Los Españoles del General Leclerc

At dusk on August 24, 1944, a detachment of the French 2nd Armored Division, commanded by Captain Dronne and with Lieutenant Amado Granell as his second in command, arrived at the esplanade of the Paris City Hall, the first milestone of its liberation after more than four years of German occupation. Among these soldiers of the French vanguard were 69 Spaniards, and many of their armored vehicles bore such evocative names as Guadalajara. After the exile of thousands of Spaniards in 1939, a few hundred enlisted in General Leclerc's 2nd Armored Division, a company known as La Nueve, which ended up being overwhelmingly Spanish. They were also present in other units of the 3rd Battalion of the Chad Marching Regiment, belonging to that division. Our compatriots took part in every battle, from the battlefields of Normandy to Berchtesgaden, via the liberation of Paris, a veritable war journey in pursuit of Europe's freedom from the Nazi yoke. This book is a rigorously historical account of the journey of this French military formation during the Second World War, in which our compatriots fought with both courage and skill. It is an epic story built on the many heroic accounts of Spaniards who transformed their personal tragedy of exile and uprooting into an example of survival in the face of adversity and also of true bravery.