The French Foreign Legion

by Douglas Boyd

  Some foreigners resident in France volunteered to enlist from political conviction and some for love for the country and way of life, which was considerably more tolerant of black people, drink, drugs and sexual nonconformity than 1930s Britain or America. Others were political exiles from Germany and Eastern European countries who thought a French uniform would provide an insurance policy against the day the Gestapo came looking for them.

  As in 1914, the French government decided that foreigners could serve only in Legion uniform. The first Legion regiment to reach France was 11 REI commanded by the much-wounded veteran Col Fernand Maire, comprising 2,500 long-service legionnaires and 500 Legion reservists with an armoured element from 7th North African Division and 97th Divisional Reconnaissance Group. To distinguish the new volunteer units from this ‘old’ Legion, they were formed into Régiments de Marche de Volontaires Etrangers (RMVE) with a number in the 20 series. In 1939, 21 RMVE and 22 RMVE recruited more or less any foreigner willing to put on a French uniform and were allocated a sprinkling of Legion officers and NCOs, making up the cadres with recalled Legion reservists. In May 1940, 23 RMVE was formed.

  Apart from 3,000 battle-experienced Spanish anti-fascist refugees who had fled Franco at the end of the Spanish civil war and since been held in concentration camps in southern France, many of the RMVE volunteers were unfit white-collar men. They tended to cause friction once in uniform by clinging together in linguistic groupings, and the argumentative nature of the Jewish East Europeans irritated veteran NCOs when they responded to orders with the word, ‘Why?’ Nor were reservist NCOs very happy to be back in Legion uniform; having acquired wives and children, they found it hard to return to the bachelor life of boozing and brawling.

  Each of the RMVEs and 12 REI, after being brought up to strength with volunteers, had around 300 Jewish recruits, with 400 more being trained in North Africa. In Col Maire’s 11 REI at La Valbonne near Lyon there were another 1,800. The high proportion began to alarm not only Legion officers trying to convert these over-educated civilians into blindly obedient soldiers, but also the general staff. On 14 February 1940, when one might think that any soldier was better than none, it issued an instruction that in future foreign Jewish volunteers for the Legion were to be turned away under various pretexts without making it obvious that ‘special measures’ were being taken against them.[306]

  Apart from the Legion policy of avoiding concentrations of any nationality, there was a second reason to be wary of the Spaniards and the East Europeans: both groups included many Communists. Since the signature of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, the Communist International, which controlled the non-Soviet Communist parties, was pro-German – changing sides after twenty months of war when Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941. Any foreign Communist was therefore suspect at the outbreak of war, when the French Communist party was outlawed and its members driven underground.

  Whatever their political or racial background, the volunteers were issued out-of-date equipment, or none at all by a commissariat in chaos. Things were so bad in 12 REI that Lt Georges Masselot had to write his own training manuals for the largely obsolete weapons issued, many of which were lacking parts and therefore useless. Masselot’s volunteers had so little webbing that they were driven to tying their equipment onto themselves with string.[307]

  A mobile foreign reconnaissance unit designated 97 GERD was created from 2nd squadron of 1 REC with officers from 2 REC, formed in July 1939 and disbanded after the Armistice of June 1940. Of all the Legion formations in France, only 13 DBLE was armed with the current infantry rifle, model MAS 36 – and that was for their mission to Narvik. The others all had the detested First World War Lebel. Given the role of Panzers in spearheading any German attack, it was deplorable that the Legion was never issued any anti-tank weapons. However, since the RMVE were held in training camps until May 1940, it seems that there was no real intention to allow them into combat until the situation was so desperate that they were flung into the front on a sink-or-swim basis.

