(B)itch to Scratch

The most effective and comprehensive way to defeat a soldier? Simple - give him absolutely nothing to do. Not a tap, not a single iota of active physical or intellectual engagement. Deny him that which he was designed to do - soldier. Then sit back and watch him crumble.

It has been six weeks since our last mission here in French Guiana, our last mission being only our second mission. And let it be clear that I mean "mission" in the true sense. Not the "mission" of taking this shovel and carrying it to that sergeant over there. Nor the "mission" of overseeing the morning chores by the young legionnaires. For us, the mission in Guiana was always only going to mean one thing - trekking through the jungle and flushing out illegal gold-digging operations.

Twice, in almost two months.

Ever since the killing of two soldiers by the increasingly brazen and formidable "garimpeiros" at the end of June, the reaction has been disappointing yet inevitably understandable. A freeze on all non-urgent raids in order to focus attention and efforts in the infamously hostile area where the two soldiers fell. The construction of an impressively sized advanced operating base is ongoing, the slow expansion of controlled territory radiating outward like ripples in a still pond. Our platoon, based further north these past two months have had LITERALLY nothing to do. The excruciating inactivity owes equally to the scheduled exchange of gendarme platoons based in the locality, with whom we embark on our patrols with this. Such a transitional period could never have fell so unkindly, the gendarmes' orientation further delaying any anticipated return to business.

Enter "Le Cafard". Now I openly admit - in advance - how disrespectful and sensationalist it might be to draw comparisons with battered, tattered, dogged and besieged Legionnaires holed up in Saharan forts more than a century and a half ago, but damn it if the doesn't temptation linger still. The word "Cafard" in French means "Cockroach", but also serves as an incredibly apt expression for a certain type of boredom. Unlike the passive kind, that has you idling aimlessly with nothing more than the faint whiff of discontent, Le Cafard actively grates at the inside of your skull, as if a cockroach itself crawled into your ear canal and set to work burrowing right through to your tortured brain. It's a mixture of restlessness, frustration, depression, and resignation, all rolled into one asphyxiating ball wedged deep down your throat. If the air was difficult to breath in before, the cessation of activities has merely accentuated the pressure. In the absence of a real mission, our superiors set us to work on various dreamt-up construction projects around the camp. Sure, we grumbled upon their announcements but in truth, we were grateful for the distraction. Apart from those menial work details and the occasional guard duty, there is literally nothing to do here. The sole bar for twenty kilometers (located right outside the base) is out-of-bounds except under the surveillance of an NCO, the bar on base is a paltry melange of crappy beer and even worse music, staffed by some of the most uninterested "soldiers" I've had the misfortune of encountering, the WiFi is sporadic at best.

To be honest, I'm not that pushed. Having already experienced Djibouti as a green-gilled recruit and Afghanistan a year later, encountering an overseas tour as disappointing as this one - at this point in my career - barely registers an enduring complaint beyond my usual gripe. The younger, less-experienced Legionnaires however are finding it particularly tough, given their expectations upon departure. Expectations merely whetted even further with the first few (successful) forays into the jungle. Then, in a sudden and violent coup, nothing. They'll return to France with nothing more than a couple of half-finished anecdotes and a slightly swollen bank account (soon to be emptied by the impending three weeks of holidays). I firmly expect the number of lads returning from vacation to notably undercut the figures leaving base with packed suitcases. Budgetary difficulties back in France mean 2013 is a blank space, a calendrical void desperately papering over the cracks with various training exercises and generic courses confined to the mainland. As the last few granules trickle to the bottom of my hourglass, others stare up despondently at a bulging mass of static, stagnant sand wondering if it might not be best to take the fireman's axe to it right now, save themselves the trouble and time. The alternative, of watching painstakingly as each grain slithers and crawls towards the hole, tumbles to the bottom with a hollow glass clink, hardly offers more glamour or inspiration. Slithering and crawling, like our good friend Le Cafard, rummaging around up there for excuses to flee. I've always held deserters with the utmost contempt, yet this generation have - at least to a certain degree - my sympathy.

Watch this space.

Burn It Down

If you're a lowly soldier, war is simple. Follow orders, go where directed, shoot when instructed, sleep, repeat. Any sense of culpability - if detected even from a very great distance - is quickly squashed, like a disorientated cockroach scuttling across a freshly polished floor. No guilt, no regrets, no sleepless nights, just a collection of macho photos and equally cock-stiffening stories to slur out over a sticky bar. "Simple comme Bonjour" as they say in France.

