French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Porch

  63. Lieutenant Colonel Martin, commander of the 2e étranger, spoke out against this practice in March 1923, because “one has seen the rebirth of the old methods of crimping of past centuries.” SHAT, 3H 697, 23 March 1923.

  64. Lyautey also blasted the practice because it “raised many diplomatic difficulties and discussions even in the most friendly foreign parliaments (Yugoslavia—Denmark).... I do not mention the others.” SHAT, 3H 697, 12 May 1924.

  65. Stuart, Adventures in Algeria, 18.

  66. SHAT, 3H, 17 January 1921.

  67. SHAT, 3H 259, 29 December 1920.

  68. SHAT, 3H 95, 3 September 1923.

  69. SHAT, 3H 697, January 1922.

  70. SHAT, 3H 697, “Questions relatives à la Légion étrangère,” 1924.

  71. Colonel Pierre Carles in an interview with the author recounted that many veterans of the Rif still serving when he joined the Legion after 1945 spoke of numerous desertions during the Rif War. J. Roger-Mathieu, Mémoires d'Abd el-Krim (Paris: Librairie des Champs-Elysées, 1927), 146–7.

  72. Vincent Sheean, An American among the Riffi (New York and London: The Century Company, 1926), 260.

  73. SHAT, 3H 697, 1924.

  74. Rudyers Pryne, War in Morocco (Tangier: 1927), 217.

  75. Cooper, Twelve Years, 223.

  76. Martin, Je suis un légionnaire, 151.

  77. Manue, Têtes brÛlées, 224.

  78. David S. Woolman, Rebels in the Rif: Abd el-Krim and the Rif Rebellion (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1968), 176–77.

  79. Woolman, Rebels in the Rif 183.

  80. Cooper, Born to Fight, 173.

  81. “La tragédie de Médiouna, 10 et 11 juin 1925,” Vert et Rouge, no. 28 (1950), 40–5.

  82. “La tragédie de Médiouna, 40—45.

  83. Beaufre, 1940, 22–3.

  84. A.R. Cooper, Douze ans à la Légion étrangère (Paris: Payot, 1934), 178.

  85. Cooper, Twelve Years, 161.

  86. “Unfortunately, ... the pilots ... launched their bombs uselessly on the cadavers strewn in front of us on the plain, while they would have done such good work on the village (which was in the hands of the Druses).” ALE, “Relation du combat de Musseifré par un officier y ayant pris part [Lt. Lacour].”

  87. Lieutenant Colonel Lorillard, La guerre au Maroc (Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle, 1934), 27.

  88. Beaufre, 1940, 21–2.

  89. SHAT, 3H 697, 11 September 1924.

  90. Cooper, Twelve Years in the Foreign Legion, 130.

  91. Officers were “distrusted by their subordinates, or on the contrary too dependent on their NCOs whose advice they ask. As a result they fail to establish their authority, or they get off on the wrong foot.” SHAT, 3H 697, 1926.

  92. Cooper, Born to Fight, 165–6.

  93. Pechkoff, La Légion étrangère au Maroc, 185–19 for the 1927 edition, 203–16 for the 1929 edition. Pechkoff places this action on May 22. See also his The Bugle Sounds (New York: Appleton, 1926), 217–222.

  94. Cooper, Douze ans, 172–3, 185–6.

  95. Beaufre, 1940, 16.

  96. SHAT, 34N 310, journal d'opérations, 2nd battalion of the 1er REI, 12 June 1925.

  97. SHAT, 3H 697, “Quelques chiffres au sujet de l'emploi de la Légion,” 12 September 1924.

  98. Martin, Je suis un légionnaire, 93.

  99. ALE, Rollet papers, November 1922.

  100. ALE, “Relation du combat de Musseifré.”

  101. G. Ward-Price, In Morocco with the Legion (London: The Beacon Library, 1937), 105–8.

  102. In Jacques Weygand's strongly autobiographical novel Légionnaire, the legendary leader of goums, Colonel Henri de Bournazel, tells the hero Robert that the Legion had not seen much action in Morocco, not because the Moroccans feared the Legion and there fore avoided attacking them, but because, “The command hesitates to use you. Your units are too heavy, your formations too rigid” for a country where “everything is a question of suppleness and subtlety.” Weygand, Légionnaire, 181.

