In France, about a dozen AFN stations operated, with AFN Orléans, as the studio control station. The network broadcast music, shows, and news relayed from AFN Frankfurt, locally produced shows and other features aimed at the American soldiers and their families stationed in France. In particular, a whole team of reporters and technicians was sent to Le Mans, France, to report the 24-hour auto race, at a time when Ford was doing its best to beat the Ferraris, and finally succeeded. AFN France broadcast in 50-watts, frequency modulated transmitters purchased from a French manufacturer (TRT), type OZ 305. The network employed a technical director, a program director, several military American broadcast professionals, and some French studio operators, record librarians, secretaries and maintenance technicians. The Frankfurt network programming was received, then re-fed from AFN Orléans studios to another studio-equipped affiliate, AFN Poitiers, and its repeater transmitters via modulation lines rented from the French postmaster department. AFN Poitiers, based at Aboville Caserne, Poitiers, France, home of an Army logistical command and a major Communication Zone Signal Corps agency, served Army depots and installations in Southwestern France with locally originated programs and network feeds from AFN Orlean via Frankfurt, Germany. It was the only other studio station affiliate of AFN Orleans because of the large American military presence and its resident Department of Defense dorm school for children of American military and civilian families assigned to Poitiers, and the American installations located throughout Southwestern France. Children living in outlying American military installations and communities commuted to Poitiers once a week for daily classes and departed for home by bus and train. AFN France was dismantled in 1967, when U.S. forces left France due to the French government's decision of President (General) Charles de Gaulle to withdraw its forces from NATO's military command. The French employees were dismissed but were granted a severance pay (in French francs and taxable) of one month per year of service, paid by the U.S. Army to the French government, in dollars (all the French employees were managed by a specially created service: le Bureau d'Aide aux Armées Alliées AAA).