The French Foreign Legion Read online

  The French Foreign Legion

  Douglas Boyd

  © Douglas Boyd 2015

  Douglas Boyd has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published 2006 by Sutton Publishing, Thrupp

  Second edition 2010 by Ian Allan Publishing

  This edition published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Sans honneur? Ah, passons. Et sans foi? Qu’est-ce à dire ?

  Que fallait-il de plus et qu’aurait-on voulu ?

  N’avez-vous pas tenu, tenu jusqu’au martyre,

  la parole donnée et le marché conclu ?

  They say that you’re without honour or faith,

  But what more could they have asked?

  Did you not fulfil unto death

  the sworn duty with which you were tasked?

  Legion Captain Borelli, to his legionnaires

  who died at Thuyen Quang in 1885

  Table of Contents

  Foreword to the First Edition

  Introduction

  Part I

  Chapter 1: A bullet for my pal

  Chapter 2: You gotta die sometime.

  Chapter 3: Terrorism and torture

  Chapter 4: Dare call it treason

  Part II

  Chapter 5: The legion of the lost

  Chapter 6: The scarecrow soldiers

  Chapter 7: No pay, no bullets, no mercy

  Chapter 8: Blood on the sand

  Chapter 9: A Head on a Spear

  Chapter 10: Chaos in the Crimea

  Chapter 11: Theirs not to reason why

  Chapter 12: Myth and madness in Mexico

  Chapter 13: Death in the afternoon

  Chapter 14: With rifle-butt and bayonet

  Chapter 15: Blindfolds and bullets on the boulevards

  Chapter 16: Tweaking the dragon’s tail

  Chapter 17: As good as it gets

  Chapter 18: War on the belly of Dan

  Chapter 19: The cut-price campaign

  Chapter 20: Miracle and massacre at Taghit

  Chapter 21: In the kingdom of the west

  Chapter 22: Chaos and Confusion

  Chapter 23: Guns and gas in the trenches

  Chapter 24: Rendezvous with death

  Chapter 25: Identity crisis

  Chapter 26: At both ends of the Med

  Chapter 27: Veterans and Volunteers: Confusion and Courage

  Chapter 28: Whose side are we on, sergeant?

  Chapter 29: Which side did you say, Miss?

  Chapter 30: ‘La Miss’ and the heroes of Bir Hakeim

  Chapter 31: The stormy re-marriage

  Part III

  Chapter 32: Who needs the Legion now?

  Chapter 33: The Legion reborn

  Chapter 34: The Dove that was a Tiger

  Chapter 35: Go! Don’t go! Go!

  Chapter 36: Kill or be killed at Kolwezi

  Acknowledgements

  Foreword to the First Edition

  By Brigadier Anthony Hunter Choat, OBE

  Since King Louis Philippe created the French Foreign Legion in 1831, thousands of books and articles have been written and countless films made about this mysterious, myth shrouded body of men which has been almost continuously in combat in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas ever since. Legionnaires – I was one myself – have always loved a fight, man against man, section against section, company against company. The other characteristic that makes them good soldiers is their craving for the satisfaction of duty done and orders obeyed.

  Their Latin motto Legio patria nostra means ‘the Legion is our country’ and tens of thousands of legionnaires have fought for this adopted country, winning themselves worldwide respect and admiration. Many have died and many more been wounded performing deeds of the most amazing valour, but until now little has been known of the social and geopolitical circumstances in which they were achieved.

  Living in France and speaking French like a native, Douglas Boyd has long been fascinated by the Legion and explored the subject in earlier writings. He understands what motivates the French and what motivates the Legion. The two are not always the same. This major work weaves French political warp with the weft of the Foreign Legion to produce a comprehensive, tight and fascinating history. Boyd’s knowledge of French politics over a span of nearly two centuries, particularly in Indochina and North Africa, gives him a clear perspective on the Legion’s activities, and throws light on the reasons for its successes and failures, and for its sometimes recalcitrant attitude.

