left standing. General Ramcke surrendered the city on 19 September 1944 to the Americans after rendering the port facilities useless. They would not be repaired in time to help the war effort as it was hoped. The last German outpost surrendered at Audierne on 20 September. By this time, Paris had already been liberated by the Allied Armies, and Operation Market-Garden was already under way in the Netherlands. "These are my credentials" When U.S. Brigadier General Charles Canham arrived to accept Ramcke's surrender, the latter asked the lower-ranking man to show his credentials. Canham pointed to his nearby troops and said "These are my credentials". Canham was at the time the deputy commander of the U.S. 8th Infantry Division; that phrase has since become the division's motto. The costly capture of Brest resulted in the decision to only surround the remaining German-occupied ports in France with the exception of those that could be captured from the march, instead of storming them in a set-piece battle. The exception was Le Havre, which was taken by the British 2nd Army on 12 September 1944. Some of these Breton ports surrendered only by 9 May 1945, one day after Victory in Europe Day. Aftermath The whole Overlord campaign developed somewhat differently than originally planned. Patton's US Third Army's quick advance allowed the Liberation of Paris to occur earlier than expected. Despite the U.S. Army committing 75,000 troops to the capture of Brest of which 10,000 would become casualties, not a single Allied troop ship or supply vessel had docked in Brest by the time Paris fell to the Allies. For the French people in Brittany, the presence of American soldiers was a joyous sign that four years of the oppressive German occupation had come to an end and hope was drawing near; especially for the local Jewish population who had been in hiding or on the run from the German regime, and others who had run afoul of the Vichy regime or the German occupiers. After the war, the West German government paid reparations to civilians in Brest who had been killed, starved, or left homeless. See also Liberation of France Battle for Brittany Saint-Nazaire pocket Battle of Saint-Malo Notes References Joseph Balkoski. From Beachhead to Brittany: The 29th Infantry Division At Brest, August–September 1944. Buchheim, L.G. Die Festung. (literary treatment of the author's experiences as a German war reporter during the battle