Every war has its battles. It is she glorious that the nation likes to celebrate and the others that we prefer to forget. The battle recounted in this film is one that one would like to erase from a French tragedy. Covered by defense secrecy. It took place on August 18, 2008 in a valley somewhere in Afghanistan. She took the name of the Uzbin ambush. The French soldiers were mostly young paratroopers on their first mission. They fell into a trap set by Taliban fighters. Ten were killed in a few hours. These images, shot a few days before the battle, tell their story, that of the broken innocence of 20-year-olds who dreamed of adventure and heroism. "That's what we want to see daddy, that's what we want to see!" 25 years since the French army had suffered such heavy losses. Ten dead and 21 wounded in Afghanistan during fighting against the Taliban. It is a very heavy toll. The French engaged as part of the NATO forces perished in an ambush by the Taliban east of Kabul which lasted all last night. These French soldiers are taking part in the international assistance force. They were the target of a Taliban attack. The Uzbin ambush has become the symbol of the war waged by France in Afghanistan. Twelve years of a distant, murderous and misunderstood conflict, without winner or loser. Warrant Officer Sebastien Dauvez. Sergeant Damien Buyle. Sergeant Nicolas Gregoire. Sergeant Rodolphe Penon. Corporal Melinda Omar. Corporal Kevin Chassaing. Corporal Damien Gaillet. Corporal Julien Lepin. Corporal Anthony Riviere. Corporal Alexis Starani. I wanted your names to be pronounced in this court where so many prestigious names were pronounced before yours. The survivors of Uzbin form a separate brotherhood. For the first time, some of them, those who left the army, agree to testify. The others have not obtained the authorization of the general staff. Their words, their personal archives and the drawings created from their memories rush us to the heart of the ambush. I never thought I would find myself on a day like August 18, the day I signed up. That's for sure. When we saw that we were alone, you tell yourself when it will stop? The exit is where what? This is the real first experience of fire. The first and the last. Nightmares. It still happens. Thinking about it is often, very often, even today. It's part of our life. Most of the soldiers killed and wounded belonged to the eighth parachute regiment of marine infantry, an elite regiment. A year after enlisting, recruits are ordered to leave for Afghanistan. They join their new family, the Carmin II combat section, led by Warrant Officer Gaétan Hévrard. For them, he is more than a leader, almost a second father. Yes, it is a section of young paratroopers. Yes, she was well trained. Yes, they had a potato from hell and it's true, I would have followed Warrant Officer Evrard to the end of the earth. So. You know, the history of this country was written, unfortunately with the blood of many kids aged 18, 19, 20 and well beyond, during very dark times. There are some who didn't like it too much. I also remember, they were scared, but which is also normal, which is understandable They saw more sideways, it was still quite dangerous. And then others, like me, wanted to go. To know at least that. A soldier can be afraid. But he keeps it to himself. At the end of July 2008, the paratroopers discovered Afghanistan, a country at war for 30 years. When you really arrive on the tarmac in Kabul, in the heat, you see that you are in another country, even compared to everything outside. And we see as in a country at war, when everything is secure, we take weapons, a platoon, leaders, it changes. Here, we are in it, we have arrived, we are right in it. And now, that has changed a lot. Me, that's what I wanted, like what I got involved. That was what I wanted to leave, to go on a mission, to see the country. And then. And then Afghanistan, when he presented himself, it was also to have contact. We feel very strong, we feel invincible, we are ready. There is cohesion. Yes, that's it, we're going to play in the big leagues. And then I don't know if it's the right way to put it, but we're going to do it a bit like in the movies. Except that it doesn't happen at all like in the movies. The shocking side? Me, I always remember it anyway, it was going into the Warehouse and seeing all the flags at half mast, especially the French flag. When we saw the flag, we said to ourselves, there are dead. The next day we went to the ammunition depot to pick up all fifteen rounds and the guy who gave us ammunition. And we were told: it's no use for me to give you a lot of what you're not going to use much of it. So our loaders, we prepared our chasuble correctly in relation to the equipment we had, the grenades on one side, everyone put away their things a bit; there were a lot of moments of silence in those moments, because everyone