13e DBLE: 2020 Change of Command | French Foreign Legion Information

In late July 2020, a Change of Command ceremony took place at Camp Larzac, the military base of the 13th Foreign Legion Half Brigade (13e DBLE), currently the last surviving “half-brigade” (demi-brigade) within the French Army.

Stationed at La Cavalerie in southern France, the 13e DBLE legionnaires saw Colonel Jacques Bouffard leaving them and their regiment after his prescribed two-year stay, while Colonel Pierre-Henri Aubry was appointed as a new commanding officer for the next two years.

Pierre-Henri Aubry joined a school for NCOs in 1995. He served with ALAT (French Army Light Aviation – part of French ground forces, not of the Air Forces). As a Marechal des logis (an Aviation equivalent to Sergeant in Infantry), he was sent to Combined Military School (EMI) in 1999 to become an officer. As a Captain, he led the GCP commando group of the 2e REP at Calvi in the 2000s. In 2015, he served with the Lebanese Army Instruction Direction (French Army, including the Legion, trains partially Lebanese soldiers, within the UN mission).

At the same time, he published a book about French General Lanrezac, an important personality of WWI, for which he was awarded with the Erwan Bergot Price (a French Army literary price named after a former 2e REP officer and well-known writer).

Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Pierre-Henri Aubry was assigned to the 13e DBLE in 2016 to head the Training & Operations Bureau of the regiment. He left the Half Brigade in 2018 for another military studies in Paris before taking over the regiment now. In November 2020, his another book would be released – La Lune est claire: La Légion étrangère au combat (2008-2018) (Foreign Legion in action 2008-2018).

In the coming two years, the new commanding officer of the 13e DBLE has to update and modernize his regiment with France’s brand-new military technologies, systems and military equipment, including new armored vehicles. Wish him good luck!

CEMAT - Lieutenant Colonel Pierre-Henri Aubry — General *Jean-Pierre Bosser*, the then chief of the French Army, and Lt-Col *Pierre-Henri Aubry*, awarded with the Erwan Bergot Price for his book, 2016.

Colonel Pierre-Henri Aubry - 13e DBLE

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