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Pierre Schoendoerffer enlisted so that he could leave for Indochina. Inflexions magazine decided to visit him and ask him to explain how one could leave for war. That experience brought forth a wealth of memories. “Leaving” became synonymous with discovering and then with setting off again and making pilgrimages. Then came daring, remembering, turning back (inevitably), assisting, setting an example, becoming richer, fleeing, returning, communicating, dying and, perhaps most important of all, hoping. In just one hour, Inflexions traversed a life with a panoply of emotions. The author and film-maker devoted himself to us, exuding warmth, generosity and trust. He spoke about plans. He dealt with death, including his own death, the one that will put an end to his departures. “Leaving” thus became a multi-faceted jewel with, at its heart, “a little candle marvelling at life”. “Leaving” became a way of paying tribute to those who had helped the little sailor become a film-maker, continuing to travel even when established.

Leaving is an eloquent gesture. What the gesture can say is illustrated magnificently in biblical literature by Abraham. For him, leaving was both going away and coming back: returning to God, even when he believed God had been left far behind him. The biblical God is certainly one who takes us on board, while at the same time being an “on-board” God in guiding our lives, travelling with us and, ultimately, always being there. With him, leaving is most certainly living, and enhancing the experience of life.

From the recruiting sergeants' “Notice to fine men” to the “operational commitment at the four corners of the earth” in the most recent film clips from army headquarters, France's armed forces have always made great use of images and slogans to attract volunteers. With the colonial saga in the mid-19th century, the exotic was a new argument that carried weight. Fascination for the East, and the initiation through a period overseas, became part of a real armed-forces culture, particularly for the French Marine Corps. It was an East without specific limits, largely a creation of the imagination, but with codes, rituals, clichés and a definite knowledge of the peoples and countries, communicated from generation to generation and echoing the slogan “Join up, Re-enlist: You will see the country”.

The Sahara, one of the great imperial enterprises of France, is still, probably, one of the most iconic images. Its conquest, marked by tragic episodes, was neither quick nor easy, and serves to illustrate the legendary endurance of the desert warriors. That conquest was to help produce a type of French officer who, with no illusions about a “civilising mission”, was able to share the life of nomadic people, understand them and reach a negotiated settlement. Finding out about the Saharan peoples and landscapes fed the ever-lively imagination and inspired many artists. The discovery of oil, when the Algerian war was at its height, was seen as a new reason for hope in France's overseas future – to the extent that consideration was given, for a time, to keeping the Sahara, separating it off from an independent Algeria.

Leaving has always been an inseparable part of being a sailor, whether as a yachtsman, a fisherman or a navy rating. The various aspects of leaving port have a variety of effects on the person: imaginative, affective, intellectual and physical. Going to sea implies a very special relationship with the boat, the action, the natural environment, danger, one's family, the weather, the crew of which the person is a member, and the vessel's command. The never-ending absences and returns punctuate the family's life as much as that of the sailor himself: a life composed of successive temporary situations of balance. The modern era has not drastically changed these realities. At most, certain technical changes have reduced or strengthened some aspect of the isolation, or social changes have necessitated increased attention to certain consequences of the separation. Overall, being a sailor is much more than practising an occupation; being a “war sailor” is a real calling.

“Having a happy family life, being lucky in love and surrounded by friends, why am I leaving this golden world for six months?” Testimony of a young lieutenant.

This article consists of extracts from a diary kept by Sergeant Christophe Tran Van Can in Afghanistan. It shows mixed feelings: the difficulty of being torn away from one's family, but pride in testing out “for real” what one has learnt.

Louis XIV was worried. His best soldiers – those most feared in Europe, his Swiss guards – were overcome with languor when horns sounded the Ranz des vaches. They were paralysed by nostalgia, or an “illness of return”.

Leaving is at the heart of thinking in the Foreign Legion, and the Legion makes it possible to illustrate this idea of departure. Those who enlist in the Legion are seeking something else, but they are also leaving their past and making a new beginning. Once in the Foreign Legion, their quest continues, and each member's whole mind is focused on the next departure for a far-off theatre of operations, until the final departure for combat leads him to what he is seeking. And that is best shown by the Legion's songs, revealing its soul to us.

The soldiers' long periods of absence are a particular feature of the Royal Moroccan Armed Forces. Despite Moroccan families' westernisation, those of most soldiers remain attached to traditional procedures. This model operates through other arrangements which provide the necessary forms of assistance and manifestations of solidarity. The institutional arrangements enable family functioning to avoid crises when the father is away.

During a soldier's absence, a game of delusion is established to protect the others. It is a game that has repercussions, especially as those who “remain behind” do not feel valued: a “double hardship”, says this writer.

French combatants are now semi-nomadic. They go off for an external operation and get back a few months later. They have time to go on leave, and resume garrison life. Then they go off again to protect a town against terrorists, rescue people in distress, come back and leave again for a course at a training centre, or a camp to prepare for another expedition in a far-off location. They are immersed in a culture of leaving! Given that this is combined with the effects of “modularity”, which ensures a variety of operational experiences within a single fighting force, this does present some problems!

