Jeannie Rousseau, the Viscomtesse de Clarens, codename AMNIARIX
My grandfather was a “french” war hero during WWII … he won the highest French medal of honor for crawling out into the middle of the battlefield and pulling a French major back to safety and subsequently saving his life (my grandfather was a doctor). He was presented the medal personally by Charles DeGaulle … too bad my grandfather was a captain in the AMERICAN army at the time … 
Yeah, similarly, my great uncle was one of the countless heroes who repelled the Germans from France;
but rather than being French, he commanded the US Army’s 95th Field Artillery Battalion of the 5th Armored “Victory” Division, from Dec. 1942 to the end of the war. They landed at Normandy, 26 July, and were under secret command of General George Patton’s Third Army, “General Patton’s Ghost Troops.” They fought their way across France, tooth and nail, to Belgium, then Germany. Near Crulai, when they were attacked by Mark IV tanks and lost several pieces; rather than retreating, he had his men lower their artillery guns to level and fired back at them point blank, over open sights. They blasted away three Mark IV tanks, and the rest of the tanks fled. They fought on through France to the Hurtgen Forest, and the Ardennes Forest (Battle of the Bulge). He was injured but continued his command, and ended up carrying countless pieces of shrapnel in him until the day he died.
Don’t know what my French relatives were doing all that time. Probably improving upon crepe recipes. 
Now my French relatives thank my US relatives with arrogant hostility, treating it as a strategic rival rather than a true ally. Which is what draws the humorous attacks upon them… But I have plenty of humorous ammunition ready for both sides 
Another great Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, made a famous 9 month trip to the USA in its early years. He then produced some of the finest books ever written about the USA. Still great reading and still timely in many ways. Well, another bon vivant is embarking in d Tocquevilles steps.
[quote]“I continue to love this country.”
A French friend of America repeats Tocqueville’s trip
By Carlin Romano, Sun, May. 01, 2005, Inquirer Book Critic
NEW YORK - In the glory days of the French-American cultural love affair, visiting Gallic thinkers brandished Gauloise cigarettes when uneasily fielding questions from reporters here.
Sartre, Beauvoir and others swirled their miniature teachers’ pointers to signal passion about ideas. They held them skyward to evince disdain. They snuffed them out forcefully to shut down a subject.
Welcome to 2005. Now peace-loving Jacques Chirac raises cigarette taxes 20 percent a year as he wages a “war on tobacco” against the third of French adults who still smoke. And here in a Manhattan conference room, Random House also lives by no-smoking rules.
So Bernard-Henri Levy, France’s most telegenic and controversial philosopher for more than a quarter century - at 56 still flashing the familiar swarthy good looks, the glowing tan showcased by his serially unbuttoned white shirt - makes do by massaging his cell phone between answers.
As communicative symbols go, it’s not a bad one for Levy’s current grand project.
The Atlantic Monthly, a magazine widely praised in recent years for top-notch long-form journalism, invited Levy last year to retrace the famous nine-month visit to America of French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville (1831-32). That trip by Tocqueville, only 26 at the time, produced the two volumes of Democracy in America (1835-40), an instant critical success at home and still considered by many the finest book ever written on America.
The bicentennial of Tocqueville’s birth takes place on July 29. And the first of Levy’s seven articles, offering his experiences and insights, appears in the magazine’s May issue. A Random House book based on the articles is promised for early 2006.
“On the whole,” Levy remarks, asked how his year of exploring the United States affected him, "I did not change. I remain the same anti anti-American. I continue to love this country. I even love it more."i[/i]
philly.com/mld/inquirer/ente … 522574.htm
may require registeration. I use “Bugmenot” for these things.[/quote]
Admiral Amedee Courbet, who got his ass kicked trying to blockade Taiwan in 1884. The clod couldn’t even die like a hero, succumbing instead to some tropical illness a year later. 
I bought this magazine to see if I could find any lists of French war heroes, but I was unsuccessful.
This issue came with a free pole.
In WWII, the Italians had this war flag:
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(white eagle on white ground).
So do not mistake it with the French one, Dangermouse!
On the other hand, they were damned clever to avoid warfare on the side of their “partner” Nazi German if possible.
Mussolini didn’t care whose side he was on, so long as it was the winning side.
Finally we was [hanging] upside down 
Finally we was [hanging] upside down [/quote]
The fortunes of war, my dear boy. The fortunes of war.