  For the greater part of its existence, the Legion has been unashamedly used by French governments for operations overseas that attracted little support or interest at home and for which the average Frenchman had no taste. Legionnaires have accepted this so long as the deal was fair and honest. Although France's treatment of the Legion now is excellent – perhaps because Paris has at last realised that it is an asset not to be wasted or disparaged – in the past, the deals have sadly often been far from fair and honest. Nonetheless, legionnaires have carried out their mission whatever the cost. Reading the accounts of the battles of Camerone, of Highway Four and Dien Bien Phu will tell the reader just how high that cost has been.

  As a former legionnaire, I welcome this book, for both its depth and clarity. It will greatly enhance the Legion’s already superb reputation.

  Tony Hunter Choat (formerly 116798 Sergeant Choat of 1 REP)

  Hereford, September 2005

  Introduction

  While researching this book, I met at the bar of a West London cricket club a former SAS sergeant and naturally asked him whether he had ever bumped into the Legion during his service years. Not exactly a chatty guy, he eyed me suspiciously before admitting that he had – several times.

  I asked, ‘When was the last time?’

  ‘A while back,’ he replied.

  ‘Where?’

  Luckily, I was with a mutual friend – with whom I served in the RAF – so the man of few words took another draught of beer and said, ‘Western Sahara.’

  The disputed territory to the south of Morocco? That sounded promising, so I pushed my luck and asked, ‘What was the Legion doing there?’

  By now, he had had enough of my questions, and muttered, ‘Same as us, like.’

  ‘And what was that?’ I asked innocently.

  He finished his beer, said, ‘Don’t be f---ing daft,’ and left.

  It can be difficult, researching the Legion. As Brig Hunter-Choat says, it’s a mysterious, myth shrouded body of men which has been in combat somewhere on the globe more or less continuously for nearly two centuries. So, where does one begin?

  Well, the most famous Frenchman of all time was a soldier who was not even born in France, but on Corsica when Italian was its first language. The two best-known French presidents of the twentieth century were both military men. Marshal Philippe Pétain was the Hero of Verdun in World War I who became the Traitor of Vichy in World War II, after which his former protégé and wartime enemy General Charles De Gaulle sentenced his senile ex-patron to death, and commuted the sentence before turning France from ‘the sick man of Europe’ into an independent nuclear super-power.

  In a country where politics and the military are so closely interwoven it is no surprise to find that one branch of the armed forces has provided many generals, marshals and high-ranking politicians up to Prime Minister. That it should be the Foreign Legion gives cause for thought.

  What makes the French Foreign Legion different from any other army – apart from its unequalled mixture of races – is that it numbers in its ranks men from all social and educational backgrounds: musicians like American Cole Porte
r, philosophers like Hungarian-born Arthur Koestler, writers like Switzerland’s Blaise Cendrars and the grand old man of German letters Ernst Junger. Poets, painters and professional sportsmen have served alongside bemedalled veterans prepared to work their way up again from the lowest rank after donning Legion uniform.

  For 179 years jobless, homeless and loveless men have found a sense of purpose worth all the rigours and risks of serving in the world’s longest-standing mercenary army, but so too have many born in palaces. Royal legionnaires include King Peter I of Serbia, Prince Louis II of Monaco, Crown Prince Sisowath Monireth of Cambodia and princes Aage of Denmark and Amilakvari of Georgia. Of slightly lesser pedigree was Prince Napoleon, son of Princess Clementine of Belgium and great-grandson of the Legion’s founder King Louis-Philippe. The Prince served as Legionnaire Blanchard, No 94707. His haughtier cousin the Count of Paris enlisted as engagé volontaire D’Orliac with the number 10681. Maxim Gorky’s adopted son rose from enlisted rank to general’s stars, yet chose to be buried beneath a stone inscribed simply Legionnaire Zinovi Pechkoff.

