March Or Die

France and the Foreign Legion

Cover

Title Page

Foreword by Brigadier A. Hunter-Choat, OBE Legio patria nostra

Author’s Preface to this Edition

Map

Introduction

1 ‘The Legion is Our Country’ (1831–47)

2 An Élite Marches Out (Crimea, Italy, 1848–60)

3 Mexican Gold at Camerone (1861–67)

4 Resisting Prussia, Crushing Paris (1870–71)

5 France’s Expanding Empire: Death in Indo-China (1884–85)

6 Hearts of Darkness (Dahomey, Madagascar, 1892–1907)

7 Milestones on the Road to Armageddon (1900–1914)

8 A Rendezvous with Death (1914–18)

9 Desert Warlords (1918–40)

10 Honour Betrayed, Honour Restored (1940–45)

11 The Extraordinary Miss Travers (Bir Hakeim, 1942)

12 Road to Dien Bien Phu (Indo-China, 1945–54)

13 ‘The War for Nothing’ (Algeria, 1954–58)

14 The Centurions’ Revolt (Algeria, 1959–60)

15 Enter the Firing Squad (Algeria, 1960–62)

16 The Legion Today: Army of Intervention

17 The Grey Suits Take Over (2002)

Appendix I: Foreign Legion Campaign Chronology

Appendix II: Sous Lieutenant Jean Nicolas Vilain

Bibliography

Index

Postscript

Maps (Camerone, Bir Hakeim, Dien Bein Phu)

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Works

Copyright

About the Publisher

The Legion is Our Country: the motto of the French Foreign Legion and of the French Foreign Legionnaire. Yet it is an odd fact that most of the many books about the Foreign Legion, particularly those written by French authors (some former Legion officers themselves), assert that the legionnaire has chosen to make France his country. Without any doubt every legionnaire owes a great and unpayable debt to the France who provided him with the escape and refuge he sought so desperately; every legionnaire owes a great debt to France for the comfort and succour she gave him when he needed it most. France in turn owes an inestimable debt to her legionnaires for repeatedly and unstintingly saving her bacon. And her face. Despite this mutual indebtedness the legionnaire’s loyalty is to his country and its officers, his love is for his country and its officers, and his country is the Legion.

The notion that he chose France rather than the Legion is a peculiarly French one and engendered by France’s view of her importance to the average legionnaire. It was by chance blended with genius that France created the Foreign Legion in 1831. Having done so, France – or rather French governments dominated by the mercenary dictates of Paris – never quite came to terms with their unique military formation. The legionnaire knows only too well the extremes of feeling France can have towards her foreign offspring, and adulation and hate – no, worse, detestation – flicker back and forth with confusing rapidity.

None of this should be taken to mean that the legionnaire is ungrateful to France. France and the Legion both give him a sense of purpose in life which, at the relevant time, no other organization could offer (for legionnaires are self-selecting). That sense of purpose shows very vividly. It always has done. In 1895, Colonel de Billebois-Mareuil wrote:

In the hybrid circle into which a man enters blindfold, passportless, without recommendation or any mention of his past, there is a strange mixture of good and bad, of latent heroism and bitterness … but from this amorphous whole emerges an iron will, an instinctive passion for adventure, an amazing fertility of invention, a supreme contempt for death, in fact all those sublime virtues which go to the make-up of a true warrior.

And this quality of the whole is reflected in the individual legionary; whether one sees him passing by in the street, his waist tightly girt by his broad belt, or rigidly at attention on a ceremonial parade, one notes that determined air, that insolent male pride of the man of action: virile, superior. No other soldier has his superb bearing.

It is symptomatic of something about the times that a growing number of young Englishmen are discovering what they need in such a setting. As France and Britain grow closer it would be appropriate in any case to re-examine the British connection with the Legion as well as that of France.

France’s other Anglo-Saxon neighbour, Germany, has always provided the Legion with volunteers, so many indeed as to seem at times to dominate the institution. The British, by contrast, have kept their distance (and, historically, had a reputation for being too ready to desert after they had joined).

Times change. During a recent visit to the Legion’s parachute regiment at Calvi, Corsica, I formed the impression that more young Britons are joining the Legion. Many are victims of unemployment. Others are starved of adventure. A former British soldier now with the unit believes that there are about 350 ‘Englishmen’ (of all kinds) now serving in the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment. His educated guess is that the number throughout the Legion’s eight major units now exceeds a thousand. If true, British citizens constitute almost one-eighth of the Legion’s current strength. This is in remarkable contrast with the experience of preceding generations of British legionnaires. As a young Legion paratrooper in Algeria just under thirty years ago, I was unable to discover more than twenty ‘Brits’ serving among a total Legion strength of about 26,000, or fewer than one in a thousand.