The great majority of young recruits choose a military career as part of a search for identity or because it is a family tradition. They are aware that as their career progresses it will be punctuated by numerous movements, including missions and assignments abroad. What relationships do soldiers establish with the idea of leaving? While these experiences are an opportunity for them to discover themselves and reveal themselves to their families, they can also be experienced as painful interludes. In the specific context of external operations, the families constitute a remote source of support but they can also prove to be a source of vulnerability for a soldier sent on a mission. The military's social function increasingly accords importance to the morale of soldiers and their families, by relying on debriefing-type feedback.

Preparing armed forces for operations should include the human aspects, notably the culture and social organisation of the countries where the troops will be sent. Conflicts sometimes occur in places with customs and practices that differ from those with which we are familiar. A military force may thus have to operate in a very specific human environment that requires appropriate behaviour in order to be accepted, or at least tolerated. In such circumstances, mistakes by an individual or collectively can seriously prejudice the mission's success. The role of EMSOME, France's specialist military academy for overseas and foreign territories, is to make units aware of these behavioural and cultural aspects before they are sent to those theatres of operations.

Between a soldier departing alone for an emergency mission of short duration, and departing, accompanied by the family, for a mission of long duration, that was expected and has been prepared for in detail, the problems and effects are dramatically different.

From the first Gulf war onwards, particular attention has been given to the psychological consequences of operational missions. The weak link in these arrangements is the families. What are the possible consequences of leaving for external operations on the functioning and morale of soldiers' families? It can now be seen as necessary to establish protective psychological and social measures for these families, so as not to undermine the operational availability of soldiers for those operations.

During the period 1956 to 1962, two million young Frenchmen “called to the colours” spent two years of their lives in Algeria. What was their state of mind when they left for the other side of the Mediterranean, to take part in what one was not allowed to call a war? What sort of people did they become, and what did they feel when, two years later, they left Algeria?

A pathological form of leaving (or departing) is running away, known to psychiatrists as “fugue”. In the armed forces, it is called “desertion”. It is a serious occurrence and, depending on the circumstances, can result in the most severe forms of punishment. Experts in the mid-20th century tended to regard those who left in this way as seriously ill, suffering from of an illness whose most extreme form can be called “dromomania”.

Now that Bin Laden's death signals an important initial success in the fight against terrorism, we should ask ourselves about the various possibilities for exiting the crisis in Afghanistan, where the USA and the 40-odd nations who form the UN-mandated ISAF have been in action against a scattered but tenacious enemy since 2001. While the concept of collective security has fizzled out, because of disaffection from public opinion, which wants no more of the war, various scenarios are possible, from a “useful Afghanistan” to extreme “Afghanisation”, which has the drawback of establishing a mafia-like regime. It seems much more desirable to convene a regional conference on security that would guarantee the integrity of the country and its neutrality, while ensuring against any return to power of the Taliban.

The specific features of military activity have often been studied from a philosophical or sociological perspective, but a legal approach also helps us understand how things have developed. The French Constitution and laws provide the basis for the existence of the country's armed forces, and they recognise the specifically military features as being death delivered and received in combat, in the service of the nation. That is recognised by there being a specific legal framework. However, developments in law and in society are leading to the military and civil worlds coming closer together. While this has desirable aspects, it can lead to questioning of that specific status. This is partly due to war becoming an increasingly criminal matter, with the loss of some of its essentially political nature. The difficulty in defining war, the proliferation of standards to govern it, and the increasingly legal regulation of our society are thus having the result of bringing death in combat into the legal arena and undermining specifically military features, giving judges the task of redefining the specifically military domain.

Pierre Schoendoerffer enlisted so that he could leave for Indochina. Inflexions magazine decided to visit him and ask him to explain how one could leave for war. That experience brought forth a wealth of memories. “Leaving” became synonymous with discovering and then with setting off again and making pilgrimages. Then came daring, remembering, turning back (inevitably), assisting, setting an example, becoming richer, fleeing, returning, communicating, dying and, perhaps most important of all, hoping. In just one hour, Inflexions traversed a life with a panoply of emotions. The author and film-maker devoted himself to us, exuding warmth, generosity and trust. He spoke about plans. He dealt with death, including his own death, the one that will put an end to his departures. “Leaving” thus became a multi-faceted jewel with, at its heart, “a little candle marvelling at life”. “Leaving” became a way of paying tribute to those who had helped the little sailor become a film-maker, continuing to travel even when established.

During the period 1956 to 1962, two million young Frenchmen “called to the colours” spent two years of their lives in Algeria. What was their state of mind when they left for the other side of the Mediterranean, to take part in what one was not allowed to call a war? What sort of people did they become, and what did they feel when, two years later, they left Algeria?