The six volunteers struggled to make their beds on their first night at the regiment and struggled even more to get out of them at 6.30am the following morning.
They wobbled under the weight of their kitbags and puffed their way through the obstacle course.
But the French Army is hailing the hapless half dozen for their role in what it says is the world’s first military venture into reality television.
In a bid to improve its image among the young, l’Armeé de Terre recruited six bloggers on a popular internet chat forum and dispatched them for a five-day training course with the 152nd Infantry Regiment at Colmar in eastern France. They were filmed night and day, and the scenes are being broadcast until the end of the year on Mode Immersion, a web TV set up by the French Ministry of Defence.
Cindy, a 21-year-old student, is shown complaining about her chapped hands and numb fingers after a night in a bivouac with temperatures falling below zero.
Gael, 21, a baker who describes his main interest in life as women, exchanges his Chelsea shirt for a camouflage jacket, but breathes a sigh of relief when he is allowed to keep his shoulder-length hair.
And Anissa, a 17-year-old schoolgirl, emerges shaken from a tank ride across rough ground. “I kept bumping my head,” she said.
Unlike civilian reality television, there is no winner and no prizes.
“But they got something much more important than money,” said a French Army spokesman. “They got to find out about themselves and about the army’s values of cohesion, camaraderie, team spirit and effort.” With 105,617 viewers in the first two weeks, the Defence Ministry is describing the programme as a success that will enhance its standing among students and other notoriously rebellious sections of the French youth.
The appeal for volunteers was made on Skyblog, a trendy, adolescent forum run by Sky Radio, which is best known for late-night discussions about sex, drugs and alcohol.
A total of 600 people applied before being whittled down to six after medical, physical and psychological tests. “We had to make sure that they would stay the course and that we could trust them with a rifle,” said the spokesman.
But he insisted that the selection criteria did not necessarily include a favourable disposition towards France’s defence forces. “We want to tackle preconceived ideas about the army and the negative opinions that some young people have about us,” he said.
“There would have been no interest in having pro-military people on the programme. We wanted something which was genuine.” Two of the six are preparing to sign up after their stint under the glare of the cameras, he said. But four are keen to get away from dawn wake-up calls, crawls through the mud and combat training.
The need to recruit large numbers of professional troops is relatively new in France, where national service was obligatory until 1996.
Although the army says it fulfils its requirement for 15,000 new recruits a year, many quit after a few months.
In a bid to cut the drop-out rate, officers have started to lay on short courses — such as the one filmed for Mode Immersion — to give would-be troops a taste of la vie militaire before they sign up.
Survivor Philippines: Celebrity Showdown
The Amazing Race Australia
Sindi Nene