  Twenty-first century recruits are unlikely to be motivated by the romance of Edith Piaf’s hit-song about her legionnaire lover, whose skin ‘smelt deliciously of hot desert sand’.[1] Fewer still will ever have read the Beau Geste novels or watched 1930’s black-and-white films in which legionnaires dying from booze and boredom inside remote Saharan mud-brick forts snap out of it just in time to rescue rich and glamorous lady tourists from the rapacious veiled warriors of the sands.

  So what is it that attracts men still unborn when the USA disengaged from the Vietnam conflict to accept the harsh discipline of this legendary army with a Code of Honour that sounds like the Boy Scouts’ pledge? Every other legionnaire is your brother. In combat, you act without passion or hate but with respect for your vanquished enemy. You never abandon your dead, your wounded or your weapons…

  Some join in search of adventures you can’t find in civilian life. For others, it’s a fresh start after unemployment, a police record, family or girl-trouble. For many, the reward is French citizenship at the end of their service, with all the freedoms of the European community theirs to enjoy. In the words of one of the Legion’s many poets, Pascal Bonetti, they become sons of France not by inheriting French blood, but by spilling theirs for France.[2] Whatever his reason for joining, every legionnaire knows that for the rest of his life he will never have to prove himself among fighting men. To have worn the white kepi is proof that he is as tough as they come.

  The term ‘legionnaire’ strictly means the ordinary soldier, not his NCOs and officers. But all ranks swear on oath that their mission is sacred, however tough it may be. In 1881 General De Négrier famously told his men ‘You legionnaires have become soldiers in order to die and I am sending you where people die.’[3]

  A Harvard graduate who died at Belloy-en-Santerre just off the A1 motorway in Picardy during the catastrophic month of July 1916, Legionnaire Alan Seeger was a Romantic poet in search of a heroic death. He wrote:

  I have a rendezvous with Death at some disputed barricade when Spring comes back with rustling shade and apple-blossoms fill the air… I to my pledged word am true. I shall not fail that rendezvous.

  Exploring the high mortality rate among legionnaires early in the twentieth century, Dr Jean Robaglia and Commandant Paul Chavigny equated the desire to enlist in the Legion as a death-wish. Although France had been anti-clerical since the Revolution, Robaglia went on to say that the strict discipline and harsh punishments served as a school of expiation for those who could not carry the burden of their guilt through civilian life.

  Psychobabble or truth? On today’s battlefield a soldier with a death-wish is a danger to many people besides himself, so seekers of a heroic death are now weeded out in the initial battery of psychological tests. A tough interrogation in his own language also ensures that, contrary to popular belief, a violent or confirmed criminal will not make it through the rigorous selection process – although minor brushes with the forces of law and order in one’s home country are taken as indicators of masculine spirit.

  Today’s engagés volontaires have an average age of twenty-three with well above-average intelligence. The Legion has its own education service, and is less interested in previous academic education than a keen brain and a fit body. The first thing it teaches recruits is basic French – the language of command. The second is a trade – which may be jumping out of helicopters in mid-air without a parachute, driving a computer to fire artillery or something useful in civilian life like cookery or motor maintenance.

  The French Ministry of Defence ruled in 1960 that women are entitled to join any branch of the armed forces for which their intelligence and physique fitted them. This was partly political correctness and also a solution to the recruiting crisis that besets most Western regular armies. However, the Legion has no problem attracting sufficient male recruits; on the contrary, five out of six are rejected. So far, only one woman has managed to penetrate its ranks. The extraordinary British nurse Susan Travers became a Warrant Officer when selected by her lover General Pierre Koenig as his personal driver during the North African campaign of 1942.

  In this otherwise all-male world, every man gets the chance to start life anew, enlisting as Bill Gates or Mickey Mouse if he wishes and receiving the appropriate papers for his new persona. While insisting on knowing his true origins, the Legion respects forever his anonymity as far as the outside world is concerned. This can make research even more difficult. Another major difficulty in compiling a history of this unique army is the conflict between accredited sources and the image of their corporate past that many legionnaires take as gospel. There may be a tendency in men who are given a new identity to shrug off the reality they are escaping and live in a world of fantasy where anything is possible, but that does not make for objective history.

