The leaders of France and Britain hailed their nations' battle-forged ties yesterday, as they marked 70 years since Charles de Gaulle's stirring radio appeal for the French to resist Nazi occupation.
In a ceremony in London attended by World War II veterans, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron also paid tribute to their soldiers who fought together in the last century and now, in Afghanistan.
Accompanied by his wife, ex-model Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the President had earlier met with Prince Charles and visited the BBC studio where the exiled de Gaulle issued the rousing appeal to his compatriots back home on June 18, 1940.
"Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not and will not be extinguished," de Gaulle said, urging those who had escaped to Britain to join him in London and for those still in France to hold firm.
Although very few French actually heard it, the speech is seen as a founding act of the resistance to the Nazis, coming four days after the fall of Paris and as the French government prepared to sign an armistice with Germany.
Mr Sarkozy said the decision to let de Gaulle make the appeal from London - initially opposed by the British Cabinet but championed by premier Winston Churchill - "made possible the very existence of the French resistance."
"The appeal of June 18 could have been made nowhere else than from among the sole free people on earth which continued to resist the forces of Nazism with all its might," he said in a speech at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, an institute for veterans in London.
Mr Sarkozy made three British and three French veterans knights of the Legion of Honour, a top French award, and he and Cameron were treated to a display of troops from both nations in full ceremonial splendour.
In his speech, Cameron hailed the "great relationship" with France and referred in French to "mon ami, Monsieur Le President, Nicolas Sarkozy".
De Gaulle's address was "a call for freedom, a call to fight oppression, a call that inspired countless acts of bravery", he said, which highlighted the cross-Channel ties "forged through fierce trials" in the last century.
France and Britain were still fighting together as part of Nato-led operations in Afghanistan, the prime minister said - a subject they discussed, along with the World Cup, over lunch with their wives at Downing Street.
Mr Sarkozy was the first French President to travel to London to mark the address, the first of a number of messages de Gaulle and his Free French followers would send via the BBC.