Since the 1970s, the Army has undergone rapid and cumulative transformations. At the same time, the great national myths were being exhausted, and French society was entering a process of individualization "to the detriment of collective disciplines" [1]. 1] Of the military thing that once shaped the national landscape and nourished the national debate, only indifference, nostalgia and vestiges remain today: old songs, street names, barracks and forts reused to house students or museum pieces.

1] On this process of individualization and its different stages, see the short article by Marcel Gauchet, "Trois figures de l'individualisme", in Le Débat, Gallimard, n°60, May-August 2010, p. 72-78.

After so many transformations in such a short period of time, what is still going on in this old Army culture, what is changing? The questioning is not Byzantine. It would warrant a thorough investigation. The culture of a community-and especially the culture of an institution as old as the army is-not off the ground. Edgar Morin understands it as an incessant dialectic between "constituted knowledge" and the experiences of existence[1]: in the case of the Army, this "constituted knowledge" is tactical techniques and procedures, rules, codes and modes of conduct, symbols and myths, etc.1]: in the case of the army, these "constituted knowledge" are tactical techniques and procedures, rules, codes and modes of conduct, symbols and myths, etc.; it is all these little things that the age-old experience of battle has not ceased to accumulate and which still today shape the soldier's imagination, mobilise him and guide his action. As we can see, the operational capabilities of the army depend in part on such cultural phenomena. Their scale is considerable. Admittedly, the glossy gloss of the military on their own culture has become abundant over the last quarter of a century [2]. 2] However, there is no methodical work that could enable us to understand these phenomena in their dynamics. Therefore, I will limit my remarks to the exploration of a diptych that seems to me to have strongly structured the combatant culture of the army for more than a century: it is a powerful imaginary of the leader in combat that does not go without a symbolic construction that sublimates the collective mission. What is the basis of these two cultural traits and their articulation? How have they been affected by the accelerated changes that have profoundly affected military life in recent decades?

The origins: the experience of infantry and cavalry combat

More than other armies, the Army is characterized by a constant process of differentiation. Hence, today, the existence of a cultural mosaic, the dynamics of which I have also shown[3], with as many subcultures and micro-cultures linked to the conditions of existence and particular epic experiences past and present. This cultural mosaic is not without relief: it is dominated by inter-services blocks with strong cultural influence (Alpine and naval troops, Foreign Legion) and this is not without rivalries and power games. But that's another matter.

Archetype of the chief

What is important here is to note the extent to which the cultural traits specific to infantry combat first and cavalry combat to a lesser extent weave this cultural mosaic: these two weapons are those of the military genesis, of the melee and of combat in the strict sense of the word. Their features have been the inner core of the army since the progressive implementation of initial training common to all the weapons from the 1920s onwards. Clues abound. These "all-weapons" training courses for new recruits mainly involve learning infantry techniques. Consider the symbolic nature of the training schools for officers and non-commissioned officers of the French Army. In Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan as in Saint-Maixent, the toponymy of the places, the monumental effigies or the names of promotions refer to heroes of the infantry or cavalry. There is no symbolic trace of Vauban, Séré de Rivière, artillerymen or brilliant or heroic transmitters. And in heavy tendency over a long period of time, the choices of the first in the rankings at the end of these schools are oriented towards these weapons of the melee.

The contemporary imaginary of the Army has therefore essentially been built and renewed by the selection and then the memory and legend of epic acts and heroic figures of infantry and cavalry combat. Now, the final act of this combat consists in leading men towards or in view of shock, at the risk of death! In no other army, in no other weapon is this compulsion found. Hypothetically, the experience of the battle would have shown that even very harsh discipline or organization was not enough. It was necessary that leaders, large and small, were able to lead the fighter towards a deadly horizon. For such leaders to emerge from the common lot, fantastic role models were needed who would mobilize those of the best who were destined for the profession of arms and show them the skills required to lead the fighter. This was the product of the age-old symbolic work of a collective memory, tinkering, sedimenting, renewing and transmitting an avalanche of signs, images, narratives, etc., which were the product of the symbolic work of a collective memory. from actions or heroic figures selected because they are reputed to have galvanized the fighter.

