What are you listening to now?

OK, something cool to to take back foot in this strange day...

Available on Deezer

Btw, speaking about it...

Here's a Dire Straits masterpiece and also a pure work of video art...

On my screen tonight...





"What doesn't kill you doesn't make you necessarily stronger"

Interview. Thierry Prungnaud belonged in the front line during the famous assault of the GIGN to Marignane. His story inspired " The Assault "

On December 26th, 1994, Thierry Prungnaud, member of the GIGN since about twenty years, was the first man to take the assault managed against four Islamist terrorists who held in hostages the occupants of the Air France plane on the airport of Marignane, in Marseille. It is him who entered the first one the plane. He who took the first bullets. He who met plunged between the life and the death. He who inspired the role pulled in Julien Leclercq's movie by Vincent Elbaz. It is thus very naturally to him about whom we wanted to speak. Meeting with a man always full of scars.


Seventeen years later, the cinema invites you to relive key events of your life. How did you live it ?

It is a big emotion. I left it feathers, but that pleases me to see this movie, which is very well made and very realistic.

What did you leave, when you speak about feathers?

Physically. And psychologically. We made me promises, which we did not hold. The gendarmerie refused for example to give me my rank of chief warrant officer, by considering that I had had it enough because I had had the Legion of Honour. It is poignant. Unrefined, the same. I hold it against certain penpushers who decided that I did not deserve my rank.

The story told in the movie stops in the evening of December 26th, 1994, with the successful outcome which we know. How took place days according to?

Later, it is the protocol. I am at the hospital during three months. Nineteen general anesthesias, cardiac stop. They wanted to amputate me twice. The protocol, that means full of people who come to see you, generals, Ministers … Every day during three months. I remember having said to my friend, who was in the room every day, to wait that everybody passes: " You know, that it is the protocol. When I am going to go out, it will be finished. " And indeed, when I went out, that ended well. But too much ended. It was something as from everything to nothing. There were not more than my office colleagues who passed. That weakened me. A big sir said: " All which does not kill you makes you stronger ". For me, that made me much more fragile. When I see the movie, I pour my small tear every time, because it is my story. And my therapy. I have already seen it six times … Young people, which had not been born in the period, took me the leg during two hours. It was moving.

What do they want to know?

Why you made that? How do we make to return in the GIGN? They become identified with the video games, where we fire, where we died. And there, they see a movie, and they see that when we fall, we do not get up. It is a movie report, for me. We see things there which people did not see seventeen years ago. In the period, we saw a plane, shots, people who rose, who came down, but we did not see the inside. Here, not only we see the inside, but we also see the human sensibility. Because we are not robots without soul, in spite of the stereotype which pursues us. We are men. We have a partner, children, private life.

On December 24th, 1994, your partner insists so that you stayed except the mission. Not only you go there, but you appear at it in the front line, with the risk of taking you the first bullets. Why so much zeal?

She wanted that I stop the interventions. She was too much afraid. We were together recently. The day before the assault, I returned her of Switzerland. In the evening I left. If I entered the first one the plane, it is because I was the oldest. That was naturally made.

What happens in your head, at the time of the assault?

Everything can take place in a few seconds. It is in five seconds that I enter, that I neutralize three and that I meet on the ground. Before the assault, when we are on footbridges, the adrenalin rises. We begin to have all the fear. The one who is not scared, it is a patient, it is better than he goes away, he has nothing to do at the GIGN. On the footbridge, we look, we say to ourselves that we go to the cardboard. We squeeze up all the hand. It was a very strong moment. I saw the face of the lads. We said ourselves " We go to the slaughterhouse ". As the door opens, it is not any more a question of fear. We are completely focused on what we have to make. We remember ourselves the morning training.

Who were the terrorists?

They were very definite. They wanted to fill the plane of fuel to blow up it on Paris. They had killed three hostages in the plane. We had to deal with warriors. Poor kids of the districts who had been indoctrinated by people of the GIA. But needs to pity them. That did not prevent them from making what they made.





English translation by myself of the interview by NICOLAS CROUSSE in Le Soir.be - 16 march 2011

Well Snow, this picture was released in 2011 in France, so i'm quite sure that you can find the DVD with English subtitles.

For information, this picture was made under GIGN staff supervision, for being sure that tactics and events complies with the reality. Also, in the assault scene, except two actors, all the others wearing cowls and helmets are authentic GIGN members.

That makes me curious, I will see, if I can find and watch it somewhere... at least when I am back...