Thank you, Nate, for rescuing this. I hope Jess is okay.
And much gratitude to Jacques Cornillion for spilling his story of the encounter, and to beloved Trickfox for the translations. I know little about the surrounding historical events in France, at the time, other than that their first nuclear reactor plant became operational in 1956 and, in the same year, SudOest began serious research efforts that would lead to the eventual development of the supersonic Concorde.
According to "Twigsnapper" the Paris trip that was memorialized with this photo, taken on Townsend's birthday, had something to do with the Lionel "Buster Crabb" disappearance "across the pond" in the Portsmouth harbor.
There is much that is hinky in the detailed facts of the Crabb story but this summary will have to do, lest we go too far off track, too soon.
MI6 recruited Crabb in 1956 to investigate the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze that had taken head of state Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin on a diplomatic mission to Britain.[8] According to Peter Wright in his book Spycatcher (1987), Crabb was sent to investigate Ordzhonikidze's propeller, a new design that Naval Intelligence wanted to examine. On 19 April 1956, Crabb dived into Portsmouth Harbour and his MI6 controller never saw him again. Years later, a Russian who had been on board Ordzhonikidze claimed that the Soviets were expecting him that night (after being tipped off about the British operation by a mole) and that he dived into the dark and dirty waters beneath the Ordzhonikidze, hunted down Crabb, and slit his air hose and his throat with a knife. Crabb's companion in the Sally Port Hotel took all his belongings and even the page of the hotel register on which they had written their names.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Crabb
For some reason Pathe news was there to film Crabb's dive. I have seen the footage, and it evokes a poignant sadness, to know he will never be heard from again.
SIDENOTE: Henri de la Falaise, Gloria Swanson's 3rd husband and her partner in the formation of a 1939 venture devoted to rescuing European scientists from the Nazis, was once employed as the American and European representative for Pathe and directed a couple of films for their American RKO subsidiary.
I have been told/led to believe that the cocky and fashionable young blade in the nifty suit is Twigsnapper, himself. The remainder of the characters are sailors, wearing what (I think) are uniforms from the East German navy at the time. I have seen the original photo. Penciled in the back top left corner is “99/020/562 3/18/56". The first sequence was the underground code number,used by "Verne" aka French Resistance war hero, Jacques Bergier (author of the 1960
Morning of the Magicians and the less popular, 1956
Secret Weapons, Secret Agents.). The second marks the date it was taken.
SIDENOTE: Unfortunately, I did not give my source for this information, when I first discovered it, but Fouquet's was located just down the street from the address given at the time for Bergier's office. It is possible that it was he who took the photo, but it amuses me to think that he is the waiter in the background.