Word: colombey
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...force lieutenant colonel named Jean-Maria Bastien-Thiry. A brilliant engineer known as "the French von Braun" for his invention of the guided SSII missile, he masterminded both Petit-Clamart and an earlier attempt in which a napalm and plastique bomb was planted on the route to Colombey. De Gaulle commuted the death sentences of two other Petit-Clamart conspirators, Jacques Prévost and Alain Bougrenet de la Tocnaye. But he refused to grant clemency to Bastien-Thiry, reportedly because the attempt had been made when Mme. de Gaulle was also in the car. He was executed...
...keep De Gaulle under glass," he would declare whenever security got too tight. Fortunately for the French President, many of the assassination attempts sound as if they were concocted by Gordon Liddy. One zany plot called for poisoning the Communion Hosts at the village church in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises, where De Gaulle attended Mass. The idea was discarded after the plotters realized that the first person to receive a Host would keel over dead and give the scheme away. And there was no way to guarantee that De Gaulle would be first at the Communion rail...
...last year of his life, Charles de Gaulle was walking on the grounds of his estate at Colombey les-Dcux Eglises with his aide-decamp, Colonel Jean d'Escrienne. During their chat, D'Escrienne asked the general to repeat the name of a politician he had mentioned. "So you plan to write a book about me some day," said De Gaulle. Last week D'Escrienne's book, Le Général m'a dit . . . (The General Told Me), was published in Paris. It contains no major political revelations, but abounds in illustrations...
Such a judgment is hardly fair. The film shows many of the General's strengths; the final scene in the cemetery at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises affectingly portrays the special relationship that existed between De Gaulle and the French people...
...family pew, to the grave site, to the walled estate of La Boisserie, where De Gaulle's widow Yvonne still lives in virtual seclusion, and then back to the town. There old, nearly empty restaurants have suddenly become packed and new restaurants are springing up, along with hotels. Colombey's streets have been repaved, there is a new post office to handle demands for a special anniversary stamp, and a 1,200-car parking lot is being built...