3e REI: 2024 Exercise Desperado | French Foreign Legion Information

Between April 4 and 10, 2024, the Foreign Legion’s 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment (3e REI) organized a regimental maneuver, Exercise Desperado. About 300 legionnaires participated.

Exercise Desperado took place between the villages of Roura and Cacao. They are located in the northeastern part of French Guiana, and south of Kourou, the regimental garrison town.

The exercise put the regiment’s two combat companies (2nd and 3rd) against each other, and nearly 300 legionnaires were deployed for seven days and six nights in a tactically difficult and rustic environment.

The 3e REI legionnaires went to the jungle “where others don’t go”, to conduct difficult infiltrations on pirogues and on foot, fight in forests and on rivers, occupy enemy positions or defending their own, and resist enemy pursuit in order to accomplish the task assigned to them.

The exercise was an opportunity to pay tribute to the 2,000 Hmong fighters who, 70 years ago, in French Indochina in 1954, mounted a relief column going from Laos to Dien Bien Phu and rescued the last 200 French troops in the valley after the fall of the entrenched camp. It was also an opportunity to remember the sacrifice of 3e REI legionnaires who resisted at the Isabelle strong point.

PHOTOS: 2024 Exercise Desperado in French Guiana
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