5. Chapter – At the Farm

Monday morning, we took our FAMAS up before leaving to the farm, situated 50 km from Castel in the countryside.

The first time when I touched a FAMAS in my life was a bit strange. Actually, I was disappointed because I didn’t know that it contains that much plastic.

When everybody took his weapon up, we got on the bus and left to the farm. I was pretty excited, because I heard some information from the other new guys who just finished their first 4 weeks over there. He said that we are not going to have too much time to sleep, and they don’t give enough food or time to eat.

Naturally, during the time I’ve spent there, I couldn’t believe that I can survive with meals like this.

But at the end I’ve already understood that the quantity was enough, but the physical trainings were too much.

In total I lost 8 kilos during the first 4 weeks.

30 minutes after we left the regiment behind, the bus stopped and we needed to march the remaining distance to the farm.

When we arrived

the sous-officer of the day, the Romanian sergent has taken the commandment.

In the previous chapter I said, the corporal from Kazakhstan was the biggest psychopath I have ever met, but this man was at the same level in craziness, I think…

So, he explained us how life is going to go at the farm.

We were standing in the classroom for an hour at least, while he was explaining us which technic we have to use to wipe our ass.

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He also said how to clean the toilettes, how to open a package of chips, how to take a shower and which part of our body we have to keep more attention while showering.

They treated us as a dog during the whole time.

Each day we woke up at 4.45AM. Until 5AM we had to shave, because the corporal of the day has controlled our face at the first assembly.

If it wasn’t good enough, he made everybody to do push-ups and started to play with a lighter at the chin of the concerned guy. He also promised us, that the next time he is going to burn it down if someone isn’t capable to shave correctly. Each day we started with running. The first wasn’t too long. Some kilometers, but at the end of the 4^th week, we made around 22 km. 

During a normal day we did at least 500 push-ups (as a punishment) and 2×30 minutes of sport like dips and pull-ups before lunch and dinner.

Once we finished the warm up, we had to shout the Code d’honneur du legionnaire and the 4 rules of firearm safety.

The afternoons we spent with basic tactic trainings in different groups.

At the end of the first week

we shot with blank cartridge and learned the basic manipulations. The Romanian sergent explained us why we have to always make attention at the security rules even if we use blank cartridges. To be sure that everybody understood what he said, he shot in the helmet of an African guy. Naturally it was not on his head.

The camouflage cover got secede from his shot, so he had to buy a new one later in Castel. These times were pretty interesting and fortunately the weather was excellent, not cold and not too hot either.

My favorite was the exercise grenade what we tried during the second week.

It’s a blue grenade in plastic which looks like exactly as a real one. When it explodes it makes a noise like a civil petard and leaves a spot of white powder behind.

They have shown us how to clean a FAMAS after shooting. During hours we were trying to take the gunpowder off the weapon, but it wasn’t that easy as I thought before.

I quickly realized that a FAMAS is never going to be clean. The first 3 times when I said I’m ready, a corporal came over to check my weapon with a cotton swab and when he found some powder left, he put it on my head. At the second verification I was like a chimney-sweep.

The 3 different groups had different missions after midnight.

One needed to learn how to iron a chemise in the Legion way.  

• you have 6 lines on the front,
• 35mm of distance between each,
• 2-2 on the sides, but
• there you have to make a 53mm of distance and
• 4 on the back,
• one horizontally and three vertically,
• also with 53mm of distance between each).

I needed for the first not bad one a bit more than 4 hours which means that day

I had a bit less than 45 minutes left to sleep.

The second group was doing the guard around the building and the farm. It wasn’t too bad, but you only had a bit less than 4 hours to sleep. The last group had a night in peace, so in that case they could sleep around 5 hours which wasn’t so bad. Every Sunday we got 2 hours extra sleep.

Each Monday we did a march. The first was approximately 9km. 16km on the second week, 25km on the 3^rd week and the last was the march Kepi Blanc. We did around 70km in 2 days. After each march we slept outside and went to run the next morning.

Between the first 50 words I learnt in French was an interesting one. I needed almost 3 weeks to understand its real meaning.

When I heard “ramassage” the first time, I thought the best thing I’ve ever done was that I joined the Legion. We’ll get a massage for free and I was wondering how the French Army is taking care of his soldiers.

Finally, I understood that “ramassage” means push-ups, running for nothing, toilet cleaning, no sleeping and carrying a rock in the backpack during a march. Getting f*cked, shortly.

The “dresscode” in the legion is very strict. Always well-arranged, ironed, cleaned. Perfect in a single word. Especially, the sport clothes were a sensitive point. The short was snow-white with green-red strips and a white t-shirt with the color of the company. They told us, that in the pockets we don’t have the right to keep anything…

However a Romanian guy put his cigarette in his pants. As an explanation, the Nepalian corporal made him to put 6-7 cigs in his mouth in the same time and made him to smoke the whole packet. Since then nobody had anything else than his dick in his short.