The best soldiers of the French Foreign Legion will be in Paris during this summer's Olympic Games, a shift from their traditional missions, as they are usually deployed in places like the troubled Sahel region of Africa.

Members of the famous foreign combat unit, the only one that allows non-French soldiers to enlist, are gathering at a military base in Southern France, hundreds of kilometres from the cafe-lined streets of Paris where they will be deployed in a matter of weeks. They will have to change their routines completely, so they are preparing specifically for this mission.

"There is no Eiffel Tower, but we are in Paris," says Lieutenant Antoine to the troops gathered around him. Like all legionnaires, they had to change their names when they joined. Soon they will join the 20,000 soldiers who will try to protect Paris, and in the meantime they are simulating situations similar to those they might encounter. 

Soon, in the thousands of cafés that line the streets of the French capital, they will be searching for "suspicious objects" with the help of dogs and drones.

The Foreign Legion, a corps of about 10,000 soldiers founded nearly 195 years ago, requires soldiers to change their names on enlistment and allows them to apply for French citizenship after several years of service, or sooner if they have distinguished themselves in combat in places like Niger, where they have fought an Islamist insurgency.

This week, they began a search exercise. Lieutenant Antoine wants to make sure that the legionnaires are familiar with what they will be up against in just over a month's time during the biggest sporting event in the world. One of the tests this week was the concealment of an object weighing only 550 grams with a suspicious substance. 

There are 30 different nationalities working side by side in the Foreign Legion. They will have to be part of the police and private security teams. The multicultural experience ahead is immense.

Captain Aymeric told AFP: "Our men are ready to join the 20,000 or so military personnel deployed for the Games. However, Lieutenant Hugo goes further. Paris is about the "complexity and the density of the urban environment". In the Sahel, there is time, but in Paris, time is very limited. The spaces are going to be huge, but the time is going to be very limited.

The exact figures are not yet known, but for example, during the opening ceremony, one of the moments of greatest concern for the organisers, police and soldiers, the number of spectators was significantly reduced. This was because it was considered impossible to control and secure the crowd. It was reduced from 600,000 to around 300,000.

Whatever happens, the soldiers are proud of their mission. "I'm proud," says Sergeant "Ganesh", a Nepalese who enlisted in 2018. Joining the French Foreign Legion is not about patriotism. Its motto is "honour and loyalty". Soldiers must not have been convicted of serious crimes such as murder or paedophilia. 

They must be ready for combat, willing to serve for five years and learn French. Nothing more. And defend France. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, there has been a restriction on Belarusian and Russian citizens. They can no longer join. For many of those who have found their calling, it is the start of a "second or third life". "What interests me is not what they did before," he said. "It's what they are willing to do for us," the captain told AFP.