Bastille Day, Paris, 14 July 2021 - French National Day from the air

Bastille Day – the French National Day – is celebrated across France on 14 July. This year the Military Parade on the Avenue des Champs-Elysées was back, after being cancelled last year.

The theme of the 2021 two-hour parade is Winning the Future associated with the deconfinement of the Coronavirus pandemic health crisis.

From 10am to midday, the avenue of the Champs-Élysées and the skies over Paris welcomed 4,300 soldiers on foot, 71 aircraft, 25 helicopters,221 vehicles,and 200 horsesof the Republican Guard.

The Bastille Day celebrations included the flypast. The French equivalent of the British Air Force’s “Red Arrows” – the “Patrouille de France” – with French military pilots, flew nine jets in close V-formation for the flypast, with blue, white, and red smoke trails – “du bleu, du blanc et du rouge.”

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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