The Showdown (Part 1)

A former squad leader of mine had a saying. He wheeled it out whenever fundamental differences no longer refused to remain hidden in the shadows between two colleagues. He called it “une histoire d’hommes”, which basically meant that rank went out the window and whatever was boiling over between two guys needed to be spilt on to the kitchen floor for the men-in-question to mop up. Come to think of it, this ex-squad leader wheeled this little nugget out a lot. Mais ça c’est une autre histoire.

And so, I suppose, have I reached my very own “histoire d’hommes” with my platoon commander. I don’t lay the blame for the situation arising solely at his door, nor do I believe for one second that he wasn’t entirely capable of diffusing it before it reached breaking point. We are both, to an extent, culpable. We are both, after all, only men.

It all started a while back now when, 2 months in advance, I had submitted my desired dates for my end-of-contract annual leave. All legionnaires are required to consume all remaining holidays before their contract ends, thereby avoiding the sticky issue of being reimbursed in cash for days not taken as they leave the Legion through the front gates of Aubagne. My reason for submitting my request so far in advance was to make it back to Dublin for my niece’s First Holy Communion. With two months’ notice, I felt confident that my high standing with my superiors and this lieutenant in particular would see an obstacle-free route to confirmation of my leave. Little did I know that my LT was a master procrastinator suffering from a chronic fear of bringing anything whatsoever up the line. Fantastic!

A month after my request was submitted, we found ourselves once again back in Charles de Gaulle airport for another bout of VIGIPIRATE. Here, I approached the LT to enquire as to the status of my request. He bashfully informed me that the captain was hard to get hold of as he was always away in Paris on day-leave. This reeked of BS given the fact that a holiday request is small fries for the captain and that a simple phone call could have accorded my dates. Still I remained patient, imagining that the request would be dealt with upon our return to regiment. Ha! Quelle imagination!!

Back at base with only 3 weeks until my niece’s communion and gradually augmenting plane fares, I delicately pressed for progress once more. To clarify, I was seeking to be released on a Thursday evening in order to fly home the Friday and be present for the church ceremony on the Saturday. I was now informed that the colonel would be reviewing troops on the Thursday and Friday and that he wasn’t sure if I’d get out as early as desired. I informed him of the rising ticket prices and that any confirmation/clarification would be much obliged. I was met with “Pfff, what rising prices?? Easy Jet fly return to Dublin for €30, don’t give me that!!”.

My plane ticket had risen from €140 to €260 since my initial request was submitted.

Still I waited, until the week before I was due (?) to hit the road and the Thursday evening the LT drops in to my room, informing me that due to the colonel’s presence in the company over those two days, it would not be possible to leave before the Friday evening. I expressed my disappointment but confirmed my understanding of the situation, and thanked him for dealing with my request (through clenched teeth, I might add). Right so, shitty news digested, time to book my flights. €280 out of pocket, but both home and my little niece were in sight.

The next day we had our traditional Friday room review, and upon passing inspection over my own quarters (of which I was the sole inhabitant as the other two lodgers were away on long-term training courses) the LT casually drops the bomb that I’d more than likely be finished with the colonel on Thursday and could head off that evening if I so desired. Not even 24 hours after I’d booked my €280 flights home, of which the cost of changing would’ve equaled the original price. Slightly less patient, I explained the redundant timing of his generous announcement.

He shrugged. I expected no more, no less.

Jump to the Friday of the following week and I’m packing the last few toiletries into my bag when in walks the LT.

“O’Shea, when are you due back in France at the end of your holidays?”

Rummaging in my head for the exact date, he rephrased his question.

“Will you be flying back on the Saturday/Sunday or earlier?”

I should’ve twigged it, but didn’t, and proceeded to reassure him.

“No no I’ll be back on Friday. I always give myself a few days in Paris before heading back to base.”

This pleased him, as he proceeded to inform me of a sports day up in the mountains for which the company was leaving early on the Sunday morning at the end of my holidays. He required that I be at base the Saturday evening. I paused, worked through the information I’d just received, and then politely asked him what the fuck a sports day happening while I was still technically on holidays had to do with me, 6 weeks before I was due to go civvy.