  Ordered into action straight from the training camp at La Valbonne on 11 May 12 REI, on whose strength were 600 Polish Jews and 900 Spanish refugees[308], was ordered to defend Soissons in Picardy. Attacked by Stukas and Panzers, by 6 June the regiment was shattered after fighting its way out of encirclement. Its commander Col Besson commented afterwards that the German NCOs who had been excellent in training camp were less than bold in combat, almost certainly because they knew what would happen to them if taken prisoner. One of his junior officers, Lt Albert Brothier did appreciate that his Spanish and East European recruits were highly motivated – never mind that they ignored Legion traditions and were slovenly on parade.[309]

  An incident during the retreat from Soissons illustrates another problem of the ‘political’ volunteers. One of the ex-Communist Poles, who had left the Party in disgust after the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 23 August 1939 divided his homeland between the two signatories, recounted how on being wounded he called out to comrades running past to help him. They, however, were ‘loyal’ Party members and deliberately left him to die. He owed his life to a long-service Legion NCO who risked his life to come back for the wounded man.[310]

  By the Armistice of 22 June 1940, 12 REI had made its way in the flood of refugees to Limoges in central France, but numbered only 300 out of the 2,800 men who had finished training. Losses in Maire’s 11 REI on the Somme front reached 50% between 9 and 22 June – and eventually around 75%. The regimental flag was burned to save it falling into enemy hands close to the church of Crézilles, near Nancy. There too, according to Legionnaire Georges Manue two deserters were shot a few hours before the Armistice,[311] after which the long-service men somehow managed to make their way through a country in total chaos back to the Mediterranean and across to North Africa.

  Of the volunteer units, 21 RMVE was moved from the Maginot Line to the Verdun front, where it was shattered by the German attacks of the night of 8-9 June and ceased to exist except on paper. Disarmed after the Armistice at Nancy, the survivors were herded initially into ‘cages’ and then permanent POW camps. On 13 June 24 RMVE broke and ran on the Marne front but, since all around them was in confusion, that is hardly an indictment. For two nightmare days and nights 23 RMVE survived Panzer attacks supported by Stuka strafing missions before disengaging on 17 June, when Marshal Pétain broadcast an ambiguous order that was widely taken to mean laying down one’s arms.

  The record of 22 RMVE was as good as any regular regiment. Transported straight from its training camp to the front in Alsace, lacking much essential equipment, it had been re-assigned immediately and sent by train, truck and finally by a six-day march through the confusion of the main attack to Marchelépot on the Somme. There it withstood heavy German attacks from 22 May until 6 June, when the supply of ammunition was exhausted. A number of the volunteers used their last cartridge to blow their brains out, rather than be captured by the Germans; others, of German origin, were shot immediately after being taken prisoner, despite their French uniforms and papers. Of the remainder, many both from Poland and Spain were to die not in POW camps treated according to the rules of war, but in German concentration and death camps.

  Thus the record of the volunteers was no worse than that of regular units, overwhelmed and out-generalled all along the front. Considering that many of the civilian volunteers knew the French uniform they wore would not be respected under the Geneva Convention on capture, their courage is incredible.

  After the Allied invasion of North Africa the Legion regiments there fought for De Gaulle’s Free French, but one legendary unit was Gaullist throughout the war, and represented half of his entire army in 1940. Formed in Algeria like a régiment de marche, but smaller, 13th Demi-Brigade de la Légion Etrangère – abbreviated to 13 DBLE – was posted to northern Syria but shipped instead to France and set to practise arctic warfare techniques. At this point, the legionnaires guessed they were going to be sent north – although one can nev
er be certain of such things in any army.

  Exactly one week after the alliance with Germany in August 1939, the USSR invaded its western neighbour Finland. The vastly smaller Finnish army fought a series of brilliant rearguard actions against the enormous Red Army throughout that autumn and winter, inflicting huge casualties on the Russian soldiers whose best generals were either rotting in Gulag camps or had been shot in Stalin’s purges. Since the USSR had allied itself with Nazi Germany, Britain and France prepared to intervene on the side of the Finns in Operation Petsamo. Due to differences of opinion between London, which wanted to concentrate on the main threat on the Franco-German frontier, and the French General Staff toying with a number of interventions elsewhere in the hope that they would delay the German invasion,[312] nothing was done before the Finns surrendered on 13 March 1940.