In the end, we obtain this imaginary of the French Army with its horizons populated by powerful figures of leadership: as a response to the age-old experience of chaos, that of the final battle of the infantry or cavalry.

There are, of course, several types of heroic leader models. They evolve, vary and are declined according to historical conditions and types of combat! Three characters are common to these models.

• The leader is standing in the melee, leading the troop or dominating it with his eyes.
• On foot or on horseback, he indicates the direction: he knows the way.
• He's turned to his men[4]. It is Bonaparte on the bridge of Arcole, Kleber, Driant, Bournazel, Leclerc, Jeanpierre, Bigeard, etc..

In these three characters, we find three themes that never cease to haunt the rhetoric on command: that of the bravery and ardour of the leader in contact, that of anticipation and competence, and finally that of concern for man and his economy.

Sublimation of the mission

But be careful! One can imagine that in extreme situations, young chiefs whose attitude conformed to this archetype were confronted with a tragic question: is this struggle worth my sacrificing the lives of "my men"? The dramaturgy of American war cinema constantly refers to this debate. It also shows that for some officers, this question does not even come to mind. But in the harassment of the ordeal, when the respite came in the fury of battle, the humanity of officers and non-commissioned officers may have caused them distress: in the name of what should I lead to death these men with whom I have shared so many hardships?

It is conceivable that tradition, in response to the experience of these tragic choices, has responded by glorifying the mission: sublimated, it resolves the dilemma. "Revere these heroes! They sacrificed their lives for the mission," say the symbols that the collective memory has fabricated, selecting from the experiences of battle the acts that are reputed to embody sacrificial combat. These selected acts were peddled, quoted, recited, until some of them were fixed in these celebrations where the sacred mixes with the profane feast: Camerone, Sidi Brahim, Bazeilles, Uskub for the spahis, etc... who recite the glory promised to the "spirit of sacrifice"! "They were here less than sixty opposed to a whole army. Life rather than courage abandoned these French soldiers" tells the gospel of the battle of Camerone. The message is clear: the individual must be sacrificed to a collective cause superior to himself and his sacrifice glorified. Such symbolic constructions, whose meaning has been internalized, offload the leader from the weight of his humanity: in extreme situations, this imaginary of sacrifice and the primacy of mission is supposed to impose itself, to conceal one's states of mind and to settle the eventual debate between life and death of one's own people. Good spirits are surprised that defeats rather than victories are celebrated in this way. This is to fail to perceive the social and political function of the mythification of these desperate barbarians: by their paroxysmal dimension, they celebrate the submission of the individual to a higher interest that the mission media portrays. To the point of sacrifice!

It would be up to historians to examine the social and historical conditions in which such symbolic expressions emerged. It cannot be excluded that their elaboration is related to the work accomplished on the imagination of the French by the Third Republic at the end of the 19th century, notably by the "^{invention of} traditions" [5] glorifying the national idea.

Of this structuring of the Army's imagination, what persists, what changes?

Persistencies and traditionalism?

The models of leadership produced by melee weapons continue to dominate the Army's imagination. In 2000, drawing on the results of several surveys administered on the St. Cypriots in the 1990s, Bernard Boene observed that among this population of officer cadets - as among the students of the École militaire interarmes (EMIA) - "the desire to serve in elite subdivisions" (Legion, navy troops, airborne troops, etc.) is a major obstacle to the development of the Army.) was in the majority. He noted the "halo effect" enjoyed by a minority of students who identified their career plans exclusively with melee weapons and prestigious weapons subdivisions. "The image of the fighting officer and leader of men" remains "deeply rooted in the military community and particularly in the Army" notes, moreover, Fabrice Hamelin, analysing the training policies for Saint-Cyr officers under the Fifth Republic. Despite the "technocratic temptation" and the advances of an academic training model whose aim is to legitimise the "reintegration ofa party of the officer corps among the professional groups that make up the senior civil service", he notes how much "the operational frame of reference" has remained preponderant in the initial training of army officers [7]. 7] The dominant expression of this myth of the leader in combat can still be found in a recent work, "Paroles d'officiers" (Officers' Words). His remarks, particularly in an opposition between command and management, are very much oriented by a traditional conception of the officer whose core profession remains "command in combat" [8].

