How French soldiers train for trench warfare

Paris: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 marked the return of high-intensity warfare in Europe. Now, almost three years later and with the conflict showing no signs of abating, France is gearing itself up to fight.

A dozen young French soldiers advance cautiously in single file in a trench in the east of France. Armed with assault rifles and light machine guns, the infantrymen explore the gutters, taking care not to get too close to each other – a standard precaution to avoid the entire troop being decimated by an enemy grenade.

“Bunker on the left! Minimi in support!,” the leader of the group suddenly shouts.

A soldier equipped with the Minimi, a light machine gun, immediately stops and positions himself, the weapon aimed at the target. Another soldier removes a grenade from his tactical vest, ready to throw it as soon as he is given the command.

Sweat drips through the camouflage paint on the young soldier’s faces. Everyone is deadly focused.

The colours of the grenade (light blue) and the gun magazines (bright yellow) are a reminder that this is only a drill – taking place here, in Alsace, in northeastern France, bordering Germany and Switzerland.

Close-up of the blank ammunition and training grenades used during an exercise in the trenches of the camp of the Régiment de Marche du Tchad on 17 December 2024.

Close-up of the blank ammunition and training grenades used during an exercise in the trenches at the Régiment de Marche du Tchad base in France on 17 December 2024. © Mehdi Chebil, FRANCE 24

While the Alsatian countryside on this mid-December day gives off the same desolate air of Ukraine’s Donbas region – currently witness to some of the most intense fighting since the start of the war between Moscow and Kyiv – the drills at the Régiment de Marche du Tchad’s base are much more relaxed. The RMT name originates from the unit formed in 1943 with troops from the Régiment de Tirailleurs Sénégalais du Tchad, tasked with safeguarding the former French colony of Chad.

Recruits playing the role of attackers sometimes come face to face with soldiers ambushed in the trenches, forcing them to be constantly vigilant.

Here, there are no simulated artillery strikes, sniper fire or drones flying over the trenches – tactics that have become a common sight on the Ukrainian front.

Aboveground, Lieutenant Melchior* keeps a sharp eye on the group of young recruits, who began their infantry training only a few months ago.

Nothing escapes the 28-year-old squad leader. He sees any mistake: an engaged safety lever, a grenade thrown haphazardly, bad communication between soldiers…

Lieutenant Melchior (R) supervises a trench attack drill carried out by young recruits from the Régiment de Marche du Tchad on 17 December 2024.

“The use of grenades is essential, the noise and smoke forces the enemy to lower their heads, and that is the moment we move forward to neutralise them,” the non-commissioned officer explains.

“Today we’re working on tactical movement and reflexes. It’s not yet automatic for this group. That’s why we have to do it over and over again … They say you have to repeat a gesture 1,000 times before it becomes instinctive.”

At the RMT base, hundreds of new French recruits between 18 and 22 years old have already passed through these trenches, which were built last autumn to prepare ground troops for high-intensity conflicts, like the one between Russia and Ukraine.

“The infantry is the weapon we use to cover the last 300 metres: we train for urban and woodland warfare,” Melchior explains. “Trench warfare can be a mixture of these two, because you approach the trenches on open ground, and progress through the gutters, checking all blind spots as you would in urban fighting.”

The recruits also practised disembarking from the armoured transport vehicle, which took them almost as far as the trench.

One of the main difficulties of trench warfare, however, lies in the fact that troops advance in a half-buried tunnel without being able to see what is going on above.

“Soldiers must be particularly vigilant, they need to keep their eyes peeled to spot where their fellow troops are and where their enemies are. A soldier can quickly lose his bearings in a network of trenches,” Melchior says.

The conditions in which these infantrymen will have to move about the battlefield have also changed considerably in recent years.

The French army, which is accustomed to counter-insurgency operations under the cover of air support, must now prepare to fight enemies with similar military capabilities.

“Fighting an enemy with the same capabilities means that they will be able to observe us constantly with their drones; they will be able to hit our rear bases, identify and destroy our command posts if we are not mobile enough,” says Lieutenant-Colonel Paul, head of the RMT’s training operations office.

“We’re looking at what’s happening in Eastern Europe and we’re trying to prepare for future conflicts – and to make sure that we’re not too far behind.

“We can see that in Ukraine the skies are full of drones. It would be an illusion for an infantryman to think he was safe in these conditions,” he adds.

Camouflage and permanent mobility are a crucial part of infantry training as the French army prepares for an increasingly transparent battlefield.

The army is also training drone operators at the RMT base to join its most basic unit – the combat group, comprised of eight to fifteen soldiers – so that potential ambushes can be detected by mini unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs.

But other aspects, such as artillery and air support, are no less important when it comes to the soldiers’ survival on the battlefield.

Most military experts, however, believe that the French army lacks the resources necessary to sustain its troops in a high-intensity conflict over the long term because it lacks artillery shells and rocket-propelled grenades.

This is a result of the French military’s decades-long strategy that prefers investing in equipment that uses cutting-edge technology, such as combat aircraft, armoured vehicles, aircraft carriers and nuclear deterrent, to stocking up on ammunitions.

“There has indeed been a change in mentality among the French authorities on the subject, but we’ve come from a long, long way behind (…) There is an inertia effect from the last 30 years, when we were often in a position of overwhelming military superiority,” explains Elie Tenenbaum, director of the Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI) Security Studies Centre.

“The desire to re-examine our technological ambitions in order to build up the army’s capacities goes against a number of players, including the French Procurement Agency (Direction Générale de l’Armement) and manufacturers who want to continue to focus on quality and maximum technological performance,” Tenenbaum says.

Although France’s new Military Planning Law attaches more importance to building up the army’s ammunition supply and increasing the military training of its troops, it stops short of radically changing France’s decades-old military strategy, he adds.

This means that, for now, France would have to continue to lean on its Western allies or fall back on the threat of its nuclear arsenal.