BORDEAUX: Since launching his US presidential campaigns, Mitt Romney has often scorned France, but those who knew him here remember a charismatic young man with an affinity for French life.
Romney came to France in 1966 as a 19-year-old Mormon missionary and stayed for two-and-a-half years through the turbulent period of the May 1968 uprising, before returning home to begin a career in business and politics.
He worked with fellow volunteers in the gritty port cities of Brest and Le Havre, before transferring to Bordeaux and eventually Paris, rising at 6:00 am to go door-to-door seeking converts to his minority faith.
"He was a strapping fellow, very charismatic," said Andre Salarnier, a 79-year-old member of the Mormon chapel in Talence, near Bordeaux. "He often came to eat with us. He loved my wife's Breton pancakes."
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has not caught on in France, where it has only 36,000 followers among 14 million worldwide, but Romney and his fellow missionaries worked hard for their rare conversions.
Back home, Romney was the privileged son of a rich businessman and state governor, but in France he sometimes lived a simple life on around $100 per month, sharing cramped digs with his colleagues.
In a recent speech to supporters in the United States, he reportedly said he had flushed the squat toilets with a "bucket affair", saying to himself: "Wow, I sure am lucky to have been born in the United States of America."
As primary voting gets underway in New Hampshire, Romney is now frontrunner for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination, and has made criticism of France and French life a key note of his campaigns.
In a 2007 speech, for example, he made the bizarre claim: "In France for instance I'm told that marriage is now frequently contracted in seven-year terms, where either party may move on when their time is up. How shallow."
He failed to win the 2007 Republican nomination, and afterwards his campaign plan was leaked to the Boston Globe newspaper, which expressed surprise at what it called "Romney's French complex".
"Enmity toward France... is a recurring theme of the document," the Globe reported. "The European Union, it says at one point, wants to 'drag America down to Europe's standards'."
The paper said Romney had planned to accuse potential Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton of seeking to make America more like France. "Hillary = France" said a campaign PowerPoint slide.
He even printed bumper stickers reading: "First, not France."
But in France few people heard of the campaign trail rhetoric and Romney's renewed candidacy has revived warm memories of a "natural leader".
Salarnier described him as a "persuasive young man... with a certain stature, very friendly, very open and very francophile".
Romney's fellow missionaries also have fond memories of the time.
"We set off together on July 4, 1966," recalled Mike Bush, a former US Air Force officer who now teaches French at a Mormon university and operates a pro-Romney blog, mitttheman.com.
Back in 1966, both young men were assigned patches in southwest France, where they prayed, studied scripture and sought converts. Romney's natural leadership instinct soon saw him become regional coordinator.
"He worked very hard, was well organised," Bush recalled, speaking French in a telephone interview. "His father was governor of Michigan, but he barely spoke of it. He didn't push himself forward."
Romney took simple lodgings in the working class Capucins district of central Bordeaux, capital of the French wine industry -- although as a teetotal Mormon, Romney would not have been able to enjoy that.
His flatmate, young US missionary Steven Bang, recalls a dramatic day out.
"While driving that morning, we noticed a burning apartment building, near the road on which we were travelling," he said. "Mr Romney immediately pulled the car off the road, and led the way to the burning building.
"There was a considerable amount of smoke... his selflessness and courage in leading us into that building. It is an example I will never forget."
In 1968 France was convulsed by a general strike and student uprising against General Charles de Gaulle's government. The economy was paralysed and Romney was forced to organise runs to Spain to gather funds for the mission.
When he recovered, he found himself in charge of the entire Mormon operation in France, still at a very young age. Friends from the time were impressed with the energy and determination he displayed after his unexpected promotion.
In Paris, he did not need a bucket to flush his toilet. The church was headquartered in a palatial townhouse in the plush 16th district, with stained glass windows and a team of domestic servants.
The current director of the Mormon church's religious institute in Paris, Christian Euvrard remembered a cheerful young man "with an affinity for the French spirit".
"I saw him several years later, he had wonderful memories of France and the French," Euvrard said.
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