8] To understand the persistence of this warrior archetype in a contemporary cultural context that in no way favours its expression, it is necessary, it seems to me, to look back over a medium period by considering the impacts of "successive and rapid changes that have modified the conditions of military existence over the last few decades" [9]. 9] We must first take the measure of thebrutal and rapid aggiornamento that marked the Army at the end of the 1970s, then that of the successive processes that, spread out to the end of the 1970s, were to have an impact on the military. At the end of the century, they will reduce its size, professionalize it and "civilize" it by seeking to rationalize its organization and management methods according to technical and economic criteria. However, in the traditional sectors of the Army, these rapid and cumulative changes will be felt - rightly or wrongly, it does not matter here - as attacks on the specificity of a combatant vocation. Hence a series of identity-based reactions that will maintain, disseminate, and even radicalize - particularly in executive schools - references to the epic combatant, as a challenge to the modernist and managerial evolution of the institution. This phenomenon of protest against the breakthroughs of modernity in the military institution will also be nourished here and there by decadent representations of the movements that are working French society at the end of the century. Thus the "Free opinions" published by Armées d'aujourd'hui, some of which express " the disturbing vision ofa world in decay", "twilight" from which the "fundamental values of the warrior function" disappear. There is a kind of "ethical militancy of the military", called to transmit and preserve military values[10]. 10] In addition to these internal and external movements that attack the combatant universe, the 1980s saw the increasingly frequent use of combat forces in external operations. But against use: the castrated combatant sacrificed on the altar of peace! Over the past quarter century, it is this combination of factors that has led to the persistence, or even the hardening, of a dominant cultural role in the army, which has been proclaiming its age-old vocation against the current trend.

Here we have to borrow from an anthropology that is attentive to the dynamisms that result from the confrontation of traditional cultures with processes of modernity: this movement of identity reactions that has been at work in the army in recent decades can be likened to "traditionalism". Tradition is "what goes without saying for those who live in tradition," observes Gabriel Gosselin. "Traditionalism proper appears the day when a conscious choice in favor of tradition is made from within it" and, quoting E. Weil, he adds: "The very emergence of traditionalism shows that tradition has moved away" [11].

11] There are many indications that, since the 1980s, signs, states ofpractices and behaviours inherited from a warrior past that had been stored in the attic of the fighting house after the Algerian war: We think, for example, of the reinvention of the 1st regiment of^riflemen or the reuse of identity signs from the regiments of the African army [12]. [12] How, moreover, can one not be struck by this antiphon that today frames contemporary military discourse and proclaims the officer's vocation to "give death" and to "give life"? 13], when never, no doubt, during this period, has the French soldier fought so little, and if he received death, he gave it very little. Formerly, the combatant felt no need to gloss over death, whether it was given or received: he was content to fight and tradition transmitted his ordeal.

In recent decades, a "fundamental traditionalism" has emerged in the army, seeking "to safeguard values and social and cultural arrangements strongly supported in the past. One could also evoke in some cases a "pseudo traditionalism", in which "tradition becomes an instrument of strategy" allowing "to express a claim" or to mark "a dissent towards modernist leaders" [14]. 14] It is through this cultural context that the persistence of this imaginary of the leader in combat must be interpreted as resistance to a modernity that calls into question a fighting tradition.

