Like u/AnathemaMaranatha told me in a comment on another post, stories are the currency in this bar, so let my buy you all a round . For those who are interested, I already shared a story here.

Back in 2010 when I was a 3 weeks old platoon leader in a French infantry regiment, my first deployment was to deter terrorism in the street of Paris as part of operation Vigipirate. This was pre-2015 terror attacks and the climate was… boring.

We were stationed at Fort de l’Est near the Stade de France and everyday a GBC180 (think French version of the M939) would take us from the fort to the RER station (suburban rail system) where we would commute to Paris’ centre. I would spend the day manning the radio in a windowless basement room while my platoon would patrol the subway stations and cordon abandoned luggage in case those were bombs, waiting for the police to investigate (no bomb found but interesting object… story for another time).

One evening after a long dull day, we were on the truck ride back from the RER station to the Fort. The platoon was in the truck's bed, I was in the cabin with a squad leader and the driver. About 500 meters (547 yards) from our destination, we see a lady with two grocery bags starting to cross the street. It was evening, the sun was starting to set, there was no other car on the road apart from our truck. Like I said, it was pre-2015 in France, so we did not think much of it. The driver slowed the truck and then stopped it a couple of meters from her to wait for her to finish crossing.

But when she reached the middle of the road, she did a right face, approached our truck and started to hit the front bumper saying “Bring me back my son!”. Confused, my squad leader and I exited the cabin and started to try to communicate with her. “Ma’am, you can’t stay here, get back on the side walk”, “please ma’am, what is wrong, how can we help”. You know, trying to be gentlemen… But she did not acknowledge us. Dumbfounded, we were trying to decide if we needed to forcibly remove her from the road or something when my squad leader gently touched her arm, trying one more time to ask her to go back on the sidewalk. This seemed to break the spell. She just grabbed her grocery bags and proceeded to walk back to the side-walk and supposedly her home, muttering to herself.

My sergeant and I looked at each other confused, got back in the truck and to the Fort. I reported the incident to the duty officer who didn’t think it was worth noting down then went to the popote (platoon/company makeshift bar that any French unit setup when setting camp somewhere) for a beer and a story.

I’ve always wondered how "we" took her son over the years. Did he join the army and not come back, did he join some guerrilla somewhere and ended up facing French troops? I’ll never know. But she’ll stay with me forever.