was in their own bubble. The summer of 2008 marks a turning point. The Taliban have resumed the offensive and the losses within the international coalition are worsening. The soldiers of the eighth RPIMa spend their first two weeks around Kabul. They circulate in VAB, in armored vehicle and film their first patrol. Windows closed. No air. The sound of the engine heating up confined. No place with the bulletproof vest. Me, I had my bottles, my gun, here, all my chargers, there, the helmet... I was like that, I was very, very badly. There you have it, buddy Noël, aka “cocoa”. Then the heat, really? Pffff. Something that falls on you, what. It's suffocating. We were old, I remember, we were soaked, we drank ten liters of water a day. The little ones do it like that. They are happy. Then as soon as we pass they do this to us. Like we 're not
welcome. It's weird at first.
The little one at six years old, but he tells you that, you know it's not him who's going to hurt you, but he, he tells you that at six years old, what does he want from me? We were on our guard all the time, and we had to be. The peasant of the day, can be the Taliban of the night. The whole problem is there, it is that we cannot recognize it. Most of the time they are already all dressed the same way. They all have their djellabas, their beards, the traditional Afghan dress. So it's impossible to tell the difference between a villager and a Taliban. Impossible. Gregory, Jean-Christophe, Mayeul, Julien and their comrades are then sent to the advanced base of Tora, located 60 kilometers from Kabul. We are really in the desert with only mountains. There is nothing.
We say to ourselves how we are going to hold out here for four months? Welcome to the KC 20 of part of the 23 group. As you can see, there is an enormous amount space. We, when we arrived, it's a very small camp. The rooms were rooms for six. So we had to adapt and cut pieces of wire mesh to make coat racks or small wardrobes. So we were very tight. You had to be organized, very, very organized. And here is my bed All the pictures you sent us. Small shelf, made on the job. We do what we can with what we have. The means on board. In this case, not much to eat for the girls. Go kiss, check everyone. It was for you, Audience. In Tora, the nights belong to the enemy. The soldiers take turns at the piton, the post overlooking the base, to stand guard. It took half an hour to go up. The path was chalked out because it was mined all around. So, when we were climbing, we had to be careful because we were mostly climbing at night. Everything is increased tenfold because it is night. We know there are enemies around. It's serious, so we really open our eyes. We think a little about everything, we say to ourselves where they can arrive... We are not too serene, what. But we could open fire if necessary, without necessarily waiting for authorization from the higher hierarchy. Whenever we saw colleagues leaving, we asked them when they were coming back. So did you have a collision or not? And there, until then, I don't seem to remember that there was a clash. We're not really into it yet. Good leader a little word for the patrol ? Nothing to report. A few days later, the paratroopers were given a first risky mission: to patrol the Uzbin Valley, known to be the crossing point for the Taliban infiltrated from neighboring Pakistan. Master Corporal Bui takes our whole group to explain to us a little how it will go. Our mission was to recognize a pass and then to remain under observation all night. And then he announces to us that, in fact, according to the information, there are a hundred Taliban who are a little further north. And we are going there. So it might stick. There is a risk of a clash with them. Before leaving this mission, People... There was a feeling, I think at the bottom of the section. Everyone said this mission has something special. So I think there are a lot of people who have called their family or their girlfriends or wives to tell them that they just want to talk to them. To prepare for the mission another section of paratroopers is sent to scout Uzbin, three days before, they establish a first contact with the inhabitants of the valley. The first person who came to meet us was an Afghan who spoke fluent English, who said he was from the police but who is dressed in civilian clothes and who was constantly on his mobile phone. During the first contact with my section chief and myself, he inspires treachery because he was the first Afghan we came across who spoke fluent English, who was constantly with his telephone, who posed a lot of issues. I found it odd that this guy came to meet us, whereas usually, it was rather us who went to meet them. I said: my lieutenant, it's fishy all the same. It's suspicious that this guy behaves like that. He left, we never saw that person again, and we went back to the base