Hop, Skip and a Bunk

As a legionnaire, weekends are a tricky lot. Kind of like the United States’ political landscape, there are only really two choices. Stay in or go out. The former boasts economic advantages on the scale of avoiding train fare (even with our military discount it costs a healthy €55 for a return ticket to Paris), hotels and a Friday and Saturday night of booze-fuelled mayhem. It also offers the nerdier (pardon, “more dedicated”) of our brethren to prepare for an approaching week of regimental service by cleaning and ironing their uniforms to meticulous, irreproachable standards. One might even squeeze in the odd run or trip to the gym. Of course, the flip side to that argument is that you avoid all that boring nonsense and go party like it’s the last 48 hours of your life, before waking up on Monday morning really wishing it had have been.

Hmm, tough call.

So a recent predicament scattered before my seemingly endless traipse towards freedom presented itself in the form of the closure of my long-frequented hotel in Paris’s trendy, canal-decorated 10^th arrondissement. An absolute fluke within the Parisian metropolis, I negotiated a rather profound perplexity to discover, at its end, a double bed and an en suite bathroom for the gobsmacking price of €35 per night. Now, there’s a fine line (at least, in my opinion) between horribly dirty and uninhabitable and just good old “rustic”. I choose to consider my little hidden gem of a hotel as well within the “rustic” category, and while some winter nights without functioning heat may have posed a problem, I considered it merely a challenge for a resourceful legionnaire like myself to go out and find another party to help raise the temperature. Ah, one in every port, and all that…..

So the hunt began in earnest (for the hotel room, not the heat-providing other party!!) back in Guiana as I set to making advanced plans for my first weekend back in the first world. As the ringing tone buzzed on to infinity my expression turned from one of anticipated joyous relief to on of increasing realization at the immediate need to uncover a new AFFORDABLE digs before the inaugural post-Guiana weekend arrived. Not an easy feat, well certainly not at €35 per night. Cue the downloading of several long-considered unnecessary iPhone apps – hotels.com, booking.com, etc, etc.

To say the gauntlet of testing new, affordable hotels in Paris city center is a colorfully challenging one would be a grave understatement. On the bright side, legionnaires are one of the lesser-known entities up here in the northern hemisphere of La France. Unlike the southern sprawls of Marseille, Toulouse, Montpellier and Avignon where our reputation precedes us and service may undertake a more “reduced capacity”. A skin-head and a dodgy French accent can get you blacklisted quicker than executing a toiletry act in public along the Mediterranean coast. C’est la vie, quoi.

Hotel No. 1 (I shan’t be naming the hotels here for fear of making future Paris hotel-hunting for my readers all too easy) was a rather expensive affair, but the only viable option at such short notice. Retailing at €115 per night, it certainly hit the pocket hard but such was the relative luxury, modernity and cleanliness of the room that the pinching price soon faded to obscurity. Another potential glitch of Parisian hotels that was welcome in its absence was the supplement for a second guest sharing the room (normally between €10 and €15). Not so much a financial hazard as an ambience-killing headache as money needs to exchange hands before one can retreat to one’s room with a guest. It’s the little things that glue together to form a semblance of dignity, you see.

Having had slightly more time to prepare for my future Parisian weekends during my three-week holiday after the South American mission, I decided to really hunt far and wide and deep within the underbelly of cheap hotels in the greater Paris area. My next port of call made a point of referring to themselves as a “residence” and not a hotel. You see, a residence boasts of a mini kitchenette to fully cook one’s own food within the same room – certainly a handy addition for a penny-pinching legionnaires of a certain Putin-esque persuasion. A reasonable €70 per night in a decent part of town, I decided to give it a try. Quickly was I to learn just how non-existent certain rules (and rather, dimensions) regarding privacy were. Let’s just say that thin walls combined with two grumpy old grannies in the adjacent room meant that supplement or not, my position (behave!!!) in this establishment became rather untenable rather quickly.

“Oh I’m zorry, I tot zis us France!!!??”

They say that the third time’s a charm. And so it proved with the “final” (?) hotel encountered on my long and arduous search for weekend accommodation. Located (perhaps somewhat ominously for an aspiring writer) right by the entrance to Père Lachaise Cemetery, the staff proved most welcoming and any notion of a problem inviting guests back for the night was dismissed with a….. er….. dismissive hand gesture indicating the redundancy of the enquiry. At a not-too-shabby €65 per night, I can enjoy free WiFi, a brand-spanking new bathroom and a TRUE 24-hour reception where one doesn’t need to hammer on a glass door and wait 15 minutes for the kid asleep on the floor behind the counter to get up and open the door, unleashing a violent wave of sweat-drenched air. I know, I know, I shouldn’t be complaining. That was, after all, the €35 per night joint.

At the end of the day, all a transient weekend warrior like me really wants is somewhere to throw his bags down, grab the odd shower and (if not spending it elsewhere) crash for the night on something resembling a mattress. Anything beyond that would be immediately deemed superfluous. Once it’s close to myfavorite bar, and no more than €70 a night (all be it twice what I was paying in my twilight-zone fluke of a crash palace) I’ll be a happy (and, more importantly, sane) legionnaire, without want of anything more. Well, perhaps maybe an extra inch or two in thickness……

FOR THE WALLS, for the walls, sheesh!

