PHOTOS: 5e RMP’s Heavy Equipment Company in Tahiti in 1971

The latest part in our series on interesting photographs. This time we head to the South Pacific — Tahiti, French Polynesia — for a set of photographs taken in Polynesia’s capital, Papeete, in 1971. They show the Heavy Equipment Company of the 5th Pacific Mixed Regiment (5e RMP) and some of its vehicles and heavy construction equipment.

The 5e RMP was the French Army’s engineer regiment in Polynesia. It brought together former Foreign Legion infantrymen of the disbanded 5e REI, regular Army sappers, marine troops, and several hundred local Polynesian civilians. Activated in late 1963 and based at Camp Arue in Papeete, Tahiti, it spent the next two decades building and maintaining the facilities that France’s Pacific presence relied on, much of it tied to the nuclear test program run from the territory. By 1971 the regiment numbered roughly 1,400 men.

One of its five companies was the Heavy Equipment Company (Compagnie d’équipement, CE), created in April 1964, six months after the regiment itself. As the name says, it ran the heavy machinery used for earthworks and for building roads and tracks, and it did the lion’s share of the regiment’s construction work. There was hardly a worksite it didn’t touch at one point or another; its machines were the only ones built for the brute-force labor that the men then finished by hand. In 1971, the 5e RMP took on an added job as well, maintaining and repairing the vehicles and heavy equipment of all French forces on Tahiti.

The regiment was reorganized in 1984 and became a Foreign Legion unit, the 5th Foreign Regiment (5e RE). The CE company was disbanded in the early 1990s; the regiment itself was deactivated in 2000. Twenty-four years later, in late 2024, the 5e RE was re-formed in Mayotte, a French island in the Indian Ocean.

The photographs that follow were taken at the military parade for France’s national holiday, Bastille Day (July 14), in Papeete in 1971, with the CE company rolling its equipment through the streets of the capital.

Click on the previews to enlarge them:

Photos - Foreign Legion Etrangere - Heavy Equipment Company - 5th Pacific Mixed Regiment - 5e RMP - Papeete - 1971 - Jeeps — Bastille Day military parade in *Papeete*, July 14, 1971. Two jeeps lead the Heavy Equipment Company’s column, carrying the platoon leaders standing at attention.

Photos - Foreign Legion Etrangere - Heavy Equipment Company - 5th Pacific Mixed Regiment - 5e RMP - Papeete - 1971 - Clark Michigan 125 A wheel loaders — Clark Michigan 125 A heavy-duty, articulated wheel loaders.

Photos - Foreign Legion Etrangere - Heavy Equipment Company - 5th Pacific Mixed Regiment - 5e RMP - Papeete - 1971 - GMC trucks - SPIROS air compressors — GMC CCKW trucks, each towing a SPIROS trailer-mounted air compressor.

Photos - Foreign Legion Etrangere - Heavy Equipment Company - 5th Pacific Mixed Regiment - 5e RMP - Papeete - 1971 - Griffet AE mobile cranes — Griffet AE 745 MS self-propelled mobile cranes.

Photos - Foreign Legion Etrangere - Heavy Equipment Company - 5th Pacific Mixed Regiment - 5e RMP - Papeete - 1971 - Berliet TBU 15 truck tractors — Berliet TBU 15 6×6 truck tractors, each pulling a semi-trailer carrying a bulldozer.

Photos - Foreign Legion Etrangere - Heavy Equipment Company - 5th Pacific Mixed Regiment - 5e RMP - Papeete - 1971 - Berliet TBO 15 truck tractors — Examples of another Berliet truck-tractor type, the Berliet TBO 15 6×4, each pulling a semi-trailer carrying a bulldozer.

Photos - Foreign Legion Etrangere - Heavy Equipment Company - 5th Pacific Mixed Regiment - 5e RMP - Papeete - 1971 - AGRIP tractors - Poclain TC45 crawler excavator — AGRIP tractors, each towing a trailer carrying a Poclain TC45 crawler excavator.

Photos - Foreign Legion Etrangere - Heavy Equipment Company - 5th Pacific Mixed Regiment - 5e RMP - Papeete - 1971 - Richier 100 graders — Richier 100 road graders, designed for grading and leveling road surfaces or terrain.

Photos - Foreign Legion Etrangere - 5th Pacific Mixed Regiment - 5e RMP - Papeete - 1971 - color guard — The 5e RMP’s color guard during the military parade in *Papeete*, July 14, 1971. On the left is probably seen Colonel *Chadal*, who had commanded the regiment since 1969. He was replaced three weeks later.

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