in the evening. This first mission in the Taliban zone should last 48 hours. As before each departure, the section checks its equipment. We are starting to prepare. We had to leave quite early, we were leaving with troops from the ANA and the Afghan National Army. We also left with the Chad marching regiment , RMT and also with Americans. In short, we were ready. It must have been 5 a.m., 6 a.m., I don't know exactly. We were ready, we are waiting, we are waiting because there are people who are late. There, we are starting to feel a little that yes, it will be hot and that we will have to be on our guard and pay attention to each other and especially to pay attention to the outside population and the environment. We take it seriously, more or less good. So it's true that a lot of a lot, a lot of bullshit, but here it's true that he was serious. And then there is the interpreter... Well, it was obvious that he was not serene. He asked a lot of questions, the time of the mission, where we were going, who was with us, all that, what. Well, a quick note for your wife, since you're going to die today. But I'll take care of her, don't worry... My darling, I'm writing to you in the light of tracer bullets. The cannon next to me sends hot casings into my face. But the pain is less intense than when I think of you. Babe ! Je t'aime... I think at the stroke of 1 o'clock, we were down in the village. We, with the VABs, we could no longer have access to the village and the pass, the pass, we could only go there on foot so... So the patrol came down and we the VABs, we got into position , in support 360 degrees, each one a shooting angle. In the village, we were not welcome. People told me to leave. They weren't happy that we were there. When you get out of the vehicles to begin the recognition of the village and the climb. We are around twenty, so we start to go up, we go up in single file, we go up. It's still very hot with the package. In my cabin I have the radio one meter from me. So I hear everything that is being said... the group leader asks if the VABs downstairs are supporting us well. So we answer yes, everything is going well. Here, we are able to support you, we see no movement. So we are going up, and at some point. There is Noel who has a heat stroke as we say he is “cash”. With the temperature, the more the package. There is a stroke of fatigue, a stroke of heat. And so... we have to stop. There is the corporal who asks me to stay with them. So we stay a small group of four and the others continue their ascent. At that time, Master Corporal Penon who hydrates Christmas so that they feel themselves. But we stay a little while he regains his strength. There is a woman who suddenly screams, who starts screaming. And there it was pulling in all directions. I thought it was an altercation. That it was a small group that attacked us, that it was going to pass. And I see this rocket landing right behind me. And there, I have a reflex, I lower myself. I come home and there, I ask myself 3000 questions. But what did we take? What do I have to do ? My chargers are there, I have my noise-canceling plugs, everything is fine. The ambush was prepared so that there were no survivors. On the French side, the Taliban, five times more numerous, hold the ridges. Julien is downstairs, near the village, in his tank. Not far from him is Jean-Christophe, also in an armored vehicle. Higher up the climb, exposed to insurgent fire, Grégory with his group of four soldiers. Finally, Mayeul, who belongs to a reinforcement section, is still at Tora's base. It's charging! The sergeant, he says on the radio: we've made contact on the crest line. They are everywhere, you have to water at the ridgeline... I had binoculars with me and with the binoculars, I try to see if I could see something, if I could help. But in fact, in the end, the Taliban were so well prepared that they built. He had built caches and just enough to put their weapons and watch. So we downstairs, we couldn't see anything. We stay in a small group of four. And there are the master corporals. They start shooting at the fires and at one point, there is master corporal Penon who is wounded, who receives a bullet. And our master corporal, he asks me at Christmas to pick him up. So already, it's starting to be the first apprehensions. We take it as we can, we can't take it by the leg, but we get it out fairly quickly. And he still has what is it going to rub on the ground? And so we take, we shoot, but that's hard, it's not as easy as one might pretend. So we put him, we put him under cover on there, we give him a shot of morphine and then we give him our sugar a little cheaper. But he is still able to reason and prick himself. What ? And then after, there is the master corporal. He tells me Martin, go get the weapon, what, it's not easy, what. 25 minutes after the start of the battle, reinforcements