The Big Leagues

The soldiering profession trades in strange currency. We barter with stories of scrapes and scares, hardships and insulated joys. We profit from the general esteem in which we’re held by a willing (if ultimately unknowing) civilian public.

Wherever we go, a certain line of credit is afforded us, allowing for minor lapses in social decorum or unconscious switches to military terminology that leaves our unarmed counterparts slightly bemused. It’s our leeway. Our permissible shortcomings in a long and sometimes endless road to reconversion. Back to life, but not as we knew it.

I’ve just waved goodbye to the end of my first true holiday in over five years. Of course one is in receipt of generous amounts of annual leave each year in the French Foreign Legion, beginning with 20 days in your first year of service and rising to 45 working days (yes, 9 whole weeks!!) for your fourth and fifth years. Naturally such extended time off can only be taken when feasible – someone returning from six months in Afghanistan can’t turn around and immediately demand 2 months. Nevertheless, it is a rather agreeable component of the Legion machine and being called into the lieutenant’s office to sign our permission slip is probably the only time that entering said office can be described as anything approaching pleasant.

When I say that this recent holiday was my first in five years, I must qualify that statement for your benefit. You see, a very defined path has been relentlessly carved out by my good self over these past 4 years in the service of France. Dublin to Paris and back again. And again. And again. Repeat repeat repeat. I am not ashamed to admit that each sliver of freedom creeping under the door has been consumed in a noble bid to visit my loving family and closest, oldest friends back in Ireland. Less an obligation, more a welcomed respite from the distanced and disconnected goings-on 600km away. Nipping homesickness in the bud, putting a smile on the mammy’s face. Still, the cycle needed to be broken sooner or later, and with a mere 10 months left to negotiate on my contract, there was an increasing feeling of “now or never”. Break the mold. Shake it up a bit. Rub it in the faces of the lads when we all get back to regiment. You know, the traditional reasons for taking an extravagant holiday. I boarded that plane expecting luxury, relaxation and exoticism. Inevitably I found all of that. But one could also say I cashed in all my chips in one foul swoop in order to earn a glimpse into a previously unknown world. That of the VFW.

The VFW (“Veterans of Foreign Wars”) is a veteran’s organization for US soldiers who have specifically fought in a foreign conflict and who have their medals to prove it. Unlike the American Legion – a fine institution working to support all former US military personnel, the VFW consists purely of combat-experienced vets. If someone had have told me that I’d be welcomed into a “VFW” post all the way out in Fairport, NY, I would’ve scratched my head in confusion. Thankfully, an enlightening education awaited me inside.

Staying with my close friend Marianne and her husband Sam in Fairport for the weekend, they invited me to the “club” on a Friday night. Sam was a highly decorated US soldier, earning numerous medals as well as a purple heart during a tour of duty in the First Gulf War. I had no idea, and the invite was a pleasant if somewhat bizarre surprise. Escorting me in to the club, I could have been forgiven for thinking I’d entered a type of bingo hall. Little snacks and nibbles decorated the billiards table as husbands and wives sat chatting at the bar. I very quickly became the centre of attention, however, my unrecognized face and youthful demeanor slowly drawing a crowd discretely seeking an explanation for my presence in this rather exclusive club. Sam and Marianne’s escort obviously lent me some authoritative muscle, but the revelation that I myself was a veteran of the Afghanistan conflict (and a French Foreign Legionnaire to boot) really set the party in motion. Dick – the commander of this particular VFW post – gave me an informal tour of my new surroundings. The most poignant focal point was undoubtedly the table-for-one, a small, simple and immaculately set table in memory of the lost soldier – a tribute to all those soldiers either killed in action or still missing, in some cases for longer than one cares to imagine. Outside, Sam showed me Freedom Hill – a magnificently imposing installation in this sleepy up-state town with a helicopter and tank perched majestically on top of a beautifully manicured grassy knoll. A cobblestone walkway further back sported a dazzling array of inscribed bricks, each displaying a soldier’s name of times gone by, from WW1 through WW2 and onwards to Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf wars and even Afghanistan and Iraq. A truly moving monument to the servicemen of the United States.

The rest of my trip to New York City and Washington D.C. was nothing short of breathtaking, a long overdue break from the norm and a chance to lose myself in childhood fantasies of The Big Apple. All the major attractions were covered, old friends were visited for the first time in ages, new friends were met for the first time full stop. But despite all the wonderful things seen, activities undertaking and people encountered, that unexpected trip to the VFW post in Fairport NY stands out as the undisputed highlight. Sometimes making light of my affiliation to the military profession is an attempt to distance myself from a certain perceived machismo, an oftentimes unqualified bravado that has me running for the antithesis as a cure from the plague of poor pretenders. But that trip to the VFW, the conversations enjoyed with great (and greatly humble) men and their lovely wives, the respect shown to me as a Legionnaire is something that I won’t forget in a hurry.

