French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Porch

  There appears to be little Rollet could quarrel with in Wren's description of Legion recruitment as

  the usual sort of men of all ages whom one would see in the poorer streets of any town . . . they certainly did not look like rogues or criminals. Two or three out of a couple of dozen or so, were well-dressed and well spoken, and one of them, I felt sure, was an ex-officer of the French or Belgian army.

  Wren is at pains to point out that the sadistic Sergeant Lejaune [Markoff in the 1939 film] is untypical of Legion NCOs: “Though these men were usually harsh and somewhat tyrannical martinets, they were not villainous brutes.” In the film, Markoff is described as “a trifle uncouth, but the best soldier we'll ever see.” The Gestes refuse to take part in the mutiny provoked by Lejaune because “to us it is unthinkable that we should stand by and see murder done, the regiment disgraced, the Flag betrayed, and the fort imperilled.... We are soldiers of France.”

  When they finally do desert, the American Buddy justifies it quite logically. First, the unit was in no danger. Second, “Hev you had a square deal in this Ma dam Lar Republic-house stunt?” he asks. “Nope. Didn't you and your brother stand by your dooty in this mutiny game? Yep. And then didn't this Lejaune guy start in to shoot you up? Shoot you up and some more. Shore. ‘Taint a square deal.”85 As Jeffrey Richards concludes, Beau Geste “memorably dramatizes those attributes of a good public schoolboy—loyalty, comradeship, self-sacrifice, duty and honor.”86 However, perhaps Rollet realized that this subtle moral message was not invariably drawn from the material: “Had not Beau Geste established [in British eyes] the moral respectability, heroic virtue almost, of deserting from the Foreign Legion?” asked the Englishman Michael Alexander in the 1950s. “Wren went further: he made the brothers Geste desert during a military operation, wantonly set fire to valuable French government property [Fort Zinderneuf] and murder an N.C.O. Quel geste alors!”87 But Wren obviously did not see his novel as an anti-Legion expose, but merely the excuse to tell a ripping good yarn—in 1941 he wrote in the preface for Captain P.O. Lapie's La Légion étrangère à Narvik, “Vive la Légion! Que son histoire vive à jamais!”88 “Long Live the Legion! May its history live forever!”

  The themes of redemption, duty and the mysterious past were present in Morocco, a film apparently loathed by Rollet. The cabaret manager in Mogador in Morocco tells singer Amy Jolly not to spend time with the legionnaires at their tables, but rather to concentrate her attentions upon the officers. It is untrue that legionnaires are ex-generals or aristocrats who joined to forget the past—“At 75 centimes a day, they are nobody,” he tells her. “Talk to the officers, they have the money.” But she is fatally attracted to Legionnaire Brown, played by Gary Cooper, whom she attempts to entice to desert. Steeled against her considerable charms, however, Brown remains loyal to the Legion. In fact, it is Amy Jolly who deserts the cabaret circuit to become a camp follower—the final scene finds her following Brown's regiment as it marches out of the gates of Mogador and over the inevitable sand dune, still clutching her now useless high-heeled shoes. The strong message is that honor among men, especially legionnaires, is more important than the love of a woman. While one might expect Rollet to have objected to a scene in which Captain Cesar attempts to get Brown killed but is himself shot, instead he complained of “half-naked native women,” the poor marching order of the legionnaires, of legionnaires and their NCOs drinking in easy familiarity with the “femmes du monde in a low dance hall, and the setting of Mogador, which was far away from the actual Moroccan fighting. Rollet succeeded in having Morocco banned in North Africa.89

  In the final analysis, the novels and films on the Legion relied for their success, like the Legion propagandists, on stereotyped characters, basic ideas and simplified assumptions.90 French historian André-Paul Comor has written that once the image of the Legion was formed in the public mind, it was merely a question of “diffusing the well known clichés.”91 The depiction of the legionnaires of Le grand jeu as, in the words of one critic, “rather colorless marionettes” who off the battlefield appear “incapable of dominating their life”92 is not far off that projected by pro-Legion writers. These are precisely “life's vanquished men” celebrated by Manue,93

  The reproach against the Legion made on the outside was that the anonymat served as a cover for criminals, or that legionnaires were exploited by a discipline that was severe to the point of brutality, charges that Legion propagandists denied vehemently. Training and discipline were hard, but this was necessary to meld disparate elements into a solid unit. With men such as these, officers had to be understanding, paternalistic, but not weak or sentimental. “With these beings who have suffered in their past lives . . . one must destroy everything,” Robert is told in Weygand's Légionnaire, “The principal objective is to forbid them to think ...”94 For the leisure to reflect inevitably brought on a bout of cafard in whose clutches legionnaires were capable of the most desperate and irrational acts. The Legion offered permanent custodial service with the option of rehabilitation.