urgently leave the Tora base. The convoy takes 1 hour to arrive on site. 1 hour during which the soldiers follow the battles fought by their comrades live on the radio. I heard all the reports from Carmine Two. Obviously I heard the shots, behind the radio, I heard a platoon leader calling for help. We are further away. They say they wrote. Around him, we obviously heard all the gunshots, he who said that everything was scattered, that we had to get there quickly. Because here they were being unsoldered. Oh, my comrade in front of me, I started throwing up because I was scared. We were all scared. Others smoked cigarette after cigarette, others began to put the magazine on the weapon. Put a bullet in the chamber. Me, I was constantly on the radio, I was doing radio work, didn't have time to think about anything else. Tony is the one I knew the best, the section, given that as he was as a radio station of carmin-2, there was inevitably a link that brought us closer. For a moment, I didn't hear him speak anymore and I heard Warrant Officer Evrard, a few minutes later, who said that he was starting cardiac massage, that he was hit, and after a few minutes, died. Of course, it really shocked me. Just the fact of no longer hearing his voice, of no longer being able to speak to him, of telling myself that I won't see him again, I won't see him again tomorrow. Yeah, that... it sure really, really shocked me. The bullets, even if we don't see them, I swear to you that the sound when it passes by, we feel that it's getting closer. It's not even the detonation, it's the sound of the bullets going by. The trap closes on the section. Cut off from the rear lines, left to their own devices, the soldiers do not understand why the mortars set back remain desperately silent. The sergeant asks what is happening, why? Why the support of mortars does not arrive... So we supported as much as we could. The sergeant continued to repeat, ask for mortar support which never arrived. And there, radio silence. He stopped talking. He didn't come. And the longer the mortar supports were delayed, the more we overlapped, so we could no longer have mortar support, it was too late. So there, the unit commander decides to make us disembark and there begins the fighting, fighting the Taliban who were therefore in front of us.... I have no more memories but several hundred invisible meters away. Invisible that is. Well, that was quite frustrating. Me, I said all the time, whore, but what the hell is the Air Force, the mortars, where is all that? After a moment. In fact, I see, I see that there is a helicopter coming, I see that it wants to shoot. But the fight is so close, that the helicopter comes and goes. This profession is made up of somewhat rational intelligence. And then at some point, there is still instinct. We go there, we don't go there, we take the left track rather than the right track. We take off, we don't take off, we land a kilometer away or we land on it. So that's a big part of intuition. And this is one of the difficulties that can be biased precisely by the fact of going to the aid of the other and taking even crazier risks. The whole question is how to manage to get out of this progressive encirclement which risks leading us to an absolute slaughter, that is to say the totality of the detachments killed by the Taliban. Section Carmine Two is decimated. With the help of reinforcements, Warrant Officer Evrard tries to withdraw to save among his men, those who can still walk. Evrard says they won't last much longer, that the platoon is completely scattered, that he doesn't know where his men are. There are deaths, and they try to go back down the pass as best they can, but each time someone is shot, they have to get shot very very quickly. Intervene because otherwise they will all be killed . At some point I go to see another warrant officer and who goes down with other colleagues, and it is at this moment, Where realizes a little more about the situation because they were with a large part of the group, and already when we go down, we see that he injured them and that's where we learn that we are surrounded. That the Taliban are everywhere and that there is no one who can actually come and get us. No one will be able to put themselves in the place of Warrant Officer Evrard. And I think he still bears, deep down inside himself, this crushing responsibility. Which is double in fact, it may be, he says to himself, the days when the positive takes over: I made the right decision by allowing the essentials of my section to be saved and withdrawn . And then finally, couldn't we have done more? But it's always like that. It's always like that, he'll live with that. So the only thing we can do is wait. Waiting here for now, fighting back, trying not to lower heads, is pushing back the enemy you don't necessarily see. And then, hoping to get out of it, that's it. So