When the mission is delegitimized

This "fundamental traditionalism" can also be read in a kind of Eucharistic setting of the memory and relics of sacrificial combat that symbolize the spirit of sacrifice and the sublimation of the mission. This is the impression one gets when one compares Camerone's commemorations of yesterday and today: the bare, intimately sacred ceremony of the 1950s in Sidi Bel Abbés has become in Aubagne a great public mass celebrated with an almost religious pomp [15]. The impression is identical when one considers the symbolic management of the wooden hand of Captain Danjou preserved in a shrine or the remains of the sarcophagus in which the bodies of the hunters who fell to the marabout of Sidi Brahim were placed. Yesterday, these objects of memory lived in a simple room of honor in Sidi Bel Abbès or a craft museum of the hunters in Vincennes. Today, in Aubagne or in the castle of Vincennes, each one of these relics is exposed in a kind of sanctuary: in a crypt where the religious atmosphere calls for meditation.

"Fundamental Traditionalism" still in the legionnaire's code established at the end of the 1980's and now ritually recited by the imperialists? However, this code is never more than the verbalized and emphatic expression of behaviours that yesterday characterized the legion style and whose norm was transmitted by tradition: by the example of charismatic leaders, by customary practices governing social life, by legendary tales, etc. The legionnaire's code is also the expression of the "fundamental traditionalism" of the legionnaire, which is still in the legionnaire's code established at the end of the 1980s and now ritually recited by the imperialists?

"The mission is sacred - states this code - you carry it out to the end and, if necessary, in operations, at the risk of your life". That is the spirit of sacrifice codified! But what is the meaning of these processes which now put into religion and codify what yesterday did not need to be so publicly proclaimed and proclaimed? Everything suggests that we are faced with attempts to safeguard states of mind and attitudes transmitted by the fighting tradition whose foundations would today be "shaken" [16] by the re-establishment of the "spirit of sacrifice" [17]. 16] by the regression of the great national myths, by the growth of an individualism calling for utilitarian reasoning, but also by contexts of engagement of land forces which, lacking a vital national stake, make it illegitimate to sacrifice lives for the mission.

"The sanctity of the mission is a notion that must be forgotten here [...]" This is whata battalion commander couldwrite in his end-of-mandate report in Bosnia fifteen years ago, in the context of the interposition of French blue helmets on Sarajevo [17]. 17] Implicit in this reflection was already the problem of missions so delegitimized by political, ideological and tactical conditions of engagement that the symbolism of sacrifice no longer had any efficiency. There, many leaders found themselves naked, confronted with the fundamental question of their office: "For what should I sacrifice the lives of my people?"

If you think about the tragedy of a young officer in Sarajevo in May 1995 during the hostage crisis... He was in charge of a platoon and had been given the mission to control the use of Serbian guns and tanks grouped in a Serbian position. His position was established, "incarcerated" on this position! 18] No space allowed him to manoeuvre, if necessary: "I consider that we have been put in an indefensible position," he later declared. On the afternoon of 26 May he was captured by surprise by the Serbs, beaten repeatedly and threatened with death if he did not lay down his arms. He resisted. Mortar and rocket fire on his post! Late in the evening, again threatened with death and the total destruction of his position, he ordered his platoon to lay down their arms. Later, he received a naive but moving poem from his men:

"That day, my lieutenant, you were great ...

You were a prisoner, and yet you still..,

Made that decision to see us all alive,

By laying down our arms, in the face of this enemy ..."

Faced with the inanity of his mission, placed in a tactical position of powerlessness, this leader chooses the life of his people rather than a probable death. In the eyes of his men, he was a hero!

As an echo, here are the results of a survey administered in 2002 on the St. Cypriots in two waves: at the entrance and exit of the School; unlike the investigations on officer cadets mentioned above, which did not allow for any comparison, this one allowed us to understand the effects of three years spent at Saint-Cyr. Alex Alber, who used it, observed that the outgoing Saint-Cyrans were distinguished from the incoming ones "by a more nuanced relationship to the sacrificial dimensions of the trade". "A statement such as "the mission takes precedence over life whatever the circumstances" arouses more disapproval among them than among the newcomers (...). The priestly vision (...) of the military office, marked (...) by sacrificial rhetoric, gives way to a much more realistic vision of the profession, which implies, in particular, a marked concern of remuneration, respect for duties and hours of service, and which welcomes with much less hostility the hypothesis of an early conversion". And Alex Alber concludes that this "disenchantment" "finally allows us to produce real professionals capable of making the difference between an essentially commemorative rhetoric and the reality of today's profession" [19].