  There are a number of basic truths, one of which is that the Legion does not recruit outside French territory. Anyone pretending otherwise for money is, as the succinct website of the French Embassy in Chile warns, ‘a crook’. Nor are there any funds to defray travel expenses of would-be legionnaires. They have to reach a recruiting office on French soil under their own steam. Most simply buy an air ticket, but one Armenian in his early twenties whom I rescued from the frontier police in Hendaye had walked from the Caucasus to the Atlantic to join the Legion, slipping over borders at night and sleeping rough with other illegal immigrants living on scraps thrown away at fast-food joints and markets because he was wary of being picked up by the police, if caught begging.

  If the Armenian made it through basic training, he will have found himself in a world where life is tough and punishments hard. Just once a year the Legion relaxes and the veil of mystery is allowed to drop. On 30 April, the anniversary of its great defeat at the battle of Camarón, the Legion throws open the doors of its bases and invites the local population to spend the day as its guests. There are sideshows for the kids and a chance to scramble over the ready-to-go vehicles, painted in green and brown camouflage, grey urban warfare zigzags or desert sand colour, depending for where they are on alert. Pretty girls eye the smart young soldiers with exotic accents. The mums appreciate the gallantry of the immaculately uniformed officers. The dads try out under supervision a version of the FAMAS assault rifle.

  The Bastille Day crowd on 14 July in Paris, watching the pride of France’s armed forces march down the Champs Elysées, reserves its loudest cheer for the men wearing white képis. Yet in the palaces and ministries inhabited by civil servants and politicians there reigns a constant mistrust of this self-contained army of highly-trained men who will follow their own NCOs and officers to hell and back. During the colonial era, metropolitan France was a no-go area for the Legion, which policed an empire stretching from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, Indo-China and the Pacific. Only in the dire days of three German invasions was it posted to French soil in 1870, 1914 and 1939.

  Based in France sin
ce 1962, the elements of the Legion are dispersed, all at a safe distance from Paris. The paras are confined to Corsica – as far from Paris as you can get on French soil because in 1962 they came within an ace of dropping on Paris and overthrowing the government. In a bar at the port of Calvi, a few kilometres from their base at Camp Rafalli, I overheard a frighteningly fit corporal and sergeant arguing over whose team should have won a shooting competition that morning. The umpire, it was plain, had been blind, stupid and probably deaf as well. Every other word began with f, but no French was required to follow the post-mortem discussion because the corporal was a Geordie and the sergeant a Cockney. Both were among France’s elite soldiers, although their loyalty was not to the government or president in faraway Paris, but to their own officers. Their motto Legio patria nostra says it all.

  It is a paradox that most people want to live as long as possible, yet professional soldiers take the ultimate gamble in signing a contract by which they stake their lives. Men have always done this to protect their wives and children, but what makes the men of the Foreign Legion want to serve, and if necessary die for, a country that is not theirs, whose language many of them hardly speak – and which cannot make up its mind whether they are magnificent heroes or dangerous thugs?

  I hope this history of France’s mysterious mercenaries provides answers to some of the questions.

  Douglas Boyd

  Gironde, France, Summer 2015

  Part I

  THE END OF AN EMPIRE

  Chapter 1: A bullet for my pal

  Vietnam 1949 – 1953

  There are few battles that military historians and lecturers in staff colleges worldwide can use to illustrate all the mistakes a general can make in one operation. Dien Bien Phu is one.

  It is also an extraordinary example of hundreds of men in uniform choosing to die together, rather than forfeit their honour by abandoning their comrades. And these were not legendary Bronze Age heroes or gung-ho kids but campaign-hardened veterans of the Second World War serving in Foreign Legion uniform in Vietnam, which was then a colony of France.