suddenly, we say we are alone in the world or what will become of us? We may not come out of this alive. I had a reflex at some point, a little later than when night begins to fall. Here, I put, I took a bullet from my magazine and I put it in the pocket. I said to myself OK, this one is for me, they won't have it. I saw one of my comrades in the distance who was really paralyzed, who had, I believe, put down his helmet, who was afraid, who could no longer shoot, who had, it seems to me, put down his weapon hidden against the rock and could do nothing more. But when we saw the A-10 arrive, it's kind of our savior, it's an American plane, but it's huge, it makes a monster noise. And then it cuts a mountain in two. It is thanks to the helicopters and the American planes that we manage to free ourselves. And so during this whole period of uncertainty, we know that what is happening is very serious, but we do not know what the final result will be. Aerial bombardments and the intervention of mortars at the end of the afternoon changed the course of the battle. Warrant Officer Evrard and his group of survivors try to go down to the village. Julien and Jean-Christophe, who had remained below in their armored vehicles, decided to meet them. But the wounded, we have to evacuate them and if we don't want to stay there, it's dead while waiting for what happens. So we said to go back to the village. So there, in the village, we couldn't. In fact, because that was shooting everywhere. We were being shot at, I had flat tires, my windows were riddled with bullets. I couldn't move forward. And he tells me that I have to leave. We had no choice. It was impossible to go further. We're backing up, and there was a hole in the ditch. He put rangers in my helmet, saying “you can't, you can't!”. I got over it, I had to go out. I was starting to fall, I had to get out. And there, I do maybe 50 meters and there, I receive the rocket. It didn't explode. In fact, it ricocheted. Maybe that's it. There is a pin, and he had forgotten to remove the pin. Excuse me. It's good. And so the rocket ricochets off the vehicle. He hits the vehicle, it still makes the blast effect inside. So I was ejected that, we call it “Blaster”. Blaster is internal bleeding, air pressure. And so I think I was more lucid, my VAB was no longer advancing. I was deaf, I couldn't see anything. And there, toto said to me “we have to evacuate the VAB”. We have to evacuate, he won't do otherwise. And there, I remember that there is a ball coming right in front of me. I'm shocked because she was for me what, I have the reflex to touch the glass. I was lost. I said to myself “she manages to do that with me, but there is the armored glass”. Toto tells me “We have to go, we have to go” It seems that the sergeant is deceased, he was already injured. And then there, we start trying to join the VAB. Finally, the VAB who had stayed because the others had gone a little further. We receive the order to leave. But me, with my pilot, we hear that there are comrades who will soon descend. So we decide to keep the position. And since we tell ourselves we can't leave them like that, we can't let them down while there are two who are shooting to lower their heads, there are two who are advancing and they are hiding. After they shoot, we advance and in fact, during that time, it's not so that we weren't injured, but in fact the bullets, it was amazing. Like when we were running. There are bullets everywhere, we don't know why we weren't hit. But hey, on the other hand, there is an interpreter, he who was who was killed during this period. When I see them arrive, I see them, they are, they are hurt, they are and they look tired. And finally, I see they've been through hell up there. We take the road, we drive maybe a quarter of an hour, we are shot at, I hear bullet holes on the VAB. Finally, it was hard. And when they arrived at the extraction zone, the wounded came out. I shouted who had injuries, but we don't quite realize what is happening to us. Sergeant Andrieux actually made a checklist with the people he knew who had fallen, and I'm going to Sergeant Andrieux, he had crossed me out. He thought I was dead.
