A French Kiss Could Save One's Life

Taking a peep into the world history, I would love to revive a few facts and fictions here.

As we all know, France had a powerful President named Charles De Gaulle (22 Nov 1890 – 9 Nov 1970) , was a French General and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969. Earlier Algeria was a part of French rule and the Evian Agreements had granted the independence to Algeria, which in turn supposed to have created enemies motivated to assassinate President De Gaulle.

OAS was supposed to be one such anti-DeGaulle organization which planned the famous assassination attempt against De Gaulle during Aug 1962, which was supposed to be the last ever unsuccessful attempts against De Gaulle in the history. De Gaulle was miraculously safe in spite of 14 bullet holes into the Citroen DS car carrying the President.

Jumping to the fictional part, relating to the best selling thriller "The Day of the Jackal" by Fredrick Forsyth, unfolds the famous ever assassination attempt aftermath the 1962 attempt. This is my favorite author, he mixes the facts with fiction wonderfully. As in the case of this novel, that depicts one of the most unparalleled man-hunt of a relentless killer code named "Jackal" ,who was supposed to be the man who got closest to the killing moments of the President De Gaulle.

Yet, the Jackal fails to take into account the gallic custom of France, kissing both cheeks as opposed to the hands shake. Also for the fact that Jackal always aimed the head instead of a chest shot. De Gaulle was known for his towering stature, Jackal's first shot misses De Gaulle as he bends over to kiss the medal-of-honour recipient. Jackal is killed even before he could think of the next shot.

I am unsure of the fact that this spine-chilling novel should end this way, but I am very sure of the fact that "A French Kiss Could Save One's Life".