Word: frenchness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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There are two sets of pilots flying the Biafra run, one English-speaking and the other French, and they are carefully segregated. The English-speaking flyers are housed in the dilapidated, mosquito-ridden Hôtel de la Rèsidence, run by a waspish French brunette named Jackie, whose sole virtue seems to be that she is able to count in English. Eighteen of the pilots are Rhodesian and South African, all clad in the uniform of the British colonial in Africa: highly polished shoes, long socks, neatly pressed shorts and starched bush jackets. Carefully holding themselves apart...
...what it calls the "Conférence a Quatre"-a four-sided conference-the N.L.F. has not convinced Charles de Gaulle's government of its independence. The North Vietnamese cars bear the green-and-orange plates of the corps diplomatique. The N.L.F. has an ordinary black-and-white French license plate. South Viet Nam maintains a legation in Paris. The North Vietnamese have the lowest diplomatic status available, that of a mission. The N.L.F. has no status at all. Because the N.L.F. delegates all carry North Vietnamese passports for travel purposes, the French helped them avoid the embarrassment...
...garden of pine and chestnut trees. Those who have been inside the villa describe its furnishings as "early Mussolini-pretty ugly stuff." In the entrance stand a wooden cupboard, a nondescript sofa and a desk manned by a Frenchman who appears to be a security man assigned by the French Communist Party. In the second-floor salon where Madame Binh has her office and receives visitors, the original pictures have been taken down (with the hooks left hanging), and portraits of N.L.F. Leader Nguyen Huu Tho and a young Viet Cong hero executed by the South Vietnamese stare down...
Perhaps the most important single reason for battered Biafra's continuing survival against the attacks of the Nigerian Federal Army is a steady infusion of French military aid. Although the French will not acknowledge their role, one of the worst-kept secrets of the war is the fact that armaments are flown into the secessionist state almost nightly from two former French colonies, Gabon and the Ivory Coast. Hard proof of responsibility for the arms lift, however, is hard to come by, as TIME Correspondent James Wilde reported from the Gabonese capital of Libreville...
EVERYBODY in this shabby capital knows about it, but few will talk. The unmarked planes, however, are there for all to see: four DC-4s, three DC-3s and a single Constellation, parked on the palm-lined seaside tarmac. Patient research shows that the aircraft have varied registration-French, German, Belgian, Zambian, Biafran and Gabonese. Each afternoon, three or four planes taxi to the nearby military airfield for loading, then take off for Biafra at 6 p.m. sharp. They return around midnight, after the 900-mile round trip. Just as predictable as the flights is the black Citroen, owned...