MuckFlash

Lyons, FR -26 May 2009- For the better part of three decades, Colonel Gerard LeDoux was the Chief Officer of Centre de Guerre Aix-En-Les-Mains, a sprawling army base in the South-Eastern French countryside where the government sponsored millions of euros worth of advanced weapons research. After a recent report revealed that over two thirds of this budget had been devoted to cheese, however, Colonel LeDoux was relieved of his command and now faces a full court marshal.

French officials refused to comment on the ongoing investigation, but sources who reviewed documents detailing the charges said that the allegations against Colonel are both serious and fantastic. Of a total weapons research budget of 300 million Euros, Colonel LeDoux had earmarked as much as 200 million towards project “Fromage.” Most staffers at Aix-En-Les-Mains had assumed that “fromage,” or “cheese” was a code name, but as internal auditors dug deeper into the base’s records, they found that the Colonel took the project literally. And seriously. So much so that he poured millions into research attempts to make France’s annual production of 1.9 million metric tons of cheese into a viable defensive or offensive stockpile.

Colonel LeDoux could not be reached for comment, but Sylvain Chavanel, an organic weapons expert based in Berne, Switzerland, says that while not unheard of, turning cheese into anything deadly is impractical at best. “With an advanced process of refining the material, you can take an organic compound, like cheese, and enhance it into either a poison or a light explosive, but the energy required is massive,” said Chavanel. “You may as well try to turn a bunny rabbit into a predator drone.”

Officers who worked with LeDoux on the base, who spoke on condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to speak to the media, say that LeDoux focused on the goal with a singular passion. “That’s the first thing he would tell every new transfer: ‘We’re going to take the pride of La France and transform it into the scourge of our enemies.’ It was ridiculous,” they said. “After a time, though, how can you sink money into Fromage? All we had were stinky piles of waste all over the lab while the fighter jet, the advanced artillery, the jetpack, they all suffered for lack of funds.”

Colonel LeDoux is currently being held at a military facility in Paris and will face a tribunal later this year.