19] "Don't bring coffins home!" Such would be the obsession of great and small leaders today, so often the Army's commitments are devoid of vital political stakes which legitimize sacrificing lives. The power of sacrificial symbolism has its limits. It fades in the face of the feeling of absurdity of a mission, when it appears to be a sham, when the political conditions of the commitment make it a task to be carried out, when it is a political task to be carried out.It fades away in the face of a sense of the absurdity of a mission, when it appears to be a sham, when the political conditions of the engagement make it a task with obscure or doubtful ends, when the tactics do not articulate the execution of this mission with the concrete objective of a higher echelon. Then the leader finds himself naked in front of the eyes of his men. If this leader is a soldier charged with humanity and not a soldier in search of honorary rattles, if the lives of his men are at stake, he will have only one thought in mind: "Bring them all home! His victory will reside in the safe lives of those he commands.

Today, it is no longer enough to proclaim the mission sacred. It's no longer enough to make sacred the memory of sacrificial battles, or else the incantation will remain. It is necessary to reactivate this collective memory by constructing new narratives that make sense for new generations of fighters. Political action needs to resource military action by reinvesting it with national goals. Finally, the ideological and political conditions for the use of weapons must be legitimized by a higher interest.

Otherwise, we will eventually end up with fighting forces governed by the law of contract and by the market: the law of financial remuneration, the law that evaluates the reputation of leaders and fighting units, the law of adventure. They will indeed be "true professionals": a kind of "state mercenaries" to use a provocative expression of General Thomann (unpublished). Honour and Loyalty will replace Honour and Country. The new soldier will die again to save a friend, to defend his unit, to save his leader. But the latter will no longer be mobilized by a symbolic force which, emanating from the power of a national interest, will force him to carry out his mission at the risk of the lives of his people. Choosing to "bring them all home", he will bypass the mortal risk. He will adopt avoidance tactics and security logic. He will do his job, and that's it, avoiding workplace accidents.

1] See E. Morin, "Sociologie", Fayard, 1984, p. 159 ff.

2] See A. Thiéblemont, "Approchecritique de la notion de culture militaire", in F. Gresle (ed.) "Sociologie du milieu militaire", Paris, L'Harmattan, 2005 , pp. 15-27.

3] Cf. A. Thiéblemont, ibidem, pp. 20 et seq.

4] The writings of soldiers (logbooks, memoirs, correspondence) written during the war of 14-18 or immediately afterwards provide many illustrations of the respected officer: "he is the one who crosses the line of the outposts, who goes on foot (in the marches), gives precise orders, loses neither his head nor his way. He is a troop leader who knows his men one by one". Quoted by Jacques Meyer, "La viequotidienne des soldats pendant la grande guerre", Hachette, 1966, p.281.

5] On this point, cf. E. Hobsbawn, "Inventing Traditions", in "Usages de latradition - Enquête n°2": 1995, Parentheses Editions, p. 171-189.

6] Cf. Bernard Boene, Le recrutement direct des officiers des armes de l'armée de terre, "Les Champs deMars" no. 7, I/2000, pp. 109-125, pp. 113, 114, 123.

7] Fabrice Hamelin, "Le combattant et le technocrate. La formation des officiers à l'aune du modèle des élites civiles", "Revue française de sciencepolitique" 3/2003 (Vol. 53), p. 435-463 - p. 443-445. The notion of "technocratic temptation" used by the author refers "to the valorization of a technical competence (...) attested by the passage through particularly selective and prestigious schools" and thus to the access to a social status that puts those who come from these schools "in a position to claim a place (...) in the group of society's leaders, on the basis of a professional competence (...) recognized in political work". (p.436-437)

[8] J.C Bar, Admiral J. Dufourcq, F. Toulon, "Parolesd'officiers", Paris, Fayard, 2010, p.137.

