On this special day which should be that of peace, fraternity and sharing, whether you are with family, on operation, on duty, alone or with your brothers in arms, Zone Militaire wishes you a Merry Christmas 2024.
Each year, it is customary to accompany this short Christmas message with a poem. This time, it will be a text by Commander Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, taken from his work “Citadelle”.
But I have built my sentinels in the hour of guarding. And there is someone here to eat. Their meal is something other than the care given to livestock to increase belly circumference. It is communion in the evening bread of the sentinels. And certainly everyone ignores it.
However, just as the wheat of bread, through them, will become vigilant and watch over the city, it turns out that the vigilance and gaze which embraces the city, through them, becomes the religion of bread. It is not the same bread that is eaten. If you want to read their secrets, which they themselves don't know, go and surprise them in the reserved area, when they are courting women. They tell them:
“I was there, on the rampart, I heard three bullets whistling in my ear. I remained upright, not afraid. »
And they sink their teeth into the bread with pride. And you, stupid, who listens to the words, confuse the modesty of love with the bragging of a thug. Because if the soldier recounts the hour of patrol in this way, it is much less to appear grandiose than to take pleasure in a feeling that he cannot express. He doesn't know how to admit to himself his love of the city. He will die for a god whose name he cannot say. He has already given himself to him, but he demands that you ignore him. He demands this ignorance of himself.
It seems humiliating to appear to be taken in by big words. For lack of knowing how to formulate himself, he instinctively refuses to submit to your irony, his fragile god. As well as his own irony. And you see my soldiers playing the bully and the thugs – and taking pleasure in your error – to taste somewhere, deep within themselves, and as if in fraud, the marvelous taste of the gift of love.
And if the girl says to them: “Many of you – and this is very hard – will die in war…”, you hear them noisily agree. But they approve with grunts and curses. However, it awakens in them the secret pleasure of being recognized. They are the ones who will die of love.
And if you talk about love, then they will laugh in your face! You take them for dupes whose blood is drawn with colorful phrases! Courageous, yes, out of vanity! They play the bully out of modesty of love. So they are right because it happens that you would like them to be fooled.
You use the love of the city to invite them to save your attics. They don't care about your vulgar attics. Will make you believe out of contempt for you that they face death out of vanity. You don't really understand the love of the city. They know it about you, the sated one. They will save the city with love, without telling you, and insultingly, since your barns live in the city, they will throw you like a bone to the dog, your saved barns.