In fact, it may just have restored a little bit of faith and pride in this messy business. Vive the land of the free, home of the brave.

Vive la Légion.

Winds of Change

One can only laugh at the squeaking, groaning balloon of anticipation hovering ominously over the shoulder as a return to normality beckons following any lengthy stay abroad. What’s changed? What’s different? Who’s gone? Who’s arrived? The inevitable, statistically guaranteed pin-prick to burst all excitement and send our little balloons hissing and squirting in to space is always greeted with surprise. The ensuing deflation is comical in its absurdity. Some people never learn.

As the bus slithered through the cast-iron green and red gates of our regiment, the sleeping soldiers roused themselves sufficiently to gaze through the steamed windows at the forgotten sights of the security post, parade square and current batch of error-prone detainees heading off to work in there orange vests. The collective sigh literally rustled the bus curtains. The light drizzle in Marseille as we exited the aircraft provided a welcome relief from French Guiana’s excruciatingly hot dry season, but rising to our mountain retreat saw the weather deteriorate with an alarming rapidity, leaving us to disembark from our military bus to be greeted by howling winds and icy rains that seemed just a tad exaggerated for late September (even in our despicably hostile alpine plateau). Reality check? - er, check!

Some important information awaited us, dispatched from the cracked, pursed lips of our captain at the afternoon assembly. Yes, yes, everybody wished to escape on a well-earned vacation as quickly as possible but first there were a few key points to be addressed. The dreaded regimental administrative gauntlet needed to be run once more, despite the fact that only four months previously every legionnaire had travelled from office-to-office offering and updating every single code, account number, important date and identity-related detail. That much had not changed in the intervening four months. Our silent protests fell on deaf ears. It was to be completed once more, encore une fois, only this time a markedly more inhospitable office staff awaited us, perhaps secretly sour at our flying visit in between having returned from a sunny well-paid vacation only to jet off on another.

“Ça va? Tu t’es bien branlé les couilles en Guyane? Vas-y, degage!”

Ah the warm welcome from our comrades back at regiment, the solidarity can be overwhelming at times.

One of the key points to be taken on board by the legionnaires before hitting the holiday road was a change in French rail policy. Once upon a time an exasperated legionnaire racing for his imminently departing train to Paris could  bypass the irritation of actually purchasing a ticket and just hop right on the TGV, subsequently seeking out the on-board controller (or not) to remedy the ticketless situation. Most of the time, one was required to pay a standard €10 fee on top of the actual ticket price (a ticket price sliced down to a mere 25% for us poor French soldiers). Typically amicable exchanges between legionnaires and controllers normally aware of our situation took place more often than not in the train’s bar, and everyone went away happy. No more, however. From recently, the French rail authorities issued a directive penalizing any soldier without a ticket by obliging him to pay the full CIVILIAN price for the journey undertaken. Rather harsh, given our unpredictable schedules, etc, but nevertheless an unforgiving new reality for all looking to enjoy a weekend away from the grind. We have been warned.

Holidays aren’t dangling tantalizing on the horizon for all, though. A certain portion of lads returning from the jungle were thrown mercilessly and without a chance to catch their breath into a Mountain Team-Leader course, lasting four weeks at the end of which they’ll finally get to unwind in the civilian world for a vacation of their own. The Monday lunchtime of our release into the hedonistic wild saw the trainees prepare for an afternoon stroll up our local summit, Mt. Ventoux. Naturally priority was given to the mountaineers in the queue for chow. That the queue wasn’t budging a single inch during a 20 minute period raised a few early alarm bells, understandably so. The acne-ridden Chinese legionnaire stared vacantly at the empty metallic dish where several poorly-cooked French fries once lay. Staring. Assumedly waiting for reinforcements to arrive from the fryer out back, but not looking overly concerned should they fail to show. The mountaineers’ patience began to dwindle. Shortly afterwards, some turned around and set off on the search for a self-funded alternative. Alas the supermarket (normally open at that time) was closed for some vague, inaudible reason. The company club was open, but had yet to be properly stocked since the company itself had returned from Guiana. Eventually, the departure for the mountain beckoned and off set more than a few trainees with little more than a handful of Mars bars and a bottle of water. Some things, as I said, NEVER change.

Even coming back to Ireland, a certain grounding was in order as my traditional expectation of a world apart gave way to the gradual confirmation of “business as usual”. I temporarily felt my star rise as the YouTube stunt lead to newspaper inches and a radio interview. Then an interesting chap named Colin Carroll contacted me in the name of mutual benefit. Reading even a few lines about this fella and his wealth of entrepreneurial ideas left me feeling a tad, well, realistic. To see what I mean, check this out.

As for the mountaineers, sure I felt for them, but couldn’t afford too much thought to their deplorable plight all the same. I had a suitcase to pack, after all. And as I hammer out this blog in the departures lounge of Dublin Airport I once more, one last time, offer a moment’s reflection to their glacier-navigating, rock-climbing exploits at this very moment. It all sounds (and to be honest, IS) fantastic, energetic fun. Then again, so does a 10-day trip to New York. To each their own, I suppose.