The French Army, officially the Armée de Terre (English: Land Army), is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. Just like the Armée de l'Air, the Marine Nationale and the Gendarmerie Nationale it is placed under the responsibility of the French government. The current Chief of Staff of the French Army (CEMAT) is general Bertrand Ract-Madoux.
In 1999 the Army issued the Code of the French Soldier, which includes the injunctions:
| “ | (...) Mastering his own strength, he respects his opponent and is careful to spare civilians. He obeys orders while respecting laws, customs of war and international conventions.(...) He is aware of global societies and respects their differences. (...) | ” |
The French Army employs 126,436 military and 17,025 reservist personnel for a combined component strength of 142,148 personnel in 2012 (this figure excludes French Foreign Legion). All soldiers are considered professionals, following the suspension of conscription, voted in parliament in 1997 and effective as of 2001. In addition there were 19,345 civilian staff working in conjunction with the Department of the Ministry of Defence.
Famous quotes containing the words french and/or army:
“Saigon was an addicted city, and we were the drug: the corruption of children, the mutilation of young men, the prostitution of women, the humiliation of the old, the division of the family, the division of the country—it had all been done in our name.... The French city ... had represented the opium stage of the addiction. With the Americans had begun the heroin phase.”
—James Fenton (b. 1949)
“Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his own,—because we have not supposed that he had a character of his own.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)