This is no movie, there are few swooping helicopters and no orchestra thundering out Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. They are arriving in dribs and drabs, probably anxious, certainly dusty after the 750km drive across Chad from N'Djamena, writes Tony Kinsella
There are unlikely to be cheering crowds to welcome them. In the best of circumstances the staggered arrival would make welcoming ceremonies difficult. It has been a long time since Abeche's 70,000 residents, or the 400,000 refugees around the town, have known anything that vaguely resembled the best of circumstances.
The fact that they are late, even very late, is considerably less important than the fact that Eufor's 4,000 troops from 14 EU member states under the command of our own Lieut-Gen Patrick Nash are finally deploying to provide security along the Chad-Sudan frontier.
If their arrival represents historic progress, the delay in assembling the force was pathetic. European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) is in its infancy. Assembling forces from national armies configured and equipped for other priorities is a skill that we are still learning.
Progress in moving from long-established structures and approaches rooted in our bloody past to the early, hesitant steps in what will hopefully prove to be a less bloody future was never going to be easy.
Comparisons between the unilateral US attack on Iraq and the UN, African Union and EU-mandated Eufor deployment in Chad is to compare the 19th and 21st centuries.
Olof Palme, the assassinated Swedish Prime Minister, headed the commission that published its report Common Security: A Blueprint for Survival a quarter of a century ago. In a world still divided by the cold war, its call for nations collectively to address their security needs sounded wonderfully, almost hopelessly, optimistic.
Palme would be cracking one of his crinkly, mischievous smiles today were he able to watch Swedish, Austrian and Irish special forces lead Eufor into Chad. ESDP is coming to life, nations acting in their common security and moral interests.
Armies are often accused of being obsessed with their last wars, hopelessly locked in the past. While there is than an element of truth in that accusation, it is frequently more applicable to their critics.
ESDP is often cited by Irish opponents of the Lisbon Treaty. Terms such as "A European army" and "conscription" conjure up images of Hanoverian press gangs roaming the boreens in search of cannon fodder - powerful, emotive, misleading, inaccurate, and thus irrelevant, language.
Conscription in Ireland carries imperial overtones - the threat of conscription in 1917 providing one of the motors for our War of Independence. Conscription in mainland Europe was viewed very differently. It was the norm, a civic duty and one with a distinctly progressive flavour. The levée populaire saved the French Revolution, while Willy Brandt championed the idea of the "citizen-in-uniform" as a democratic bulwark against a professional military class.
Most EU member states have abandoned compulsory military service, others are phasing it out. It is not only that conscription would be impossible under the Lisbon Treaty as defence remains a national domain, it is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.
Countries no longer need to spend scarce security resources training lots of troops how to shoot. They increasingly invest in the altogether more complicated task of training a small number of professionals about when to shoot.
Defence spending is largely static and shrinking or radically changing across the world outside the US.
It is ironic, if understandable, that major capital procurement programmes such as the UK's Typhoon Eurofighter or France's Rafale are coming to be seen as resource-devouring dinosaurs.
These sophisticated aircraft began their design lives during the cold war and the purchasing contracts were signed in that, now redundant, context.
Both London and Paris are now reducing the numbers and switching resources elsewhere. Similar considerations apply to heavy-armoured vehicles such as Main Battle Tanks.
This imbalance was a major contributory factor to US casualties in Iraq. Tanks and armoured fighting vehicles proved far too cumbersome for Iraqi streets. The US switched to the ubiquitous Humvee. This, at best, lightly-armoured jeep proved be a death trap for its occupants when attacked with roadside bombs.
Washington, post-Rumsfeld, has reacted with a rushed $22.4 billion programme to build over 15,000 Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) vehicles. Four different models from four different manufacturers are now coming off the production lines and are being individually airlifted to Iraq. In June 2007, there were about 100 MRAPs in Iraq, by the end of January 2008 that had risen to over 2,500. The presence of these vehicles largely accounts for the recent fall in US combat deaths. Even the Pentagon has begun to shift some of its priorities.
There is no provision for a European army in the Lisbon Treaty, but EU experiences in the Balkans, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Chad point towards growing co-operation.
This, for the moment, is primarily concerned with bolting together operational expeditions out of the elements different national forces can provide.
In time this may well lead to parallel, or even co-ordinated, national decisions. Ireland is highly unlikely to provide the air support our Ranger Wing needs.
This may well nudge other countries to purchase more helicopters and say, fewer combat aircraft. Such national specialisations could provide the pieces of a puzzle which, when national capitals decided to fit them together, would collectively form an operational whole.
Eufor Chad, with all its imperfections, represents another step towards common security.
A measure of the force's success will be whether cheering crowds turn out in Abeche to say goodbye. "Conscription conjures up images of press gangs roaming the boreens in search of cannon fodder