2e REG: French Guiana 2020-2021 | French Foreign Legion Information

Between September 2020 and January 2021, legionnaires from the French Foreign Legion’s 2nd Foreign Engineer Regiment (2e REG) were being deployed to French Guiana in South America to reinforce French troops there. See a few pictures from their four-month mission.

The men from the 3rd Company, 2e REG arrived in French Guiana in mid-September 2020. They were immediately assigned to the 9th Marine Infantry Regiment (9e RIMa), another military unit stationed in this French overseas department, along with the Legion’s 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment (3e REI). Both regiments are composite units consisting of regular personnel (rotating every two to three years) and elementary units (platoons/companies) coming from different French Army branches, usually rotating every four months. While the 3e REI is based in the town of Kourou, the 9e RIMa is garrisoned some 40 miles (65 km) south-east, at Cayenne.

The 2e REG legionnaires replaced in Guiana their comrades from the 3rd Company, 1st Foreign Engineer Regiment (1er REG) who had been deployed there since mid-May 2020.

The main tasks of a rotating company in French Guiana is to maintain order in the region and to intervene, under the terms of Operation Harpie, in illegal gold-mining taking place deep in the tropical rainforest, close to the border with Brazil. This means searching and destroying of illegal mining sites and gold-diggers’ equipment. From time to time, the coming troops are attacked, even by firearms, but the attackers are quickly neutralized.

The 2e REG’s 3rd Company left Guiana in mid-January 2021. During the departure ceremony, several legionnaires and NCOs were decorated.

A year earlier, in 2019, the company served in Mali, West Africa, within anti-terrorist Operation Barkhane.