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Flags of the Normandy landings (France)

Flags of the Normandy landings, 6 June 1944
Anniversary flags

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Flags of the Normandy landings, 6 June 1944

Flags of the Normandy landings - Images: (left) US 1912 flag by Clay Moss, 3 February 2007,
(center) Royal Navy White ensign by Martin Grieve, 10 July 2007, (right) FNFL ensign by Žejlko Heimer, 14 February 1997

When Lieutenant Colonel Edward Krause briefed his battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment on the eve of the invasion, he held up a worn 48-star flag: the same one his men had raised over Naples on 1 October 1943. His promise was that it would fly over Sainte-Mère-Église by morning. Krause jumped with the flag that night, and before dawn on 6 June 1944 it was run up the pole in front of the town hall of one of the first towns in France to be liberated.
That small ceremony had almost no company. The regimental colours of the assault divisions stayed behind in Britain, as colours had stayed out of battle since the late nineteenth century. What crossed the Channel were working flags: ensigns by the thousand, printed identification flags pinned to sleeves, buoy and marker flags, and a handful of Crosses of Lorraine coming home after four years.

Ensigns off the beaches

Operation Neptune put nearly 7,000 vessels off the Norman coast under Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, the largest invasion fleet ever assembled. Most of it wore the White Ensign, the red cross of St George on a white field with the Union Flag in the canton. It flew from the battleships Warspite and Ramillies in the eastern bombardment line down to the motor launches shepherding landing craft toward shore. Canadian warships off Juno wore it as well; the Royal Canadian Navy kept the White Ensign until 1965, with Canada's Blue Ensign serving as the jack.
American warships wore the 48-star ensign, six even rows of eight stars, the pattern in use since Arizona and New Mexico entered the union in 1912. Naval custom allowed a ship going into action to hoist extra battle ensigns, so that no single hit could leave her without colours.
Two French cruisers, Montcalm and Georges Leygues, stood in the bombardment line off Omaha and fired on the coast of the country whose flag they wore.

Forty-eight stars ashore

American assault troops wore their national flag rather than carrying it. From the North African landings of November 1942 onward, US invasion forces went in with printed recognition flags, and by June 1944 these had settled into a standard piece of kit: an oilcloth brassard, roughly 17 by 4 inches, printed with the 48-star flag and pinned around the right sleeve. Paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne wore them on the jump into the Cotentin, and photographs show them on glider pilots too. A paratrooper scattered far from his drop zone needed to be recognisable as an American at a glance, by day, to troops advancing from the sea.
Full-size flags travelled by choice, which is what makes the Krause colour worth recording. It was a standard-issue flag that had already served through the Naples campaign, folded in a jump bag for its second liberation.

The Cross of Lorraine comes home

Free France fought under the tricolore defaced with the double-barred cross of Lorraine, an emblem generally credited to Vice Admiral Émile Muselier in June 1940. The ensign of the Free French Naval Forces (FNFL) placed a white lozenge at the centre of the tricolore, charged with the cross in red.
The FNFL was present on 6 June afloat and ashore. The escort destroyer La Combattante, on Channel patrols since March 1943, sailed with the invasion fleet, and the 177 French commandos who landed on Sword Beach that morning under Philippe Kieffer, the only French ground troops in the first wave, were FNFL sailors. Eight days later La Combattante carried General de Gaulle back across the Channel. He came ashore near Courseulles-sur-Mer on 14 June and spoke at Bayeux the same afternoon, beneath the tricolore and the Cross of Lorraine, his first speech on liberated French soil.

Marker flags and working signals

Planners cut each beach into colour-named sectors. Utah was Tare Green and Uncle Red; Omaha ran from Dog Green through Easy Red to Fox Red. Out in the Channel, minesweepers marked the swept approach lanes with flagged dan buoys so the convoys behind them could hold their course. On the sand, US naval beach battalions landed with the early waves; their beachmasters placed markers showing incoming coxswains where each sector lay, and their signalmen worked by lamp, radio, and semaphore flag amid the wreckage. Almost none of this flag work survives. A marker flag that has done its job is rubbish by the afternoon.

Where the flags are now

An 18-metre Cross of Lorraine now rises from the dunes on the boundary of Courseulles-sur-Mer and Graye-sur-Mer, on the stretch of Juno Beach where de Gaulle came ashore. La Combattante herself was mined and lost in February 1945, but her jack outlived her: a nearly square flag, 2.10 by 2.25 metres, of the FNFL pattern, preserved at the Musée de l'Ordre de la Libération in Paris.
The American flags of 6 June cluster in the Cotentin. At La Madeleine, on Utah Beach itself, the landing museum founded in 1962 by Michel de Vallavieille stands where the US 4th Infantry Division came ashore, and guided tours of Normandy beaches usually take in both the museum and Sainte-Mère-Église on the same morning. Krause's flag stayed in that town. His widow presented it after his death, and it is kept at the town hall in front of which it was raised on the morning of 6 June 1944.

Sources:

Imperial War Museums, "D-Day at sea: Operation Neptune"
The Army Historical Foundation, "The 505th Infantry Regiment"
Juno Beach Centre, "General de Gaulle and the Croix de Lorraine"
U.S. 6th Naval Beach Battalion association
Musée de l'Ordre de la Libération, Paris

Milan Magyar is Brand Manager at Beaches of Normandy Tours, a former diplomat and lawyer, and a lifelong military history enthusiast born on the anniversary of D-Day.

Milan Magyar, 26 August 2026

Anniversary flags

80th anniversary flags by the Regional committe for tourism

Flag by the regional committee for tourism for the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings - Images by Olivier Touzeau, 3 March 2025

The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day (after the military term), it is the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of France, and the rest of Western Europe, and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.

Several flags were created by Region Normandie and the regional committee for tourism for the 80th birthday of the Normandy landings: photo, photo.

Olivier Touzeau, 3 March 2025

Anniversary flags in Manche department

Anniversary flag by the Manche departent for the anniversary of the Normandy landings - Images by Olivier Touzeau, 3 March 2025

Special flags by the Manche department were raised in 2019 and in 2024 for the 75th and 80th anniversaries of the Normandy landings: photo, photo, photo.

Olivier Touzeau, 3 March 2025

80th anniversary flag in Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach D-Day 80th anniversary flag - Image by Olivier Touzeau, 3 March 2025

A flag (photo, photo) was created to adorn the communities of the Omaha Beach site on the coast (Calvados department). It was offered for purchase by the ARLOB association (association of residents of the Omaha Beach coastline) in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer. On this flag are the code name of the beach, the landing dates, a dove of freedom raising and holding a laurel branch, a ribbon with the inscription: 80th anniversary of D-Day, a reminder of the American flag, a feather, so as not to forget the Native American and Indian veterans of the US, the name of the association. These elements are laid on a blue starry background. 320 of these flags were bought. [Source: linkedin (first version of the flag before production, a cross of Lorraine was then added for the Free French Forces: linkedin].

Olivier Touzeau, 3 March 2025