  103. Beaufre, 1940, 21.

  104. Doty, Legion of the Damned, 90.

  105. Doty, Legion of the Damned, 97, 101.

  106. Doty, Legion of the Damned, 111–15.

  107. ALE, Rollet papers.

  108. ALE, “Rapport annuel sur l'état d'esprit,” 3e REI, 1933.

  109. ALE, Rollet papers, 24 October 1933.

  110. ALE, “Rapport confidentiel,” 4e étranger, 31 January 1933.

  111. ALE, report of 7 March 1934.

  112. SHAT, 3H 697, 12 May 1924.

  113. ALE, Rollet papers, “La pacification du ‘Maroc utile.’”

  114. SHAT, 3H 697, 23 March 1923.

  115. A/C André Gandelin, “Le général Rollet, un homme de coeur, de caractère et d'idéal,” Revue historique des armées, no. spécial 1981, La Légion étrang ère, 1831–1981, 133. See also ALE, Rollet papers, letter of 1 April 1934.

  CHAPTER 20

  1. Képi blanc spécial—Septembre 1979, no. 382 bis, 23.

  2. Louis Rousselet, Sur les confins du Maroc, d'Oudjda à Figuig (Paris: Hachette, 1912), 27.

  3. ALE, Rollet papers, “La Légion,” nd.

  4. SHAT, 3H 697, 23 March 1923.

  5. SHAT, 3H 697, 24 January 1924.

  6. SHAT, 34N 310, Historique du régiment de 1921 à 1934.

  7. For a discussion of “invented” tradition, see Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1–14.

  8. “The legionnaire wants his uniform to be different from that of other corps,” General Cottez reported in January 1922, calling for a kepi and a blue waistband (SHAT, 3H 697), a statement Rollet endorsed completely. “This question [of the uniform] is not a negligible detail, in particular in the Legion, where the esprit de corps is very developed,” read a 1934 report, which warned that “the legionnaires are as badly dressed as the other soldiers in the French army and soon nothing will distinguish them.” ALE, 7 March 1934.

  9. Brunon et ah, Le Livre d'or, 225.

  10. Ward-Price, In Morocco with the Legion, 131.

  11. Martin, Je suis un légionnaire, 176, 178.

  12. Martin, Je suis un Légionnaire, 178.

  13. Raymond Guyader, “Le Légionnaire des années 1919 à 1927,” Képi blanc, no. 449 (July 1985).

  14. SHAT, 3H 697, 14 March 1926.

  15. Jean Brunon, “Essai sur le folklore de la Légion étrangère,” Vert et rouge, no. 19 (1948): 30.

  16. Martin, Je suis un légionnaire, 177–8.

  17. Doty, Legion of the Damned, 62.

  18. ALE, Georges d'Ossau, “Le Képi-blanc,” typed memo.

  19. Brunon et al., Livre d'or, 225.

  20. Adrian Liddell Hart, Strange Company (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1953), 33.

  21. Guyader, “Le légionnaire des années 1927 à 1935”; Brunon et al., Livre d' or, 225.

  22. ALE, report of 7 March 1934. Nor were the regulations always honored: the 4e étranger complained in December 1933 that their uniforms were impractical, of poor quality and utterly lacking in elegance. ALE, 4e REI, 2 December 1933.

  23. Charles Favrel, Ci-devant légionnaire: La vraie légende de la Légion (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1963), 58-9.

  24. Képi blanc, spécial—Septembre 1979, no. 382 bis, 23.

  25. L'Illustration, a popular newspaper, consecrated a large article to the battle with an engraving in its 18 July 1863 issue. The survivors of Danjou's 3rd Company were decorated, the first medals awarded to French troops in the Mexican campaign, and a memorial plaque was ordered placed in the Invalides, although this was done only in 1949. Napoleon III granted the request of Colonel Jeanningros that “Camerone” be inscribed upon the standard of the “Régiment étranger” and the official artist of the expedition, Jean-Adolphe Beaucé, was commissioned to paint a scene of the last moments of Camerone. The painting was shown in the Salon of 1869,
purchased by the state, and disappeared from view until discovered at the Musée de Tours and given to the Legion in 1952. After 1871, Camerone occasionally surfaced in literature calculated to intensify the spirit of patriotic revanchism—an article about the battle appeared in the prestigious literary magazine Revue des Deux Mondes in 1878, and in 1889 a small brochure written by General Alexis de la Hayrie, who had been a battalion commander in the Régiment étranger in Mexico, was published in Lille. Abbé La-nusse, chaplain at Saint-Cyr who had been present in Mexico, produced Les héros de Cama-ron, 30 avril 1863 in 1891, as the title suggests, written in prose calculated to inspire his future officers. The following year a monument was built at the scene of the battle.