He was happy to see me. And there I see, I see a big guy coming and I asked: “but what happened?”. Because he was upstairs, I was downstairs. There was not the same story, not had the same point of view. He tells me they are all dead. I stayed on my ass. He was completely shocked. He was there, staring blankly... As night fell, the toll of the ambush was not yet known. The section of reinforcement carmine-3, receives the order to retake the pass to rescue the wounded hidden in the mountain and recover the bodies of the deceased soldiers. We rake, and then we start to come across the first dead. So there we see the first three bodies. Three, first visions of war, of the dead. Me that the vision of Tanit, it is a shock because it was one of those that I knew more of Carmine two, so here it is. And in addition, having followed these fights in the afternoon, to see him there, now facing me, three centimeters from me lying on the ground, his mouth open, his hands clenched and stripped of all his equipment. It was really tough. With hindsight, we say to ourselves that, in their place, we would have done the same. So, first leap of attitude, I recover, me, this material on him. We would have done the same. But it's true that on the spot, it's striking, It's impressive. There's rage, there was a spirit of revenge, there's a whole bunch of stuff. And so there, we are evacuated to the camp in warehouse, so to the hospital. I was totally lost, I was still stunned. I heard nothing. They were talking to me, I saw something like a mouth moving... And so we arrived in Kabul. And the same, they were trying to talk to me, and I was completely deaf. So I was asked to hand over my weapon. But I didn't want to give it away. It was my weapon and there was no way I was going to drop my weapon.
So they had to sit me down, explain to me, write down the fact that it was over, that I had to give up my weapon. They must have taken 10 minutes to explain to me that I had to drop my weapon. Me, I stand, I see silhouettes on the track in the distance. And it's true that they were people, friends. And in fact, around the body of Damien Buil. I had talked to him that very morning over breakfast before we went on patrol. He had just had his wife on the phone telling him that it was going to be a boy, a girl and that he was super happy. So I decided. We talked for two minutes. Here, here. I think it was his birthday too. And then the last one, the one I had gone to mass with the day before. Julien the bread which had almost arrived on the pass. There you go, with a bullet in the head and a bullet in the leg all alone. Nothing around, only sand, only rock around, no vegetation like the others, stripped of all material. So we brought all the bodies up, we lined up the body we found, and we smoked. I smoked half a pack of cigarettes with my comrades around them. I was I was sitting against them when. I started having nausea. So I left throwing up after that, on the side next to him. Then some, some of us cracked up a bit. There were also officers who took a step back, who had tears in their eyes, like many of this team who were on the pass that morning. The next day, the president landed in Kabul and discovered the price paid by the young paratroopers. Ten killed and 21 wounded, all on the same day. We have to go back to the Algerian war to find traces of such human losses in combat. My real memory is that. He is an angry President of the Republic. That's clear. Against who ? Because that's it, it's a failure. When you have when you have so many deaths, no one can satisfy these situations. Sometimes faced with silence or approximations. We had a Head of State who, in the nature of his character, was rather to say we will have to give precise accounts of how it happened. We want to decide on operations, but we want it to go smoothly. It doesn't happen that way, it never happens that way. It has never happened like this in history and it will never happen like this in the future. There is no military operation that does not involve risks. It was in August. France is on vacation, nothing was happening and all of a sudden, it's a clap of thunder. The French discover that they are waging war on the other side of the planet. The French war in Afghanistan now has a face. That of the families of soldiers who fell in Uzbin. But behind their sufferings already point the first questions did the military hierarchy make mistakes or faults? Was the French Army ready to face this type of insurrection? The battle leaves the military field to become a national issue. The ambush becomes Uzbin's business. The President of the Republic, in his speech at the Invalides, made a very fine speech on the virtues of the soldier. But he has a sentence which was it will be necessary to find the responsibility or to determine the responsibilities. There, you enter into the news item and it is not surprising if you want that, The family, in this case, end up saying the same thing, it is not normal that he is dead, and so on You have to even if we know why, As head of the armies. I have no right to consider the death of a soldier as a fatality. I'll see the families in a few minutes. I want them to know everything, they have the right to it. I want all the lessons to be learned from what happened. Finally, we have a professional army now and finally, there is a bit of a link that is made quite quickly. Profession and work, work, accident at work, whose fault is it? So. And it affects almost everything. The entire spectrum of our company's professions. The problem is that the profession of soldier is not a