“The captain said the whole company was to be involved”, he said. Indeed when saying that, the captain was hardly thinking of my individual circumstance, I responded. Surely he need only be reminded that I was on holidays until the Sunday evening and all would be clarified.

“The captain said everyone goes, meaning you too”.

For fuck’s sake, use your little head, man. But no, master procrastinators and auctoritasophobes would never dream of using their heads. And so I left on holidays, destined to miss my niece’s communion and with a cloud of potential insubordination hanging over me. Let’s be honest, I had no intention whatsoever of cutting my holidays short, even by a day, in order to go running around the mountains in some typically idiotic and ceremonially misconceived nonsensical event, a speciality of the Legion.

Not that my LT didn’t have his chance to win me over one last time. While back in Dublin, I embarked on a tedious, oftentimes torturous and unfathomably competitive house hunt with my friend. Every landlord wanted references, both previous landlord and current employer. The former was impossible for me, having been off the grid the past 5 years. The latter was tricky, but not completely beyond my limits. I text my LT asking for a letter of reference (good character, etc etc) and received a reply telling me he’ll get around to it tomorrow. 9 DAYS LATER (and after already – SOMEHOW – securing a fabulous little place in Dublin) the letter arrives by e-mail. Now it WAS written in more-than-acceptable English, it WAS extremely complimentary, but is was ALSO 8 days late. Legion officers are hardly bogged down with paperwork. I took it as a prime example of where this “commander”s priorities lay.

I weighed up the pros and cons. Pros – nice letter. Cons – so late as to render it completely useless. If any doubt remained, it was mercilessly extinguished there and then. Fuck the sports day, I was going to soak up every last drop of holidays before heading back to base on the Sunday night.

I texted him to confirm receipt of the letter, and - perhaps in one last attempt to allow him see sense and scratch me off the sports day list - I asked if I was still included in this little outing up in the mountains. The reply was unambiguous.

“We leave early Sunday morning, you aswell.”

I wrote back to him: “With the greatest respect, LT, I won’t be back in regiment until late Sunday evening. This is to inform you now, so that you’re not waiting around for me wondering what’s happening.”

He replied: “OK, so you’ve basically fucked me over. No problem, I’ll remember this for the next time.”

What next time? I’ve 6 weeks left!!!

I replied: “I don’t enjoy doing this, LT, but perhaps better that we discuss it face to face, because I too feel like I’ve been royally fucked over. See you next week at regiment, Cpl O’Shea.”

End of transmission, and here I now type on the TGV back down to base. I predict that the company (and my wonderful LT) will be back by tomorrow evening or Tuesday latest. Interesting times ahead. I feel calm and relatively prepared. Either he’ll nip it in the bud or he’ll continue to ride his precariously high horse leaving a spot free at the pulpit for some venting from my side. Let’s see how this “histoire d’hommes” unfolds.

To be continued……..

Don’t Ask, Don’t………Ask

I’ve never subscribed to the idea of “hanging out” with my Legionnaire brethren outside of working hours. After having first remarked upon this evident pattern throughout my service, I began asking the question of whether things might have been different had I not established such a solid core of civilian friends in Paris, my destination every weekend I’m free. Would I eventually have ended up passing my spare time in the Legion’s kick-back resort in Marseille with the lads, downing beers and getting in to the odd scrape or two down by the Vieux Port? Or perhaps heading down to the infamous “Dallas” on the French/Spanish border to enjoy the company of some prostitute while my buddies shacked up in the adjacent rooms?

The fact that I couldn’t honestly contemplate participating in these activities has oftentimes led me to question my suitability for the French Foreign Legion. The Legion is constantly referred to as a family, the impossibility of heading home to one’s actual family in the evening obliging legionnaires to rally round and form deep-rooted bonds amongst eachother. The myths and legends allude to a sense of all being in the same boat, seeming eons from our native lands, gelling us closer together and instilling a sense of cohesion unparalleled in any other army or walk of life in general. A noble thought, one that I’m sure catches the eye of more than a few disillusioned and socially excluded young men the world over. However my own sensibilities have taken a knocking these past few months as guys I’d long considered close allies (closer, certainly, than the dozens considered no more than professional acquaintances) have begun showing their true colours. Suffice to say I’m not too enamoured by the revelations. Leopards, spots, and all that jazz.