And in France, a similar clarity reassuringly graces the decision-making of metropolitan law enforcement. The law is written, nay engraved for all to read. Sinisterly motivated lawyers may continually try their utmost to bend and warp interpretations to suit the needs of their own specific quests, but the written word remains unchanged, unbroken. There for all to read, for all to obey. An experienced and comprehensive police force maintain a visible yet non-intrusive presence to ensure its enforcement. Infractions are punished accordingly. Full stop.

So what to make of French Guiana then? Technically considered a department of the French mainland despite its enormous distance from Europe, the same laws that exist in France are practiced and enforced here as well. The rules of the road synchronize themselves conveniently with those of France (and with impressive facility too, given the high quality of infrastructure established in such a remote and climatically challenging environment). The currency is the Euro. The official language - spoken by almost everyone within its borders - is French. All very civilized in theory, but all the while tending to overlook one discreet yet profound difference.

French Guiana is in the midst of a war on illegal gold digging. A war perhaps similar to those declared by law enforcement on drugs and arms smuggling back in France, but inevitably destined to venture far closer to the limits of what an actual war resembles in the traditional sense. Here in Guyanne, there are no diligent bystanders to blow whistles and point in the direction of the fleeing bank robber, no CCTV footage to identify pickpockets or sexual deviants. Here there's just the jungle. The savage, dense, near-impossible-to-navigate rainforest that hides our hunted deep within. Those who brave informing the Gendarmerie of possible site-locations or witnessed activity risk severe sanction from the gold diggers, or "Garimpeiros" as they're known here in French Guiana and bordering Surinam and Brazil. Cases in the not-too-distant past have seen French forces stumble upon sites only to find a heap of corpses scattered throughout the clearing. Ratting out your colleagues to save your own skin is a risky business down in these parts.

And so off we go to "war", patrolling the quad-bike trails in search of the Garimpeiros, assault rifle at the ready but without a single cartridge in the chamber. If we catch a glimpse and they flee, chase is never given. "Too dangerous" they say. If they're armed but not assuming a menacing attitude (personally, I would've thought that being armed already put paid to any illusion of a non-menacing attitude) it is strictly forbidden to open fire. Admittedly lacking confusion except in those grey moments. Is the weapon pointed at me in the process of being raised or being lowered? Is he running at me or around me? Who knows? Certainly not the law makers back in their mahogany splattered offices in Paris - the closest to woodland they're likely to come in there lives.

An early mission saw us arrive at a freshly deserted site, water yet to come to the boil, damp clothes hanging out to dry, women's clothes, children's clothes. It's far from a glamorous, gold-nugget-decorated life the Garimpeiros lead. They live up to their necks in mud, scavenging metres under the equatorial forest floor for the paltriest scraps of gold for up to twelve hours a day. They have rickety shacks that serve as homes, showers, toilets, shops. Pets roam free, occasionally children too. Prostitutes play an integral part in any site, as do armed guards to alert the workers to incoming French forces. It's their life, a sorry existence, one born of necessity more so than choice. A life we are obliged to objectify, annul and eradicate at all cost. Watching those children's clothing go up in flames, unable to look away as the burnt, blackened edges of mattresses, satellite dishes, washing detergent, shoes, eggs, milk, creeped ever inwards towards a charred centre of nothingness, nothingness is exactly what I felt. The time of conscientiousness is long gone, the moment for heart-string-twanging reflections on the right and wrong of our actions is behind me. I no longer worry, I no longer care. There's a job to do, a law to uphold. My pay grade doesn't venture outside of those boundaries, and my thoughts are slowly, finally beginning to catch on. Was this their goal all along? If so, it was a hard fought victory.

That, or a slow burning surrender. Slow burning like all those hard earned possessions, like those rickety shelters serving as homes for people born and bred a million miles from anything we could possibly consider normality. 

Burn, burn, burn. 

Burn it all, until nothing remains but ashes.

Where's Wally?

How exactly do you lose an whole Legionnaire? Not a piece, not a morsel, not a stray, frayed corner or loosely bound front cover, but an entire operational soldier. This land is not for the light hearted, nor the disorientated, that's for sure.

