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Largement composée de volontaires qui n’ont cessé de combattre depuis juin 1940, la 1re division française libre (DFL) connaît, d’août 1944 à août 1945, un parcours relativement difficile dont l’analyse fournit d’intéressantes pistes sur la sortie de guerre des « Free French ». Même s’ils sont convaincus d’avoir, presque à eux seuls, sauvé l’honneur de la France, les combattants de la DFL doivent rentrer dans le rang à l’automne 1944, au sein de l’armée française en reconstruction. Au long de la campagne de France, il leur faut progressivement oublier leurs origines, les méthodes de combat qui ont fait leur gloire, et leurs espoirs d’action politique pour retrouver une condition militaire plus traditionnelle. Dans le même temps, les retrouvailles avec leurs compatriotes, que ceux-ci aient été résistants ou non, ne leur apportent pas la reconnaissance escomptée. Au plan mémoriel, enfin, les désillusions ne sont pas non plus absentes. Une relative amertume en découle, et le repli sur les associations et amicales d’anciens. Free French and the challenge of the Liberation. Consisting largely of volunteers who had been fighting continuously since June 1940, the 1st Free French Division (DFL) underwent quite a difficult experience from August 1944 to August 1945. The analysis of what happened to the division offers some interesting research avenues concerning Free French demobilisation. The men of the 1st DFL, for all their conviction that they, almost alone, had upheld the honour of France, were obliged to take their place in a new French Army that was in the process of establishment in the autumn of 1944. As the French campaign of 1944-45 ran its course these men were progressively required to forget their origins, the combat techniques that had covered them in glory, and their hopes for a political role, in favour of re-locating themselves in a more traditional military situation. At the same time their encounters with their compatriots, whether people who has been in the Resistance or not, did not generate the recognition on which they had counted. And as far as the memory of what they had done was concerned, this too proved grounds for disillusionment. What ensued was a legacy of comparative bitterness, and a retreat into the bosom of old comrades and veterans’ associations.