Post by Raoul Duke on May 9, 2017 9:16:44 GMT -5
Having fun?
Written by one of your own.
Working with the French Army
Almost every time I tell someone I worked with the French, I get comments like, “You mean the French have an army?”, “Did they surrender to you the day you got there?”, or some other variation of the “cheese-eating surrender monkey” theme. And if they don’t outright insult French troops, they usually dismiss my experience by saying, “Oh, you must have been working with the Foreign Legion. They’re not really French.”
Those comments really get on my nerves. And they’re flat out wrong. I served with a few Legionnaires and a lot of regular French troops. Whatever the French public’s or government’s politics are, their soldiers are brave, well-trained, in fantastic shape and aggressive. Describing those men as cowards is absolutely unfair.
Admittedly, I had a low opinion of French soldiers before I served with them. In Kosovo, the French military had a reputation as being politically biased and ineffective. As a UN cop I worked with French gendarmes, a type of military police officer. They didn’t like the regular French military either.
So in early 2009, when I was told I was going to a French firebase in Afghanistan, I was a little worried. I didn’t speak French, didn’t have a positive view of their troops, and was worried I’d be stuck inside the wire with people who didn’t want to be in combat. I had spent all of my Iraq deployment in a humvee on a convoy escort team; that mission sucked, and I wanted nothing to do with fobbit life or force protection. In Afghanistan I wanted to spend as much time as possible on foot with guys who wanted to fight. The French didn’t seem that type.
Then I started investigating. I went to soldiers who had been in Afghanistan for a while and asked what they thought about the French. And I heard something I didn’t expect, a phrase I was to hear many times during my deployment:
“The only soldiers here who really want to fight are the Americans, Brits and French.”
Almost every time I tell someone I worked with the French, I get comments like, “You mean the French have an army?”, “Did they surrender to you the day you got there?”, or some other variation of the “cheese-eating surrender monkey” theme. And if they don’t outright insult French troops, they usually dismiss my experience by saying, “Oh, you must have been working with the Foreign Legion. They’re not really French.”
Those comments really get on my nerves. And they’re flat out wrong. I served with a few Legionnaires and a lot of regular French troops. Whatever the French public’s or government’s politics are, their soldiers are brave, well-trained, in fantastic shape and aggressive. Describing those men as cowards is absolutely unfair.
Admittedly, I had a low opinion of French soldiers before I served with them. In Kosovo, the French military had a reputation as being politically biased and ineffective. As a UN cop I worked with French gendarmes, a type of military police officer. They didn’t like the regular French military either.
So in early 2009, when I was told I was going to a French firebase in Afghanistan, I was a little worried. I didn’t speak French, didn’t have a positive view of their troops, and was worried I’d be stuck inside the wire with people who didn’t want to be in combat. I had spent all of my Iraq deployment in a humvee on a convoy escort team; that mission sucked, and I wanted nothing to do with fobbit life or force protection. In Afghanistan I wanted to spend as much time as possible on foot with guys who wanted to fight. The French didn’t seem that type.
Then I started investigating. I went to soldiers who had been in Afghanistan for a while and asked what they thought about the French. And I heard something I didn’t expect, a phrase I was to hear many times during my deployment:
“The only soldiers here who really want to fight are the Americans, Brits and French.”
It's a long read, but knock yourself out if you want
chrishernandezauthor.com/2013/07/09/working-with-the-french-army/
