Word: indo-china
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...Legion tour of duty in Algeria just as Rainier began conductor hunting. Born in northern France, Frémaux had studied piano briefly at Valenciennes Conservatory before World War II sent him into the Maquis. He went to St.-Cyr military academy at war's end, served in Indo-China under General LeClerc. The experience, he thinks, was not altogether foreign to a musical career: "I learned a lot from my years in Indo-China; it was my discovery of the world; I saw people and wars." He was tempted to become a career Legion officer, but finally decided...
Laos was dreamed up by French Diplomat Jean Chauvel, who in 1946 was France's Secretary-General of Foreign Affairs. At the time, France was trying to reassert its authority in Indo-China, whose rebellious inhabitants had no desire to return to their prewar status as colonial subjects. In place of original Indo-China, consisting of various kingdoms and principalities, Paris put together three new autonomous states within the French Union: Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos. Drawing lines on a map, Chauvel created Laos by merging the rival kingdoms of Luangprabang, whose monarch became King of Laos, with Champassak...
French influence did not long survive the drawing of the map. Nine years later, with the humiliating defeat of Dienbienphu, France withdrew from Indo-China, and the fledgling state of Laos was on its own, along with the other remnant states of partitioned Indo-China. Independence was complicated by the fact that two Laotian provinces were securely in the hands of Communist Pathet Lao bands under Red Prince Souphanouvong. In 1956 his halfbrother, Prince Souvanna Phouma, was chosen Premier and soon integrated the two Red provinces into the kingdom by giving Souphanouvong a Cabinet post. In a subsequent national election...
...minute statement in which he once again traced his military record ("I made the name of France glow at the ends of the earth"). As he saw it, his career in the French army was beset by "treason" and "betrayal" back home; he would have won gloriously in Indo-China and Algeria. He admitted being the leader of the S.A.O. and declared: "My responsibility is entire. I accept it." The S.A.O...
...Where is my wife?" asked S.A.O. Chief Raoul Salan when the Sante Prison gates closed on him in Paris last month. Slight, trim Lucienne Salan had been an army nurse when he met her in Indo-China in 1938, and when in 1944 Salan finally joined the Free French, she became an army driver. La Bibiche (little doe), the soldiers called the frail woman with the thin legs, the long face, the velvet eyes. But she was harder than she looked, and as her husband moved up the army ladder, she supervised his schedule, his appointments, his travel (avoid airplanes...