"It is a long story."
It wasn't. But that gruff comment was enough to turn away all questions. That it was a long story was the timehonored evasion men of the French Foreign Legion used against prying reporters or too-curious temporary girlfriends.
Thus, no one ever learned that Colonel Bavard had joined the French Foreign Legion because of a gastrointestinal irregularity.
Cheese gave him gas. Not any common gas, but the most malodorous, ferocious gas imaginable. He had only to nibble a corner of Chevrotin, sometimes only inhale the pungency of Brie, when his bowels would churn and boil and begin venting.
It was acutely embarrassing. It drove off lonely women, lost children and hungry dogs. Even flies avoided Colonel Bavard when he was enveloped in a noxious cloud of his own making.
There were only two humane solutions. Give up cheese or join the French Foreign Legion, which would take anyone, no matter his sins or quirks. Colonel Bavard naturally chose the latter course of action.
After all, what self-respecting Frenchman could survive without cheeses? To dwell Brieless was unthinkable. And to be deprived of Rambol and Camembert? Not to mention the sublime La Vache qui Rit?
Colonel Bavard had served with distinction in Kuwait and Rwanda, and elsewhere in the Frenchspeaking world. He had won countless medals for accepting surrenders. That some of those surrendering to Colonel Bavard were his own men was beside the point. Enemy surrenders far, far outnumbered comrades-in-arms who threw themselves gasping on the tender mercies of Colonel Jean-Guy Bavard.
So it was only natural that in their darkest hour, his fellow countrymen would turn to him.
"We have chosen you for this mission for a reason," the commander of the French Foreign Legion told him in his headquarters office.
Colonel Bavard saluted snappily. "I am prepared to die for my nation."
"We need an officer who can lead his men into the darkest quarter of hell."
"I have no fear."
"Your objective is the Blot."
"It is France's."
"It is already France's. Technically we own fiftytwo percent. Or our unfortunate banks do."
"Then I will destroy it."
"We can accomplish that with an atomic bomb, and may we do so at a later point as a lesson to others who would inflict their inferior culture upon us."
Then they handed him a pair of goggles with the lenses crisscrossed by impenetrable black electrical tape.
"What is this for?"
"To protect your eyes."
"From what?"
"The terror of the Blot," they told him solemnly, and Colonel Bavard felt a slow chill creep up his stiff Gallic spine.
"But how will I lead if I am blind?"
"We will guide you by radio from a hovering command helicopter."
"What about my men?"
"They, too, will be similarly goggled."
"That is fine, but how will they follow me?"
His commander allowed himself a slow smile. "You have hit upon the very reason why you have been chosen for this mission, mon Colonel."
And his commander handed Colonel Bavard a blue wedge of malodorous Roquefort.
"Excuse me," Colonel Bavard said, squeezing his cheeks together. Too late. The room was perfumed with the toil of his sensitive intestines.
"Bon appetit!" said his commander, clapping a respirator over his lower face.
WHEN HE EXPLAINED the mission to his men, Colonel Bavard told them it had an extremely low pucker factor.
In military parlance the world over, this meant that the mission was a low-danger one. The pucker factor being the degree to which the anal sphincter contracted with fear under combat conditions.
Normally low-pucker-factor missions were the most welcome.
Not in Colonel Bavard's unit of the French Foreign Legion. The higher the pucker factor, the easier the breathing.
"How low?" asked a lowly private during the premission briefing.
"The lowest possible."
The men looked stricken. Some, in anticipation of their immediate fate, stopped inhaling. Their red berets seemed almost to deflate in resignation.
"We expect to encounter poison gases?" a sergeant asked, unable to keep the hope out of his voice.
"No poison gases are expected."
"Should we not take our gas masks along just in case?" a private suggested eagerly.
"Gas masks are forbidden," Colonel Bavard said sternly. Some of his men, normally brave to a fault, actually quailed.
"You will don these." And he began handing out the taped goggles that sealed the eyes from bright lights.
The men examined the goggles doubtfully.
"If we are blind, how can we follow you into battle, mon Colonel?"
And to their utter horror, their colonel undid the flap of his blouse pocket and flung away the all-important roll of gas-absorbing charcoal tablets that Colonel Jean-Guy Bavard was never without.
"By your proud French noses," he told them.
WHEN THEY LEARNED that they were to assault Euro Beasley in an armored personnel carrier, the men under the command of Colonel Bavard almost deserted.