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NEW // Mont Kennedy in Crépy: a little piece of America in the Laonnois region
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Description
In the early 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, work began on upgrading Couvron Air Base to accommodate a US Air Force base.
This was to be Laon-Couvron Air Base, which became fully operational in 1954.
Many American servicemen and their families settled there: more than 200 of them settled in the new housing estate built on the outskirts of Laon and called "Marquette-sous-Laon", or cité Marquette.
And it was because this nearby hill on the Crépy heights welcomed all these expatriates for picnics on Sundays that this site - formerly known as Mont Sérival - quite naturally received its name as a tribute to this American presence after the murder of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy at the end of 1963.
They're gone now, but you can still take a stroll up this wooded hill and think about the atmosphere that must have reigned here some sixty years ago!
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Anecdote
When you're there, bear in mind that this place may well have been trodden by one of the legends of US indie rock, Don Fleming*, who as a child lived for a few months on the Couvron base, his military father being stationed there...
* founder of the bands Velvet Monkeys and Gumball, and producer of Sonic Youth and Hole, among others!
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