Vichy French soldiers at Normandy

[hackmon]

Were their any Vichy French soldiers defending anywhere around D-Day landing beaches? I've seen French weapons laying around beaches but these may be from conscripted troops with captured weapons.

[Orwell1984]

No, as the Vichy French Armed Forces were disbanded in December 1942 after the Axis put Case Anton into play, the occupation of Vichy France in response to Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa.

[Loïc]

of course, not only the metropolitan Armistice Army was disbanded the 27th november 1942 but it was also allowed and limited to the southern free zone
in the Northern Zone exceptions to the rule there were only
-the Gendarmerie
-12 Engineers Railway & Signals companies disbanded or "civilianized" after 1942
-3 companies of the 1er RdF (Troyes Langres Belfort in the Northeast)
-the short-lived Railway Anti-Aircraft Artillery batteries of the Air Defence General Secretariat (SGDA) raised from some men coming from the disbanded Armée d'Armistice, nothing to do with D-Day beaches even if some batteries were in Normandy railway stations because it was a failure, raised in june 1943 and disbanded in november 1943, the soldiers deserted, totally wrongly described as "french flak" in some website as if these soldiers were "volunteers in the Werhmacht" or some foreign unit of the german army

[Carl Schwamberger]

... I've seen French weapons laying around beaches but these may be from conscripted troops with captured weapons.

Captured weapons, distributed to German units in a effort to arm the 400 odd division size formations formed for the Wehrmacht.

A corps of French soldiers was formed for service on the eastern front. This "Charlemagne Division" was still fighting as a a motorized regiment somewhere in the east in June 1944. In November 1942 there was a second French unit formed for service in Africa. Recruiting was a failure & the formation was never more than a glorified company, which did fight in Tunisia. Otherwise there were a lot of Alsatians recruited or conscripted into the Wehrmacht.

[Cassius29]

Wasn't the PPF nearby Normandie assisting refugees?