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Like a few other folks I spoke to, he alluded to the long-ago warning from Charles de Gaulle, the legendary French president and wartime general.

Rene is 87, and clearly remembers August 1944, when his mother took him into the streets and lifted him up in her arms, among the crowds of Parisians, so he could see the 6-feet-5-inch-tall De Gaulle march into the city after it had been liberated by the Allies.

The French may adore Hollywood cinema, country music and the allure of the American Dream, and celebrate ties that date back to America's war of independence, but they have kept some distance too - shunning what's known here as "Le Woke-isme" and, today more than ever, celebrating President De Gaulle's determination to build an entirely French-owned nuclear deterrent separate from both Nato and the US.

The two governments recently agreed to transform Camp de Gaulle, the longstanding French base in Gabon, into a new training centre that they will operate jointly.

So in the end Charles de Gaulle was right.