Word: croix
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When De Gaulle departed, things were definitely looking up for France's grand design-at least in Ecuador. Then came trouble. Though De Gaulle had given each of the four junta members the Grand Officer, he had bestowed the much more exclusive "Grand-Croix of the Legion of Honor" on the heads of state in all the other countries he visited...
When the Ecuadorians demanded how come, the French Foreign Office firmly explained that there was no intention to insult Ecuador, but there could only be one Grand-Croix given per country. If one country got four, the others with only one might feel slighted...
...Paris. For punctuation, a bomb exploded last week in front of the French embassy in Quito, knocking a hole in the embassy's brick balustrade and shattering windows in the embassy and the ambassador's residence. To those who suggested that France should have presented one Grand-Croix to the junta as a whole. Paris' Le Figaro posed the problem. "How," it asked, "to get one ribbon of the Grand-Croix around a junta without making the recipients look like a bunch of radishes...
Though Dienbienphu was surrounded by hills, Navarre was unworried, since he was convinced that the Reds had no artillery. Dienbienphu's two air strips, its only lifeline to the outside, were within easy field-gun range of the mountains. Under Cavalry Colonel Christian Marie Ferdinand de la Croix de Castries, who was promoted to four-star general during the battle, the garrison had been organized into ten separate commands. With Gallic gallantry, each had been given a woman's name-Gabrielle, Béatrice, Anne-Marie, Françoise, Isabelle, Dominique, Claudine, Huguette, Eliane and Junon...
...salacious posturings. But when the war began, he enlisted in the army-which he did not have to do as a foreigner-and proved a tough and durable soldier until he was hit in the head by shrapnel. He won a measure of respectability, French citizenship and the Croix de Guerre...