9] The following is developed in. A. Thiéblemont, "Réveils identitaires dans l'armée de Terre", Inflexions civils et militaires: pouvoir dire, La documentation française, June September 2009, n°11, p. 73-85.

10] Cf. M.A. Paveau, Paroles de militaires: les "Libres réflexions sur la défense" in the review Armées d'aujourd'hui, 1986-1996, Mots-Les langages du politique, 1997, vol. 51, pp. 58-74, pp. 65, 68.

11] G. Gosselin, Tradition et traditionalisme, Revue française de sociologie, XVI, 1975, pp. 215-227, pp. 219-220.

12] Cf. on this point, A. Thiéblemont, "Réveil identitaire...", art. cit.

13] Cf. in particular, JC. Barreau et alii, op. cit., pp. 130, 137.

14] These concepts are borrowed from G. Balandier, op. cit., p. 121 .

15] Cf. A. Thiéblemont, "Les paraîtres symboliques et rituels des militaires en public", in A. Thiéblemont (ed.), Cultures et logiques militaires, pp. 163-210, pp. 196-197, 200 et seq.

16] Cf. "L'exercice du métier des armes dans l'armée deTerre", Emat, January 1999, in which its editor, General Bachelet, expresses the feeling of "shaking up points of reference and references". of military action due to the "profound transformations that affect the geostrategic context, the economic and financial balances, the mentalities (...) and the French army itself".

17] Quoted by A. Thiéblemont, "Expériences opérationnelles dans l'armée de Terre - Unités decombat en Bosnie (1992-1995 ) ", (3 volumes), Les documents du Centre d'études en sciences sociales de la Défense, November 2001, volume 1, p. 78.

18] In April 1995 in the Sarajevo sector, following ceasefire agreements in February 1994, there were more than 40 French positions nested in the front lines or established on Serb positions: "potential hostages"! In particular, a NATO-imposed ultimatum to the forces of the Bosnian Serb Republic (BRS): their heavy weapons were to be withdrawn beyond a 20-kilometre exclusion zone around the city. Under the pretext of many difficulties in moving some of their guns or tanks, the Vrs commanders obtained from the United Nations Protection Force (Forpronu) the possibility of regrouping some of their weapons in their own positions: they would be placed there "under the guard" of Forpronu! Blue helmet posts were then set up in the middle of the Bosnian-Serb positions with the mission to "guarantee the neutralization" of these armaments: an impossible mission since these posts were in reality under the control of the Serbian separatists! On May 26, 1995, at least two hundred blue helmets, including a hundred French soldiers, were captured or surrounded by Bosnian Serbs. Cf. the detail of this episode and the drama lived by this officer in A. Thiéblemont, ibidem, volume 1, pp. 63-68 and 74-81.

19] Alex Alber, "Une socialisation professionnelle par l'histoire: la formation morale des saint-cyriens et le martyrologue patriotique", Temporalités [ Online], 6/7 | 2007.

Colonel (H) André Thiéblemont is a graduate of the EMSST, a graduate of the Institut d'études politiques de Paris and holds a DEA in sociology. He left the uniform in 1985, after having served in the foreign legion, in motorized regiments, in the Prime Minister's information service, then in the information and public relations service of the armies. At the same time, since the 1970s, he has been conducting research linking the daily life of the military and the combatant with the political, ideological and cultural dimensions of the life of the armies and French society. His work has been the subject of numerous contributions to French and foreign journals (Cahiers internationaux de sociologie, Ethnologie française, Pouvoir, Revue des deux mondes, Sciences humaines, Le Débat, Armed Forces and Society, etc.). He has notably published "Cultures etlogiques militaires" (Puf, 1999), "Expériencesopérationnelles dans l'Armée de terre: combat units in Bosnia 1992-95", Paris, Les Documents du Centre d'études en sciences sociales de la Défense (C2SD), 2002 and "Le métier de sous-officier dans l'armée deTerre" (with C. Pajon), Paris, Les Documents du C2SD, 2004.