  26. Ehrhart, Mes treize années de Légion étrangère, Part I.

  27. Merolli, La grenade héroique, 307, 332.

  28. Doty, Legion of the Damned, 43.

  29. Képi blanc, no. 501, May 1990, 37.

  30. Georges d'Esparbés, Les mystéres de la Légion étrangère (Paris: Flammarion, 1912). This was a re-edition of La Légion étrangère, first published as a series of articles in 1898 and then in book form in 1901. The 1912 edition was enriched by the drawings of Maurice Mahaut. D'Esparbès proved to his satisfaction that the Legion recruited principally among Europe's uprooted middle classes, men whose lives contained some terrible secret that they interred in the Legion. Unfortunately, his research methods, which consisted principally of lingering about the wine shops of Sidi-bel-Abbès buying drinks for legionnaires as long as they remained willing—or capable—of recounting their life stories, would strike modern investigators as suspect, for the inventiveness of legionnaires probably ran as deep as Monsieur d'Esparbès's pockets. The cover of Les mystères de la Légion étrangère was decorated with a drawing of a legionnaire in full combat kit, but wearing a mask. The device at the beginning of the first chapter declared, “Ma vie a son secret.” Already before World War I, the 1er étranger had earned the nickname of the “1er mystérieux,” because the pasts of its inmates were alleged to be shrouded in mystery.

  31. Képi blanc, spécial—Septembre 1979, no. 382 bis, 10.

  32. Brunon et al., et al., Livre d'or, 454.

  33. Brunon et al., Le Livre d'or, 107.

  34. Pierre Sergent, “Du nouveau sur le combat de Camerone,” Revue historique des armées, numéro spécial 1981, La Légion étrangère, 1831-1981: 86-8. The reaction of some officers to the publication of this new information was recounted to the author by Legion archivist Tibor Szecsko.

  35. Roger Cabrol, L'adaptation, 104-5.

  36. Jean des Vallières, Les hommes sans nom (Paris: Albin Michel, 1933), 231-2.

  37. Lieutenant Langlois, Souvenirs de Madagascar (Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle, nd), 144.

  38. A. R. Cooper, Born to Fight (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1969), 166. But even when the Legion had the leisure to pay their respects in an appropriate manner, it is not always clear that they did so—Magnus describes the funeral of a legionnaire at Bel-Abbès in 1916 that in his view was carried out with indecent haste.

  39. Charles Favrel, Ci-devant légionnaire, 45.

  40. Henry Ainley, In Order to Die: With the Foreign Legion in Indo-China (London: Burke, 1955), 19.

  41. Janos Kemencei, Légionnaire en avant! (Paris: Jacques Gracher, 1985), 207.

  42. Kemencei, Légionnaire, 269.

  43. Kemencei, Légionnaire, 291-92.

  44. Colonel Pierre Carles, “Survol de Phistoire du sous-officier de la Légion étrangere 1831-1981,” Revue historique des armiées, Numéro spécial 1981, La Légion étrangere 1831-1981: 24.

  45. Communication from M. Raymond Guyader to the author. Benigni was made an honorary legionnaire during the celebration of Camerone in 1933 and served on the editorial committee of La Légion étrangère and of its post-1945 successor, Vert et rouge. In more recent years, Andreas Rosenberg, an Austrian who served in the Legion from 1939 to 1944, and as peintre aux armées in 1944-45, has been commissioned by the Legion to produce watercolors that evoke the prominent campaigns of the Legion but that especially portray legionnaires as tough but fundamentally human characters.

  46. Jean Brunon, “Essai sur le folklore de la Légion étrangère,” Vert et rouge, no. 19 (1948): 30.

  47. Liddell Hart, Strange Company, 57.

  48. Brunon, “Folklore,” 30.

  49. Ainley, In Order to Die, 223.

  50. Prince Aage de Denmark, Mes souvenirs de la Légion étrangère (Paris: Payot, 1936), 106.

  51. Cabrol, L'adaptation, 106-7.

  52. Manue, Têtes brÛliés, 244.

  53. Favrel, Ci-devant légionnaire, 25.

  54. Junger, Jeux africains, 172.

  55. These observations have been made to the author by regular French officers.

  56. Such was the case with a Hungarian intellectual in Pechkoff's battalion who gained an entirely new perspective on life in the Legion: “This rigid and severe discipline is a salutary thing for those who cannot discipline themselves, nor discipline others.” Pechkoff, La Légion étrangère au Maroc, 200. Manue also congratulated the Legion for turning a Parisian apache or delinquent and an anarchist into useful citizens because of “the disciplined life they were forced to lead.” Manue, Têtes brÛliés, 251.

