L'Âme de la France, War memorial in Salazie, France.

L'Âme de la France is a bronze war memorial in Salazie depicting a female figure with raised arms, holding flowers in one hand and a shield in the other. The artwork stands in an open space where visitors can view its details from various angles.

Sculptor Carlo Sarrabezolles made three versions of L'Âme de la France: plaster in 1921, stone in 1922 and the bronze cast in 1930. Deputy Lucien Gasparin ordered the bronze for 30,000 francs on 11 July 1931 and gave it to Salazie, where it was set up facing the town hall and the church. Father Gabriel Bourasseau had it dynamited under the Vichy regime, breaking its arms; it was welded, moved, toppled by a cyclone and found again in 1968, then classified in 2004.

The statue serves as Salazie's war memorial, honouring Réunion's soldiers who fell in World War I, among them men led by the aviator Roland Garros. The Mérimée database calls the figure a "secular allegory": a helmeted warrior whose right hand ends in a small spray of flowers while her left fist grips a shield slipped onto her forearm. Her two long braids slide down her back.

The bronze stands at the entrance to Hell-Bourg, in the Salazie commune of the island's Hauts, on a tall square column of grey stone blocks set on a wider stepped base reached by stone steps. A light plaque with inscribed text faces the front of the base. The figure is outdoors, with vegetation and a building behind it.

The memorial sparked controversy due to its depiction of nudity and was even dynamited by a local priest, making it an unexpected symbol of artistic resistance. This turbulent history has shaped local identity and makes the work today more than just a war memorial.