“The mission assigned to me was to reconnoiter the route in order to ensure its viability, to make sure that road users could use it in complete safety,” explains Gendarmerie Captain Foucault. During the night, the gendarmerie's armored vehicles cleared branches and large stones erected by the pro-independence fighters. In Noumea, the heavily-equipped gendarmes in their armored vehicle, the Centaure, travel the sensitive axis leading to the airport with the sole mission of clearing the road of obstacles. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES