Mont Kennedy in Crépy: a little piece of America in the Laonnois region

In the very early 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, Couvron Air Base was chosen to be brought up to NATO standards in order to host a US Air Force base. This became Laon-Couvron Air Base, which became fully operational in 1954.

Many American military personnel and their families settled there: more than 200 of these families were housed in the new residential area built on the outskirts of Laon, known as ‘Marquette-sous-Laon’ or Cité Marquette. And it was because this nearby hill on the heights of Crépy welcomed all these expatriates for picnics on Sundays that this site – formerly known as Mont Sérival – quite naturally came to be named, following the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in late 1963, in tribute to this American presence.

They have now left, but you can still go and stroll along this wooded hill and imagine the atmosphere that must have prevailed here some sixty years ago…
Follow the road and you’ll find yourself on the plateau of Mont Kennedy, which, incidentally, rises to the same altitude as the western part of Laon Hill – 182 metres!