  57. Cooper, Twelve Years in the Foreign Legion, 72-3.

  58. Liddell Hart, Strange Company, 49.

  59. Prince Aage, Mes souvenirs, 99, 104, 154.

  60. Cabrol, Adaptation, 105-6.

  61. Manue, Têtes brÛlées, 245.

  62. Ward-Price, In Morocco, 217.

  63. Manue, Têtes brÛliés, 107.

  64. Pechkoff, La Légion, 202.

  65. Manue, Têtes brÛlées, 10-11.

  66. Aage, Mes souvenirs, 108, 113.

  67. Brunon et al., Le livre d'or, 431-6.

  68. Liddell Hart, Strange Company, 29-30, 50, 84, 173.

  69. See, for instance, Christian Jennings, A Mouthful of Rocks: Modern Adventures in the French Foreign Legion (New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989). “Most people who joined up, trained keenly and were posted to a good regiment, yet still deserted, were victims of the Legion misinformation service,” Jennings writes. “They had believed everything they had heard and had been taken in by it” (181).

  70. For an explanation of these themes, see Ray Allen Billington, Land of Savagery, Land of Promise: The European Image of the American Frontier (London and New York: Norton, 1981), 151-2; Simon Schama, An Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York: Knopf, 1987), 24-5.

  71. Liddell Hart, Strange Company, 206.

  72. Jeffrey Richards, Visions of Yesterday (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), 46.

  73. Pierre Boulanger, Le cinéma colonial de “L'Atlantide” à “Lawrence d'Arabie” (Paris: Seghers, 1975), 105.

  74. Billington, Land of Savagery, 320.

  75. Cooper, Twelve Years, 237.

  76. Légion étrangère, no. 10 (October 1931), 24-5.

  77. ALE, Rollet papers, 3 May 1934. Ortiz's letter had some effect, for certain portions of the film, such as the line, “They [the Moroccans] defend their land,” were cut. However, Le grand jeu was a critical success—even the royalist newspaper Action française approved of it because “from these vulgar heroes is born a poetry, the poetry of luck and of death.” Boulanger, Cinéma colonial, 105. Indeed, as in the quasi-official Legion portraits of itself, it is the very weaknesses of the characters that humanizes them.

  78. Légion étrangère, 17 May 1932, 151; 19 July 1932, 244.

  79. ALE, Rollet papers, May 1934.

  80. Légion étrangère, December 1934, 419. I also thank Richard Mahaud for some of this information.

  81. Légion étrangère, no. 71 (November 1936).

  82. Indeed, several proposed film scripts remain in the Rollet papers at Aubagne.

  83. ALE, Rollet papers, 27 October 1932.

  84. ALE, 7 March 1933 report, 16.

  85. P. C. Wren, Foreig
n Legion Omnibus: Beau Geste, Beau Sabreur, Beau Ideal. (New York: Grossct & Dunlap, 1928), 207–8, 218, 274, 371.

  86. Richards, Visions of Yesterday, 159.

  87. Michael Alexander, The Reluctant Legionnaire: An Escapade (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956), 19.

  88. P.O. Lapie, La Légion étrangère à Narvik (London: John Murray, 1941), xii.

  89. Boulanger, Cinéma colonial, 84-5. Boulanger cites these as Rollet's objections to the 1926 version of Beau Geste. However, the film he describes is Morocco.

  90. Richards, Visions, 44.

  91. Comor, “L'image de la Légion étrangère,” 159.

  92. Boulanger, Cinéma colonial, 8.

  93. Manue, Têtes brÛlées, 245.

  94. Weygand, Légionnaire, 78.

  95. Doty, Legion of the Damned, 6-7.

  96. Stuart, Aventure in Algeria, 18.

  97. Légion étrangère, no. 27 (March 1933), 94.

  98. ALE, SIL report 7 March 1934, 16.

  99. Murray, Legionnaire, 12, 60; Jennings, A Mouthful of Rocks, 191.

  100. ALE, 1934 report.

  101. ALE, Rollet papers, 13 March 1935. Even pensions were refused because legionnaires, allowed to enlist without papers, were required to produce them for a pension, which was often impossible for Germans and Russians whose governments refused to send them, or for Italians whose hopelessly inefficient administrations were often unable to locate them.

  102. ALE, Rollet papers, 12 March 1936 letter; “Le problème des libérés de la Légion étrangère,” nd, probably 1938.

  103. SHAT, 9N 123, 25 March 1927.

  104. Mordacq, Le ministère Clémenceau, 330.

  105. Rivalries and politics also plagued the Société d'entr’ aide—the director complained in 1936 that “the mentality is distressing: Pettiness, spitefulness, hatreds, bitterness,and insatiable appetites for personal satisfaction.” ALE, Rollet papers, see letter of 28 April 1933 and 12 March 1936. A June 1938 report suggested that the “spectacle of disunion” created by three rival societies in Marseille “does not encourage foreigners to serve under our flag.” SHAT, 9N 123, 30 April 1938.