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Between 1950 and 1967, for the first time in its history, France welcomed foreign forces in peace-time on its soil. What is left of these lesser-known pages of our history?

The signature of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949 and the beginning of the Korean war a year later led to a massive influx of GIs to Europe. From this date on, the American army set up a series of infrastructures on French territory, including about fifteen air bases, aimed at ensuring the provision of its troops stationed in Germany, in direct contact with the soviet adversary.
During the high point of this presence - between 1953 and 1958 - there were about 100,000 Americans, soldiers, civil servants and families living in France. Communes such as Châteauroux (in the Indre-et-Loire department) and Chaumont (in the Haute-Marne department) entered a golden age - the bases employed nearly 28,000 French civilians at the time.
But the retreat stated in 1959, when General de Gaulle expressed his refusal to stock American nuclear arms on French territory. And, after a brief reactivation linked to the Berlin crisis in the early 1960s, the American bases started to grind to a halt and were definitively evacuated with the decision of the French government to leave the NATO integrated commands in 1966.
From the Marshall plan in France, we retain the image of growth made possible, of the reconstruction of a country that had been ruined physically and morally by the Occupation. But what traces has this American presence left on French society?