  For a man who commanded the summits of Legion psychology and who displayed such a deft feel for public relations, Rollet's strong objections to much of this outpouring of popular interest in the Legion is somewhat surprising. Most of it was a reflection of popular taste, rather than a specific attack on the Legion. The public wanted certain themes and plots that could be adapted just as well to a setting provided by the Legion, the Far West, or the British Empire. Nor was the message, though subtle, invariably unfavorable—quite the contrary! Even if the literary and popular image of the Legion was a contradictory one, at the very least the corps profited from the publicity. At best, the publicity was extremely positive, or at least intriguing. Each potential recruit had to reconcile the images to his own satisfaction and make the decision to enlist or stay home. But any potentially bad publicity was easily reasoned away: “I had no childish illusions,” wrote Bennett Doty, who was attracted away from a boring office job in New York by colorful accounts of the Rif War. “The books I had read about the Legion were rather black ones. But I thought, ‘In those there is as much apple-sauce as in the giddy romantic Ouida ones. The truth is somewhere in between and I'll soon find out.’ ” One thing he did discover was that Sergeant Lejaune was complete fiction: “As a matter of fact that would be impossible in the Legion. A brutal sergeant would not live long in a hard-boiled outfit like the Legion. He'd be murdered in his sleep.”95 But at the very least, some men took the depictions of Legion brutality as a challenge, and the test of taking the worst a Legion NCO like Lejaune had to throw at them as the best means of taking the measure of their toughness.

  Nor did these films put off London stockbroker Brian Stuart, rather short of work in 1930: “I forget the title of the film being shown at the cinema,” he wrote,

  but it was of the blood, bullets, bayonets and brutality variety—with a few luscious Arab maidens here and there—dealing with the French Foreign Legion. The Mars benedictine hummed happily in my interior and the Arab maidens were very luscious indeed. The blue smoke of a Balkan Sobranie curled above my head as I descended the marble staircase and out into Charing Cross Road. I made up my mind to join the Foreign Legion.96

  The Cork (Ireland) Examiner believed that Beau Geste had started a vogue for the Legion that had encouraged English and Irish to join.97 A 1934 report concluded that the bad publicity had not hurt Legion recruitment, but had actually boosted it: “The campaign of defamation carried out in certain countries against the Foreign Legion is not new,” it reported.

  It has never compromised its recruitment. The Germans even concede bitterly that it has favored it. . . . For some time, the Legion has been à la mode with film directors, journalists and novelists. One has talked a lot, usually saying the same old thing. The Legion would gain by rediscovering the mystery of silence.,98

  The Englishman Simon Murray claimed that his decision to enlist in the Legion fresh from school at age nineteen during the Algerian War was moti
vated in part by his reading of Beau Geste: “What I did not know at the time was that Wren had painted a picture of the Legion that was not all that inaccurate,” he wrote, “and I was about to step into a very hard way of life indeed for which I was totally unprepared.” When things began to disappear in the barracks, he did expect the thief, once caught, to be given the “traditional” treatment a la Beau Geste of being laid out spread-eagle on a table with bayonets rammed through his hands, an assertion repeated as fact in a more recent Legion memoir.”99