Racism and principles live out a rather torrid affair within the confines of the French Foreign Legion. A fellow soldier, a brother-in-arms is supposed to be someone to whom you can entrust your life. Surely, in order to bestow such trust one must first know one’s Legionnaire comrade intimately. Surely, the men must be kindred spirits, a kin to real-life brothers. Here’s where what I call “controlled bi-polarity” comes in to play.

There’s a corporal in my section. A nice enough guy, young, a bit of a joker. We get on well, we cooperate on the execution of orders by the younger legionnaires as corporals in the same section should, I even have him as a friend on Facebook. Then one day I showed him a photo of a girl I was dating at the time. She’s French with parents from Ivory Coast and Benin respectively. His face dropped.

“You’re joking!! This is a joke!! Shut the fuck up, she’s not your girlfriend!”

I could tell immediately that the disbelief overwhelming him stemmed from a complete incomprehension at a white guy dating a black girl. I found this so disappointing but not more than bemusing. That was, until his shock gave way to disgust. A genuinely close mate of mine was beside me, and so dissuaded me from causing a scene by laying in to the kid, but the putrid racist bile that spewed forth was, to this young corporal, an honest lack of ability to fathom inter-racial relations. That, plus a regard for anyone black as somehow substandard within the human species. Sadly, guys like this are far from a secluded minority.

The bi-polarity, however, activates in situations such as this. I told him how wrong he was, how backward and offensive he was. I told him to get out of my fucking face before I clocked him, and then I spent the rest of the evening cooling off while he spent it avoiding me. The next day, it was like it never happened. I was still dating a black girl, he was still a racist, but there was work to do and hostilities slowly thawed. He later apologized for saying what he said. I tried to explain that he should be apologizing more for thinking like that in the first place than for simply articulating it, verbalizing it. Impasse reached and accepted, life trundled on. I still think he’s a racist. He still thinks I’m a perverted bleeding heart liberal. We still share the odd beer at the bar after a day’s work.

Recently, in France, debate has been raging (and laws subsequently passed) concerning gay marriage. Now homosexuality must be undoubtedly THE most ridiculed topic within the walls of the Legion. It’s the go-to put-down for anyone not showing enough effort, the primary weapon in the arsenal against a half-second hesitation. Fucking faggots, anyone who renders himself to the infirmary with anything less than a severed limb. Cock suckers, all those who’d rather read a book back in the tent than head to the bar to get shit-faced and engage in ironically homoerotic drunken hugging and such. Colleagues have frequently expressed their disgust at the idea of gays getting married. When pushed to elaborate on their outrage, the sturdiness of argument falters. Marriage? What next? Adoption? Oh……it’s already…….right, well that’s an abomination. Kids shouldn’t be exposed to that. They’ll surely grow up to be gay. What? Gay kids being born to straight parents? Well, let’s just agree to disagree, shall we?

Let’s.

In fact, what I simply adore about the homophobia pervading this and practically every army is that, depending on which statistics one places one’s confidence in, anything from one in seven to one in seventy is gay. This would mean that anywhere between 100 and 1000 current-serving legionnaires could possibly bat for the other team. The irony would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic. For every dozen or so bleeding heart liberals such as myself who find themselves having to bite their lip in the face of such sustained bigotry in the work-place, somewhere in some platoon in some bar with some drunken colleagues there must be a gay legionnaire biting his lip a whole lot harder. The shame I feel in not standing up for my principles must be tenfold for someone directly affected by the jokes, the jibes, and the ignorant hatred. And yet, no one unclenches his teeth. Why is that?

Simple. It’s simply not an option if one wishes to continue one’s career in the French Foreign Legion. This isn’t the American military under Obama. This isn’t any other Western army with a government slowly being dragged towards modernity. This is the Legion. A haven of masculine myth and Neanderthal chest-thumping where anything other than a calloused-hand Caucasian weight lifter is seen as somewhat inferior. Piping up in the name of one’s principles might alleviate some of the guilt, the unease, but will ultimately only cause greater problems for the dissenter in question. I’m not proud of it, but……..

No, you know what? I’m just not that proud of it.

