approximately two months prior to Dragoon, the Allied landings at Normandy had taken place.

Field Marshall Erwin Rommel -- the famed "Desert Fox" of the Nazi campaigns in North Africa -- had personally seen to the construction of the Normandy's defenses; the infamous Atlantic Wall against which thousands of American, British and Canadian troops hurled themselves in wave after wave of assault formations.

The bloody fight to take the beachheads of Normandy from Hitler was ultimately successful but only at a tremendous cost in lives and materiel. The Allied advance deeper into France was hampered by fierce German resistance. But advance they eventually did, forcing the Nazis into an ever-tightening noose.

Dragoon was intended, in part, as a means of closing the noose completely and strangulating the German war effort in France. Under the direction of General Alexander Patch, the plan called for the Thunderbirds of the Oklahoma National Guard to form the cutting edge of a three-pronged assault force hitting the beaches along the Mediterranean coast of southern France.

Since the German lines were thinly stretched and Nazi strategy hinged on retreat, the Allied advance was surprisingly swift after the landings. Allied forces gained ground at a rapid pace.

While swift, the advance was not without pitfalls. Soldiers fell by the score on these killing grounds in the south of France as they had done on the bloody beaches of Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword in the north earlier in the campaign. Yet despite the hardships they endured, history has recorded that this was to be the Oklahoma National Guard's finest hour.