  Successful films like Sergent X (1931) and Un de la Légion, released in 1936 and starring the popular comic actor Fernandel, and music with a Legion theme like Vincent Scotto's 1937 operetta Ceux de la Légion, as well as the popular songs like Mon légionnaire and Le fanion de la Légion, made immensely popular by singers like Marie Dubas and Edith Piaf in 1938, testified to a burst of popular interest in the Legion that did cause it to pay more attention to its public image. One of the most important elements of this concern, certainly in recruitment, was believed to be the impressions of their service by ex-legionnaires. According to a 1934 report, the best defense against bad publicity was to “return to civilian life Legionnaires content with their condition, proud of their years of service and these old soldiers will know themselves and better than others, once back home, how to reestablish the truth.”100 It was axiomatic in the Legion that the best recruiting propaganda was provided by ex-legionnaires. Unfortunately, many legionnaires had occasion to be bitter at the way they were treated upon liberation. Many, French and foreign, were refused work permits and even pensions because of the complicated technicalities of French administrative regulations.101 Legionnaires repatriated after having contracted diseases in the colonies were released from the hospitals, cured or not, after a certain number of days and dumped on the streets, where they were sometimes arrested by the police for “vagabondage” and expelled from the country. Others might wait years for naturalization papers, and, refused passports by their consuls because they had served in the Legion, were denied work or often arrested by French police—on December 15, 1938, thirty-four ex-legionnaires were detained in the prisons of Marseille, Aix-en-Provence and Toulon because they had no papers. This shabby treatment of men who had often fought and been wounded in French service raised fears of lower recruitment.102 “When [legionnaires] are liberated, they are thrown without resources into civilian life,” read a 1937 report. “All sorts of difficulties await them there (in France as well as abroad) and they too often became human wrecks. This situation furnishes to foreign propaganda its best arguments. It is paralyzing recruitment efforts. [Italics in original]”103

  In 1898, Colonel de Villebois-Mareuil had founded La Légion, a mutualist society that had around a dozen branches by the outbreak of the war. In 1919, General Mordacq had called upon the president of La Légion to help him pass the bill on the creation of a Legion division.104 However, the problem in this period was to coordinate efforts to help liberated legionnaires. These efforts were hurt by a rivalry between the Société des centres d'entr'aide aux réformés et libérés de la Légion étrangère and the Amis de la Légion, organized by the American Philip Ortiz. An art dealer living in Paris, Ortiz had been horrified when his adolescent son joined the Legion, but after being treated to a personal guided tour of Sidi-bel-Abbès by none other than Rollet, he subsequently became one of its most fervent supporters.105

  Yet despite modest, even contentious beginnings, these efforts did create a network of ex-legionnaires to defend Legion interests and keep traditions alive, even to lay the foundations for what would become a wealthy organization dedicated to the well-being of legionnaires in and out of uniform. It gave the Legion a means to formalize relationships among its old boys, to enhance the sense of fraternity through shared experiences: “Whatever their condition,” wrote Jean Martin,

  a porter, a retired officer, a newspaper vendor at the entrance of the metro, a businessman who stopped at the curb in a sumptuous car, a small old man who had gained weight, a German visiting Paris as a tourist, all spoke with sadness of the time spent out there, all lingered over the old memories of the bled, and took pleasure to see and hear someone who just returned, and, to prolong the interview, all offered: “Say, let's have a drink” Even if the veteran had no money to eat.106

  The Legion was not entirely seduced by its own propaganda, however. As the political situation in Europe became more troubled in the 1930s, it became clear to the Legion that it might be vulnerable to political agitation. In 1933, the Service d'immatriculation de la Légion étrangère, which kept an eye on recruitment, complained that the large number of Italians enlisting posed a security risk in North Africa.107 A 1934 report expressed the fear that, in the event of a European war, French, Belgians and Swiss would be dispatched to Europe, leaving North Africa in the care of its German recruits. “It would be imprudent to go by the experience of the last war,” the report read,

  for it is certain that in the case of a new conflict, the Legion would be much more undermined than it has ever been. The present intrigues of certain powers against our authority in North Africa leave no doubt on this subject.

