Behind the cross of Saint Louis is an M4 Sherman tank, which was widely used by all Free French armored forces during World War II.

In 1943, Free-French armed forces were formed in exile in the French colonies of Africa under the command of General De Gaulle.

On January 28, 1943, General Jean Touzet du Vigier (promoted on December 25, 1942) took command of this unit as it was being formed.

The unit reached the Rhône in a series of rapid advances, then regrouped, west of the river, for fifteen days.

After 45 days of marching towards Le Thillot, liberating Mélisey, Servance, Haut-du-Them-Château-Lambert, Ramonchamp, Cornimont, Travexin [fr], Fresse, the Col de la Chevestraye [fr], Recologne, the chapel of Ronchamp, and Bourlémont, the division finally entered the Belfort Gap on October 18, 1944.

Operating under the 1st Army Corps of General Antoine Béthouart, it manoeuvred to Héricourt along the French-Swiss border and captured Delle on November 18.

The next day, the CC3 was in Alsace and, at 1800, the tank platoon of Lieutenant Loisy was able to raise its standard on the banks of the Rhine at Rosenau.

He was part of the 4th squadron of the 2nd African Chasseur Regiment and met his end on November 23 when his tank was hit by an anti-tank launcher during the attack on the Lefebvre barracks at Mulhouse.

For the next two months, the division held a defensive sector in the snow on the Dollar River, south of what would later be referred to as the Colmar Pocket.

On January 20, the 1st Army relaunched an assault on the two northern and southern flanks of the pocket, in the middle of a snow storm.

The division, which had engaged in combat since December 5 under the orders of General Aimé Sudre, following an annoying delay in two minefields, achieved a breakthrough which led to the capture of Chalampé on the morning of February 9.

The 9th Colonial Infantry Division, cleared a path through the Black Forest, to free for the 1st Army important routes.

General Sudre regrouped means at the exception of CC3 around Freudenstadt, and while acting with the cadre of the 1st Army Corps, his unit mounted the assault.

The division accordingly made their way to the Danube by Rottweil and Horb am Neckar, crossed the river on April 21 at Müllheim and Tuttlingen, and while engaging Stockach, pushed back along the Danube through Sigmaringen to Ulm, which was taken in liaison with the American 7th United States Army arriving from the north.

First to the Rhine, first to the Danube, the division with the Cross of Saint-Louis reached objectives following a sequence of successful event combat engagement series.

The 1re DB, with reduced effectif by the demobilization, returned to France and garrisoned, October 1945 to March 1946 in the zones of Bourges, Châtellerault, Nantes and Angoulême.

earlier in the campaign, meeting engagements were also expected, which often led the Zouaves to travel on the backs of the Division's tanks.

Losses were replaced by reinforcements sent from North Africa as well as numerous volunteers who enlisted as villages and cities were being liberated.

After the 1999 reorganisation, EMF 1 (État-major de force 1) was created on 1 July 1999 at quartier Ruty in Besançon, as a NATO type division headquarters that could supervise 20–30,000 personnel.