  On 8 April Royal Navy vessels mined Norwegian waters against German invasion. The government in Oslo protested, but the following day Hitler invaded anyway. At last the British and French decided to act and destroy the strategic port of Narvik, through which high-grade Swedish iron ore was exported to Germany. Under Lt Col Raoul-Charles Magrin-Vernerey, 13 DBLE was integrated into a mixed Franco-British-Norwegian-Polish force that included two Norwegian brigades, a Polish contingent and three battalions of 24 Brigade of Guards. The French contingent was commanded by Gen Marie-Emile Antoine Bethouart. They left Brest aboard the Canadian Pacific liner Monarch of Bermuda, supported by seven Royal Navy vessels, and disembarked on 13 May against heavy German ground and air attack in the fishing ports of Bjerkvik and Meby, about 10km north of Narvik at the head of Herjangs Fjord. Simultaneously, to the south of Narvik a British force was landed at Ankenes, the idea being to use the two bridgeheads as a pincer between which to squeeze the 4,500 German and Austrian forces[313] occupying Narvik itself.

  Bethouart had graduated from St Cyr in the same promotion as De Gaulle. He and Magrin-Vernerey were the sort of officer who could have stemmed the German advance, had they been given the men and equipment. Magrin-Vernerey had actually run away from home to join the Legion at the age of fifteen, but been rejected as obviously under-age. By the end of the First World War he was a captain in 60th Infantry, had been wounded seven times and made Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. His entitlement to a 90% disability pension did not stop him serving between the wars with the Legion in North Africa, the Middle East and Vietnam. He and Bethouart were now about to win the only French victory of 1939–40.

  From the moment 1st battalion of 13 DBLE waded ashore from their improvised invasion fleet of wooden whalers towed by MTBs, time was against them. So was the weather. The snow, bloodstained in many places by the shattered bodies of the local inhabitants blown to pieces by the naval guns, was still knee-high. Yet, despite the pessimistic predictions of the regulars, Capt Pierre-Olivier Lapie was impressed to see his hitherto sullen Spaniards show their toughness in combat while the East Europeans – whose wealth of academic qualifications had earned 13 DBLE the mocking sobriquet la troupe des intellectuals – showed their true worth once they had a German uniform in their sights.[314]

  Knowing it could only be a matter of days before Gen Gerd von Rundstedt’s forty-five Wehrmacht divisions started to move into France, Bethouart and Magrin-Vernerey were determined to do their job against the clock. However, by the time they had put several German units to flight, abandoning equipment and prisoners as they retreated, the phoney war was over and Guderian’s Panzers were blitzkrieging their way through Holland and Belgium.

  Accordingly the British troops in the Norwegian ‘sideshow’ were ordered to withdraw on 24 May, and prepared to do so, but Bethouart and Magrin-Vernerey ignored their instructions from Paris to do likewise. Although lacking the forces to hold Narvik against German counter-attack, they decided to continue the mission as a way of salving national pride in the throes of defeat.

  The 2nd Battalion of 13 DBLE moved in from the south and 1st Battalion re-embarked to land just north of Narvik on the night of 27-28 May. Against all the odds, it fought its way through a series of heavily defended railway tunnels into the city, demolishing many harbour installations and destroying several Luftwaffe aircraft on the ground at the local airfield. For his part in the grim battle of the tunnel, British legionnaire James Williamson won both the Croix de Guerre with star and Norwegian bar.

  A company of 2nd Battalion under Lt Szabo pushed on along the railway lines, over which the iron ore had to travel, nearly to the Swedish frontier. Spearheaded by the motorcycle unit of Jacques ‘Toto’ Lefort, they managed briefly to cut off all the German forces to the north of them before being forced to withdraw undefeated or risk being stranded by the ebbing tide of war. After two captured German aircrew shot two British guards with a concealed Luger pistol, the legionnaires executed them both.[315]

  Having liberated forty Allied prisoners, capturing 400 German soldiers and blowing up a great deal of military equipment, 13 DBLE was evacuated on 7 June. Its numbers were reduced by seven officers, five NCOs and fifty-five legionnaires – two of whom, according to long-service legionnaire Charles Favrel were shot for desertion after a field court martial, despite claiming to have been left behind when they fell asleep from exhaustion.11 According to him also another Spanish legionnaire was shot for looting, but these things are still impossible to verify officially.