  This situation was especially dangerous as the only other white infantry in North Africa, the zouaves and the marines, were “very mediocre and their poor quality does not escape legionnaires.” For these reasons, “the security of French North Africa must be confided almost uniquely to the loyalty of the Legion and the regiments of North African tirailleurs. Therefore, it is this loyalty that one must obtain and conserve intact.”108 This proved a prophetic report: In May 1936, a series of “communist and revolutionary . . . demonstrations of indiscipline in general isolated, rarely collective,” occurred in the 1er étranger “in close liaison with the political events in the metropole [a reference to the election of the left-wing Popular Front and widespread strikes], insidious and at the same time very active.” Although the demonstrations, the work of “undesirable French elements of which the number does not cease to grow each month,” were severely dealt with, the report recommended vigilance.109

  This was especially true of the Germans. The number of German recruits had diminished drastically by 1936, because of the Spanish Civil War and the “draconian measures taken by the III Reich toward their nationals desiring to enlist in the Foreign Legion.” Rapid German rearmament also absorbed many potential German recruits. Already the number of Germans in the Legion had dropped from 37 percent in 1934 to 19.2 percent in 1935.110 By February 1937, only 11 percent of recruits were German.111 A 1935 report noted that the German police confiscated the military record books, good conduct certificates and medals of legionnaires returning to Germany, and made their lives a misery as an example to young Germans who might otherwise be tempted to enlist. German legionnaires returning home were also interrogated thoroughly on their service.

  Those Germans who still came forward were in the main left-wing political opponents of Hitler and many Jews, who “are not generally speaking first class military elements.”112 A 1937 report noted that German Jews were “of a generally revolutionary tendency,” while even those Germans forced to return to the Legion by political harassment “look favorably upon the attempts by the Third Reich to recover its colonies and increase the force of its permanent army.”113 However, Colonel Azan, commander of the 1er étranger, reported in the same year that the “immense majority” of legionnaires had remained indifferent to Nazi propaganda.114

  This was not the case in the following year, when Azan wrote that, with the exception of those who had enlisted for political reasons, the Anschluss had been greeted with “profound joy” by Germans, Austrians and Czechs of German origin. “I no longer think of requesting French naturalization,” one legionnaire wrote home, “because I am too profoundly German.” Azan's remedy for this political effervescence was one of which Rollet would have approved—to increase military ceremony, “to revivify in the hearts of the veterans and above all [in those of] the young legionn
aires sentiments of pride, esprit de corps and respect for traditions.”115 In April 1938, General Georges Catroux, an ex-Legion officer and by 1938 commanding general of the 19th Army Corps, warned that German legionnaires were “exalted” by the success of Hitler's diplomacy, especially the Anschluss, which had even shaken the faith of non-German legionnaires in French resolve. But he believed that Legion esprit de corps would successfully weather the political storm.116

  Subversion by foreigners appears to have offered a minimal threat to Legion efficiency. Potentially more damaging was the reappearance of a situation all too familiar in the “Old Legion”—an influx of “loyal” but worthless Frenchmen, “old chasseurs of the Bataillons d'Afrique, or ex-colonials [marines],” which had been noted since 1933.117 It was the revival of the “Old Legion” with a vengeance. Colonel Azan complained in April 1938 that recent enlistments were “very mediocre and it is not desirable to see their numbers increase.”118

  This is not to say that the Legion did not take precautions against subversion in the ranks. The first was to remove Germans from sensitive positions, like that of radio operator.119 The second, another inspiration of Colonel Azan, was to distribute a “Memento du Légionnaire,” a list of duties expected of legionnaires running to sixty-two pages, which, apart from its length and rather emotional style, was similar to that issued to American soldiers following the Korean War, when the collaboration of U.S. POWs with the communists revealed that many lacked the most elementary notions of loyalty. This list stressed the individual commitment of the legionnaire to the Legion, as exemplified by the contract. The example of the anciens was continually cited as a model to emulate: “Like your anciens, you will serve with all the force of your soul, and if necessary up to the supreme sacrifice,” it declared. “This LEGION is your new FATHERLAND and you will always cherish in your heart this device: ‘LEGIO PATRIA NOSTRA.’ ” And on it went, very much in keeping with the popular and official myths, praising the essential humanity of the corps, admonishing legionnaires to “forget a doubtful or bitter past,” calling upon them to give complete loyalty and confidence to their officers, even to be “passionately devoted” to them “to the point of sacrifice,” as they are “your companions in suffering and in danger.” (Obviously, the brochure was composed by an officer.) “It is this discipline, strict but freely accepted, that makes the strength of our ‘Old Legion.’ ” Even leisure activities were provided for: “You must never remain deaf to cries of ‘A MOI LA LEGION,’” which was declared a “sacred call.”