That's a nice article.

I wonder how you came about it?
Has your Francophilia gotten you to read French blogs? I note that even your YouTube is French nowadays. Aaahh...the sweet, tempting lure of 'la douce France'...

Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins and creatine - they are all heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of Rambo. Our frames are amusingly skinny to them - we are wimps, even the strongest of us - and because of that they often mistake us for Afghans.
I'll never get used to this. Americans are so bulky.

There are obese people in France. There are muscular men in France. But what is distincly American, is that odd combination between the two. Fit young men weighing twice as much as I. Always in their baggy clothes, impossible to tell whether fat or muscle is hidden beneath the huge clothes they wear. It's only the men. The women are normal. Americans remind me of elephant seals on South Georgia. There too, the males are twice as large as the females. And as with Americans, one will quickly regret confusing bulk with 'slow and fat'.

To think some of them fight live grizzly bears for sports!


Ici on découvre l’Amérique, comme souvent elle est dépeinte : les valeurs qui sont les leurs sont ici portées à leur paroxysme, amplifiées par la promiscuité et la solitude du poste au milieu de cette vallée Afghane. Honneur, Patrie.

[Here we discover America as it is often depicted : their values are taken to their paroxysm, often amplified by promiscuity lack of privacy and the loneliness of this outpost in the middle of that Afghan valley. Honor, motherland - everything here reminds of that: the American flag floating in the wind above the outpost, just like the one on the post parcels.]
I can't help but be reminded of 'arrse', that British armypedia. Even in the - rather crude - translation above, the difference in language, refined observations, and manners is striking.
The English gentleman is still an example to the world. But beyond that, I do wonder whether my shock was owing to my lack of experience with 'barrack language', or owing to different cultural expectations. Brenus will have to enlighten me about French army standards.


Quote Originally Posted by Meneldil View Post
Who cares about the voice of a french soldier anyway ? We all know they're cheese eating surrendering monkeys
a) Yes, I know. b) It already belongs to a different world. It's history, where it belongs. Why care about the old?