  Chapter 28: Whose side are we on, sergeant?

  France – North Africa – Syria – Britain, 1940

  If the story of the Legion in the Second World War reads confusingly, it was far worse for the men involved. In Syria, John Harvey was typical of British and other legionnaires who were unclear where they were or for what political purpose they were fighting, but most combatants at least know which side of a conflict they are on. During this war many legionnaires and other French servicemen asked their superiors this question, only to learn that they were not sure, either. ‘Fighting for France’ could mean loyalty to the legal government in Vichy, or it could mean fighting against that government with De Gaulle.

  When 13 DBLE returned to France via Glasgow on 14 June, it disembarked to find the home front in such chaos that there were no orders for it. The frustration of Bethouart and a fire-eater like Magrin-Vernery can be imagined. Discipline was hard to maintain. Pour encourager les autres, two brothers who attempted to desert were executed[316] and Magrin-Vernery is reputed to have personally shot dead a young infantry lieutenant who told him that continuing resistance would only cause trouble for everyone.[317]

  On 18 June Col Charles De Gaulle – a protégé of Pétain, who had protected him from the many enemies he made by his outspoken criticism of French strategy and generalship in the 1930s – made his famous appeal to French men and women to continue the fight. Those who were free to do so were invited to join his Free French forces which, at the time, existed only in his own imagination. De Gaulle’s lone voice crying in the wilderness of defeat touched a chord in Magrin-Vernerey’s indomitable soul, but the renegade colonel in London was technically a traitor, betraying his government – which had fled from Paris to Bordeaux.

  It was one thing to commit treason himself, but no French officer could order his men to betray their government, whatever they thought of its policies. Magrin-Vernerey therefore gave his veterans of Narvik the choice of surrendering in France or joining De Gaulle. Those who wanted to accompany him to Britain stayed with, or were transferred to, 1st Battalion. The others, on the roll of 2nd Battalion, opted to remain in France and make their way back to North Africa under Maj Boyer-Resses.

  German tanks were on the outskirts of the port-city of Brest as Magrin-Vernerey embarked 500 men on the next ship leaving for Southampton. Maj Pierre Koenig and Lt Dmitri Amilakvari literally missed the boat while reconnoitring near Rennes. They solved that problem by commandeering a fishing boat to make the crossing, and caught up with the others at De Gaulle’s Free French forces camp in Trentham Park near Stoke-on-Trent. Sleeping in the open on the first night and in tents thereaf
ter, they found 13 DBLE the only organised formation among a collection of men from the French army, navy and air force who had been evacuated from Dunkirk. With local stores unable to cope for four days, food was scarce until deer roaming the park were slaughtered, butchered and cooked in washing boilers.

  Magrin-Vernerey was promoted by De Gaulle to full colonel in recognition of the success of the Narvik raid and, happily for chroniclers, changed his name for the simpler nom de guerre Monclar – this in the hope of avoiding trouble for his family in France. His men, however, were far from happy with what they had got themselves into by following him to Britain. On the very day that the Armistice took effect in France, twenty-nine Republican Spaniards who believed that the Legion was to be disbanded and they would be handed over to Franco, mutinied and were escorted to prison by British police, no cells having been constructed in Trentham Park.

  The sorry story escalated, with many other Spaniards striking in sympathy.[318] They too were handed over to the police. Given an ultimatum offering either ‘repatriation’ to Legion units in North Africa or staying in Britain with the Free French, the Spaniards demonstrated the depth of their despair at a choice between two alternatives, neither of which corresponded with their needs, by voting instead to stay in the cells. Some French officers and NCOs were anglophobic, for the same vague reasons that many insular Britons dislike the French. They argued that sending the Spaniards to British prisons was not the way to treat fellow-legionnaires, however troublesome.

  De Gaulle’s haughty ‘state visit’ to the camp on 30 June did nothing to heal the rift. Many legionnaires boycotted the visit with no effect since De Gaulle had no intention of talking to other ranks – which his mentor Pétain would have done in the circumstances, to let them vent their grievances.