To-Do List

As a corporal, every so often one finds one’s name present in big bold letters on a particularly dreaded sheet of paper posted, almost obnoxiously, behind impenetrable plates of glass inside the entrance to the company.

That nightmarish “Service Régimentaire”, whereby the company assumes the regimental service for an entire week (guard duty, kitchen duty, leaf-collecting duty, the works), rears its ugly head every so often and leaves us legionnaires with two main, pressing questions:

1) Will I – at some stage - have to iron my guard uniform?

2) Is my weekend fucked?

If the two happen to combine (on, say, a Friday) therefore rendering your weekend fucked as you watch – in the most comical of ceremonial uniforms – your fellow legionnaires roll out of regiment in a bus headed for the train station and the start of their weekend, well then you’re just shit out of luck, I guess!

But guard duty and pot scrubbing aren’t the only chores to be delegated out to companies on a regular basis, for each company has its own perpetual service unfolding and recycling down in a small dusty corner of the building here, known simply as “la semaine”.

The Bureau de Semaine is the control centre of any company in the French Armed Forces. Manned by a sergent (or Caporal-Chef) and a corporal, it’s the go-to point for any information whatsoever concerning the daily events, schedule, news, etc of that particular company. Here is where legionnaires scribble their name to go eat at the canteen in the evenings, where they sign-up for a seat on the Friday bus carrying them out of regiment and away to 48 hours of freedom-by-rail. At the semaine is where they’ll discover if they have any post or parcels to collect from the on-base depot, or whether they’ve an appointment with the military hospital in Marseille. Running the show is the Sergent de Semaine, receiving the orders from the company captain or other high-ranking officers/NCOs, but the Caporal de Semaine is the true enforcer, the real glue holding it all together. And today, on my birthday, and during a long weekend where there is literally not a soul lingering within these walls, that gelatinous adhesive substance is me. Oh yeah!

Now typically the corporal’s chores read as follows:

05:30 – Wake up the company by blowing a whistle as loudly as possible through every corridor of the company.
06:00 – Roll call by the sergeant after which I collect the roll call slips for each platoon, extracting the names of those designated for morning chores.

06:30 - Distribute sectors together with cleaning product to the fortunate chosen for the mission ahead.

07:20 – Assemble the sick and brittle for an inspection by the captain to deem them genuine cases for medical consultation that morning.

07:30 – Assemble all the corporals and legionnaires for Corvée Quartier (a circular sweep of the grounds surrounding the company building for any cigarette butts, papers, general rubbish).
07:45 – Company assembly, lead by the sergeant (I kick back in the bureau).

08:00 – Oversee the departure of the various legionnaires for their respective regimental services.

09:30 – Same thing but for the sickies heading off to the infirmary.
11:30 – Off to eat lunch early, in order to hold the fort while the sergeant escorts the company to the canteen.

12:00 – Sergeant escorts the company to the canteen.

12:30 – Chores
13:15 – Corvée Quartier
13:30 – Company assembly
14:00 – Collect the post from the on-base depot.

17:30 -  Early eats encore une fois.
18:00 – Hold the fort while the rest chow down, again.

19:00 – Lock up all the offices.
22:30 – Whistle loudly for lights out.

Of course, this is a TYPICAL day at the semaine. However, granted that the entire regiment has been on a long weekend since Tuesday evening, the schedule has seen some adjustments made. Here’s my current day in this ghost barracks:

Whenever – Wake up.
11:30 –           Collect the lunchtime meal for me and the sergeant, bring it back and eat it together in front of the TV in our company club/bar.

Afternoon – Play some Playstation or write some of my blog.

17:30 –           Food run again.

Evening – Shower, play guitar, sleep, whatever.

Now most of this freedom is down to my particular sergeant not giving a single fuck this entire weekend, but who am I to complain? A reader recently asked for some more detailed insight into a day in the life, the day to day, etc. Well here ya go. Not a word of a lie, you will get to a point in your legion career where the above typifies all that passes between your eyelids opening from slumber and shutting for some more.

You will also get to a point where one more birthday down the drain has about as much impact on your mindset as the weekly elephant polo results from Kathmandu.

Happy Friday folks.