profession like the others. That's for sure. Chantal and Jean-François are the parents of Damien Buil, one of the soldiers who died in the Uzbin Valley. On his birthday, along with six other families, they decided to sue senior officers for failing to assist a person in danger. They accuse them of having poorly prepared the mission and of having sent ill-equipped soldiers to the front line. With Uzbin, for the first time, the French army finds itself on the bench of the accused and it is the civil justice which is seized of the investigation. To lose your son today in combat in a conflict in the world, I mean it seems completely antiquated, completely. With the means we have, with all the means we have, a hand-to-hand combat, like 50 years ago. Me, personally, I thought it was over, that it no longer existed if he had fallen because he had set foot on a Hyundai or in his VAB. It seemed like fate, that's how it is. You will say to me, there, it is the destiny too. But he was a little forced. It's still fate, He was forced. That's why we, with my wife and other family members, have this weapon. We got this because it felt like it should never have happened, never, never, never. So following that, afterwards, we have the families out of the 10, there are 7 of them who wanted to file a complaint, not against the army, especially not against the army. It was the family of our children. Their second family was their second family, that's what they told us. But when these people who organized this mission, we consider that there was a serious fault and that these people must be punished by the fact that we did not even take maximum security, certainly not minimum security . The problem is older than that. The problem, it is older than that, is that this country, our beautiful and old country, was deeply marked by the great massacres of the last century , the First World War, the Second World War, the colonial wars, and so on Indochina , war in Algeria and then finally, there is a kind of clear and definitive aversion to war and human losses. Uzbin, for me, is the moment when I discover that we are in a society that no longer has any resilience. There is no longer any capacity to withstand the blows. We are in modern societies which try to erase death permanently. And what really struck me was the bad debates. As if it was necessary to necessarily find those responsible. As if inevitably, there were people to indict. So we lost the property. I don't know how many. 88 dead as I speak of soldiers in Afghanistan. In this macabre count, we lost far fewer than other countries. Twelve years of Afghanistan, it's 22 minutes of the war of 14. The reality of the figures. I measure all that there is behind as pain for the families. For sharing it and sharing it again. At some point, if you want the nation, it must say to itself how far am I ready to accept the risk to defend my essential interests. That's the real question. We didn't register dead for France because he didn't die for France. I regret a lot. He died for world peace. It's quite different. Me, I clashed with people because they say they died for France and no, I'm sorry. They are in Afghanistan and are not dead for France, dead for France. I would like it to be in France or a French territory. Other than France, but that's not the case. So we say the defense of the fatherland, but what are they doing in Afghanistan? I believe that everyone will have to understand one day or another that the security of the French is not, it is no longer Vauban's backyard, it is not even Europe anymore expanded to 27, right? Today, the safety of the French, it gets along at the planetary level. With hindsight. Today, the fact that the French army. Evacuate Afghanistan, let's turn the page on Afghanistan, what do you say to yourself? All that for this ? We would not have come, it would have been the same. So did my homies die for a just cause or not, that we don't always think , I that we can answer. For me, they didn't die for nothing. I know that is the opinion of many others. I know it's very hard for families and I know we 'll never be able to put ourselves in their shoes, that's for sure. But here, I tell myself that they are committed, fought for France and died on the field of honor. Like our grandparents died in Algeria, in Indochina, during the Second World War. It's the same principle. The Uzbin ambush eventually precipitated the withdrawal of French forces from Afghanistan. In our countryside, some war memorials honor the soldiers who fell that day. But what is the meaning of their sacrifice? Did these men die for the nation? Or for other causes too distant? Lack of response? The memory of Uzbin fuels feelings of anger among the families, injustice among the generals and bitterness among the survivors. Public opinion has forgotten. However, this battle undoubtedly announces the sacrifices of the next wars.
