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Even as General Eisenhower's armies were scoring a great victory in Normandy, on August 15 the Allies staged another invasion, this one in southern France. Operation DRAGOON, originally code-named ANVIL, sought to establish a supplementary line of communications through the French Mediterranean ports and to prevent the Germans in the south from moving against the main Allied armies in the north. It also provided an opportunity for the Allies to bring to bear in France the troops from the Mediterranean Theater, including the sizable Free French forces in North Africa and Italy. Lack of landing craft had pre- cluded launching this invasion at the same time as OVERLORD.
Under control of the Seventh U.S. Army, commanded now by Lt. Gen. Alexander M. Patch, three U.S. divisions, plus an airborne task force and French commandos, began landing just after dawn. The de- fending Germans were spread too thin to provide much more than to- ken resistance, and by the end of the first day the Seventh Army had 86,000 men and 12,000 vehicles ashore. The next day French troops staged a second landing and moved swiftly to seize the ports of Toulon and Marseille.