The missions over here in French Guiana consist mainly of taking a riverboat up/down stream to a debarkation site. From there, one marches several kilometers until we stumble across a pre-identified illegal gold extraction site where poverty-stricken clandestine Brazilians scrape manically at the earth's surface in search of that coveted yellowish metal. We silently remove our backpacks, load our rifles and then rush into the clearing screaming "Armée Française!! Armée Française!!", watching powerlessly as the gold smugglers scarper for the tree line. 

French Guiana being an actual department of France means that our hands are tied on many levels on operations over here. No chasing the gold diggers into the jungle (OK, well that's mainly a safety issue for us), no explosives (WTF!?), plus a plethora of other restrictive operating procedures that really only allow us to tie our shoelaces unattended and maybe relieve our bodily functions at pre-arranged intervals throughout the working day. Frustrating? - yes. But surely I should have long-since passed the frustration issue at this point.

Here in the tiny port of St.Jean de Maroni, a combination of soldiers and gendarmes undertake cooperative missions as described (ever so enthusiastically) above. In anticipation of our operational deployment in the jungle, we undergo a 5-day training course (as described in my last blog). The gendarmes' lasts 3 days. Attention must then be paid to the assessment of each individual's performance and a decision on their aptitude for the forest taken. Each individual beneath a certain rank, it would appear.

The patrol in question saw a group of legionnaires and a group of gendarmes head off in to the thick green mass in search of  another gold-digging site. The infiltration march was long, but the sacks had been lightened back at the boats with any non-essential items removed and left behind for collection later in the day. No problem ("normalement"). A bit of the way along the trail, an incomprehensibly overweight gendarme started to complain of breathing difficulties. Pulling up completely and demanding that a legionnaire be left behind for security while the others went on, there was initial hesitation. Our captain was reluctant to leave one of ours behind, seeing as it was one of theirs in trouble. Why not another one of theirs? Nope, we needed all the gendarmes we could carry, apparently, and this fat fucker was un-carry-able. So, GPS co-ordinates were taken and the rest moved off in search of the gold site while the crocked and the guard awaited their return.

Unfortunately, the crocked felt ten times better in one foul swoop and decided to lead the unwitting legionnaire on an ill-advised march to catch-up with the others. If the fat fucker genuinely felt up to speed, that would be one thing to consider. His lack of a GPS, however, was rather the over-riding issue that he himself failed to factor in before setting off on his quest. Needless to say our lads arrived back at the site several hours later to find the two culprits gone. Vanished. Uh oh!!

And so the panic began. Back at the base, the captain of the French army - together with our own CO - launched a full-scale search for two missing persons in the equatorial jungle. The chances weren't looking good. Average life-expectancy for a fully-equipped soldier in the jungle is 72 hours. Forget all illusions of improvised animal traps and refined hunting methods. A soldier, with as much water and food as his bag/back can carry, lasts 72 hours. Straight up. No-one knew anything, and so the minds raced and wandered. A snake bite necessitating movement/evacuation. Kidnapping by displaced gold-diggers. Everything was possible. Nothing was ruled out. Groups were mobilized back at base to head into the dense forest searching for the lost. What would they find? - no-one dared imagine. Rifle burst flared up into the tree canopy, helicopters passed overhead, the search went on and on and on. Where were they? What happened to them?

As it turned out - a wrong turn. Instead of going right on the path, the fat fucker of a GPS-less gendarme chose left. A left turn, a wrong turn that brought the terrible twosome almost fourteen kilometers away from their group who were forced to abandon their mission in the search for their comrades. The gendarme is question was a major. A major for whom the 3-day preparation course was deemed unnecessary. Indeed.

Let it be noted that - in general - the gendarmes are truly a top, professional bunch of lads. Their particular job-description is amongst the most wide-ranging and inconclusive of all the French security forces. Working hours determined by the job at hand, annual overseas tours guaranteeing heightened salaries and domestic tensions in equal measure. Heading into the jungle equipped with loaded side-arms and streamlined kits containing the BARE minimum, they truly are an admirable and formidable force to behold.

Except this one fat fucker. This one fat fucker, and the system failure that allowed him anywhere near an equatorial rainforest.

They found our guys eventually. 36 hours later. Relieved was not the word. Infuriated stole implicit precedence. Naturally the gendarmes have revised their tactics, their techniques, their deployment of physically questionable personnel into the heart of darkness. Fortunately, it wasn't a case of too little too late. But it very nearly was. Despite the irony given the heat and humidity, one long-standing mantra rings eternally true here in French Guiana.

Stay frosty, soldier.