FRENCH KISS is a one-of-a-kind look at the Cold War. It has it all: laughter, bizarre behavior by high-ranking Air Force officers, black market, sex, love and tears, and most of all how mutual acceptance overcomes suspicion and distrust. The story was made possible by the generosity of Americans and French who worked at Dèols-Châteauroux Air Station (CHAS) in the Berry region of Central France. They provided more than 250 hours of interviews while permitting study of cherished mementos and photos. Examples. The beautiful wife of a general explains why she danced and sang naked from her balcony at an exclusive hotel. French kitchen workers preparing Baked Alaska for a large dinner party at the Officers’ Club decided to get drunk instead. The last base Commander was a hard-drinking decorated fighter pilot. He demanded a fireplace be built so that each pilot had a place to smash his liquor glass after a successful mission. No fighter missions were flown from CHAS, for 16 years strictly a supply and repair depot. Officers, their wives and girlfriends turn a historical hunting lodge into a trysting hideout complete with raucous food fights. Trainloads of prostitutes poured into Châteauroux every pay day, some like Nine Fingers and Gigi became legendary. Pilots on temporary duty celebrated the pleasures of the town with the ditty, Ninety Days in Châteauroux. The Black Market was everywhere, even seducing a native kid, one day to become a world-famous French movie star, into the racket. An Air Force Captain describes what Johnny Walker Black label and a carton of cigarettes can get you in Paris. Here are real people, relating maybe for the first time, their sorrows, betrayals, loves and building kinship with military occupiers. Their words are candid and unsparing. An unmarried teenage girl is disowned by her Master Sergeant father and betrayed by the father of her son. The son of a Châteauroux woman and an American GI, now a grown man, fails to hide his hatred for a father who betrayed them with broken promises of a return to France and marriage. A Black Air Force Military Policeman was overwhelmed by the house-to-house open-armed acceptance of his marriage to the white, beautiful daughter of a neighborhood family. A white medic and seasonal football player is proud of the Jive talk he developed as a member of a team that was 75% black. A beautiful cheerleader describes how she and a girlfriend ran into the entire baseball team from an Army supply base, then shared what they had in common, loneliness. Sports were a great integrator. Commissioned officers of all ranks hated Saturday mornings. Full-bird colonels arose early to bend shoulder-to-shoulder with lowest rank enlisted men to clear a field of rocks and stones for a nine-hole golf course. Farm boys and inner-city youths were allowed entry to the most exclusive fencing clubs in France after being taught to parry and thrust by a fencing master imported from Paris. Every American sport from baseball to skeet shooting was there for the asking. This was a land of plenty in the center of France’s most impoverished region. Her first glance at the aisles of goods offered for sale at the Post-Exchange prompted a French woman to exclaim, ‘It’s just like one big Hollywood movie set.’ It was easy to forget that CHAS existed during a Cold War a world away when you were roller skating to the jute-box sounds of the Drifters. France was the Kremlin’s primary target in Europe and Communist radio and print propaganda was everywhere, largely ignored until the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Described is the empty-headed running around when it was discovered the base evacuation plan in case of war was temporarily lost. No surprise since mock evacuations ordered by NATO had not been performed for years. The bombs didn’t fall and CHAS continued on its merry way until 1967 when Charles de Gaulle kicked NATO out of France.
Table of Content
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1. Transformation and Reaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2. Pencil Pushing Pilots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
3. Reluctant Equality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
4. Main Street Baggage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5. You Name It, We Have It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
6. Corn, Wheat, Oats and Homes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
7. Escaping Eggs and Betrayal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
8. It Ain’t Necessarily So . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
9. Che Guevara and a Sewing Machine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10. Nomads and Air Force One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
11. Patriotism, Broken Bottles and Penicillin . . . . . . . . . . . .
12. Betty Boop and the Wing Walker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
13. Mourning, Mindszenty and Michelin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
14. Opportunities, Good and Bad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
15. Abandonment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
About the author
Steve Bassett was born, raised and educated in New Jersey, and although far removed during a career as a multiple award-winning journalist, he has always been proud of the sobriquet Jersey Guy. He has been legally blind for almost a decade but hasn’t let this slow him down. Polish on his mother’s side and Montenegrin on his father’s, with grandparents who spoke little or no English, his early outlook was ethnic and suspicious. As a natural iconoclast, he joined the dwindling number of itinerant newsmen roaming the countryside in search of, well just about everything. Sadly, their breed has vanished into the digital ether. Bassett’s targets were not selected simply by sticking pins in a map. There had to be a sense of the bizarre.First there was The Long Branch Daily Record on the New Jersey shore. Mobsters loved the place. It was one of their favorite watering holes. A mafia soldier was gunned down not far from the paper. Great fun for a cub reporter. Curiosity got the better of him with his next choice the Pekin Daily Times located in central Illinois. Now a respected newspaper, it had once been the official voice of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920’s. Pekin had saved its bacon during the Depression by tacitly approving two time-honored money makers, prostitution and gambling, earning an eight-page spread in Life.Next it was the Salt Lake Tribune. The Pulitzer Prize winner was then, and still is, considered one of the best dailies west of the Rockies. Bassett’s coverage of the invective laden contract talks between the United Mine Workers and the three copper mining giants led to his recruitment by the Associated Press. Bassett’s series for the AP in Phoenix uncovered the widespread abuses inherent in the Government’s Barcero program for Mexican contract workers. The series exposed working and housing conditions that transformed workers into virtual slave laborers forced to buy at company stores, live in squalid housing and pay illegally collected unemployment taxes that went into the pocket of their bosses. The series led to Bassett’s promotion and transfer to the San Francisco bureau where as an Urban Affairs investigative reporter he covered the Black Panthers, anti-war protests, the radical takeover and closure of San Francisco State University, the deadly ‘People’s Park’ demonstrations at U.C. Berkeley, and the Patty Hearst kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Bassett’s five-part series on the Wah Ching gained national attention by exposing the Chinese youth gang as the violent instrument of Chinatown’s criminal bosses. Then came CBS television news in Los Angeles, where he rose through the ranks to become producer of KNXT’s Evening News, the highest rated late-night news program in the nation’s second-largest media market. After a four-year stint with KFMB-TV, the CBS station in San Diego, he returned to Los Angeles as the Executive Producer of Metromedia’s KNXT’s award-winning news program, Metro News. AWARDS: •Three Emmy Awards for his investigative documentaries.•The prestigious Medallion Award presented by the California Bar Association for ‘Distinguished Reporting on the Administration of Justice.’ •Honored by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences as Executive Producer for Metro News, the top independent news program in 1979. Bassett currently resides in Placitas, New Mexico with his wife Darlene Chandler Bassett. Contact Steve on his website: stevebassettworld.com.
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