The General and his wife finally returned last week for a brief visit, 18 months after they left for "home" in Wiltshire, leaving me truly saddened at their going.

They were two of the first people to warmly welcome me here. They included me in their many soirees and lunches; entertaining in that seemingly effortless, yet semi-formal style, which still clings to the rank long after retirement.

Both then in their 70s, tall, handsome and dignified yet filled with a mischievous sense of fun, they inhabited a fine maison de maitre filled with good silver, crystal bowls overflowing with cream roses and round, full-skirted tables stacked with books.

When the late summer light poured through the full-length windows on to linen-covered sofas and fine Pakistani rugs, and glasses chinked with G&Ts or Bloody Marys, one felt all was right with the world. The old world; and, for me, this new one.

The General’s service history was long, honourable and covered several countries. If we skimmed around his role in Northern Ireland at the start of the Troubles, it was out of an unspoken, mutual courtesy of our cultural differences. Plus, the private, black-and-white views of a firebrand 20-year-old Irish reporter covering those frenzied first months for an English newspaper had long ago fudged into the mature knowledge that nothing is as right as it feels at the time.

And anyway, here we all were on the neutral ground of yet another country.

The General’s wife, a wry, self-deprecating Borders Scot, made light of her role in the army, preferring to tell of her faux-pas and put herself down as a not very good army wife. The fact she was a military nursing sister when she met him was also played down.

But anyone looking into her sharp, intelligent eyes and watching her mingle with the disparate groups of expats and French at her parties knew she was the diplomatic wife par excellence.

Through work I had occasional interplay with the military. And, later in life, socially also. Strangely, given the above, I have also had a strange attraction towards them, and share, with many, a bizarre enjoyment of military history and strategy, with shelves of books dedicated to such. God knows why, but there it is.

I’ve dined in both officers’ and sergeants’ messes around the world and have had to fight the urge to stand up and salute as the senior officer arrived last, even though every chord of my feminist body shrieked “no”. But I so wanted to.

Usually I was the only woman present, which of course I enjoyed. And, as a female reporter in the late 1960s and 1970s, I had the wistful realisation that I was simply an alien guest in a man’s world I could never fully understand.

Sorry, I’ve meandered off again. Back to France.

At the last count, I know four generals, three colonels and a handful of majors around here. One is French. Without exception they are all charming, amusing, entertaining and totally lacking in side, unlike many of the middle managers who have landed up here.

The chippy reading this will bristle at the thought of further colonisation by the Brits, particularly the military. And I understand, and once would perhaps have agreed with that in my ignorance.

The “mix only with the French” brigade will take such thoughts as proof that Little England lives on in the upper echelons of the bloody forces retiring early and tell me to get down and dirty with my neighbouring farmers.

Actually it’s the ex-military who dig in, learn French, seek out the neighbours … and prosper. They have spent their lives moving, changing, uprooting, learning how to mingle. It’s why they make the best immigrants anywhere. But also why they ultimately don’t know where home is.

The General’s wife wasn’t sure she wanted to go to France in the first place, but agreed to do another five-year posting to please her husband.

And she did her best, before returning to where they spent their young army years, Wiltshire. Neither came from there. They are now within driving range of at least four similar couples who started army life with them and returned, like swallows to the past. And are you happy, I ask? They are. Totally. At times, blissfully.

I remember first meeting them and asking them if they were here for good. They both replied they didn’t want to die here, which I found oddly sweet at the time.

I understand it now.

At this moment though I’m not sure where I want to die. If ever. n