As mentioned in the previous article, which dealt with the 2024 Bastille Day Parade in Paris, the legionnaires of the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment (1er REC) participated in this traditional event. However, they commemorated the French national holiday also abroad.
The 1er REC detachments are currently serving in West Africa’s Ivory Coast, and in the Balkans (Southeastern Europe), in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Ivory Coast, the Legion cavalrymen are stationed in Abidjan, as part of the 43rd Marine Infantry Battalion (43e BIMa), a French combined arms overseas unit. The Battalion is formed with rotating elements who rotate in the former French colony every four months. Combat engineers from the 2nd Foreign Engineer Regiment (2e REG) are being deployed there, too.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the 1er REC detachment is part of the European Union Force Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUFOR; also called Operation Althea), the successor to NATO’s SFOR and IFOR. In fact, the French soldiers returned to the Balkans recently, this May, after a decade of absence – they left Kosovo in 2014. Their mission is to oversee the military implementation of the Dayton Agreement, a peace agreement between the largely Serb-populated Republika Srpska (Republic of Srpska) and mainly Croat-Bosniak-populated Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, two entities that constitute the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In both continents, the 1er REC legionnaires commemorated the French national holiday, Bastille Day (14 July).
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Related posts:
2024 Bastille Day Military Parade
13e DBLE, 1er REG: Ivory Coast 2023-2024
1er REG: 2022 Bastille Day in Ivory Coast
2e REI: 2021 Ivory Coast and Djibouti