http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_foreign_legion
History
The French Foreign Legion was created by Louis Philippe, then King of the French, on March 10, 1831, to support his war in Algeria. Successive legions were also raised to augment the French forces in the Crimean War, in the Austro-Sardinian War and in Mexico.
Initially, the Legion proved to be an effective means for removing some of the more "undesirable" elements of 19th century French society, as its ranks were filled with cut-throats, run-aways, beggars, general criminals and unwanted immigrants. During its early period, the Legionnaire was very poorly trained and given only the most basic of equipment, clothing and food. He tended to be badly motivated - as his reasons for joining were desperation and self preservation rather than patriotism (he would most likely be running away from some grave problem in his life). Living and working conditions were terrible, and their early campaigns were typically bloody affairs. As a result, desertion has traditionally been a major problem for the Legion.
The task of forging a rag-tag band of poorly-motivated would-be warriors - from many different cultures - into an effective fighting force proved to be an immensely difficult undertaking. To accomplish this, the Legion quickly developed an incredibly austere code of discipline, far in excess of that of other contemporary units (even within their own French army).
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Mexico
Main Article Battle of Camarón
It was in Mexico on 30 April 1863 that the Legion earned its legendary status. The small infantry patrol led by Capitaine Danjou numbering 62 soldiers and 3 officers was attacked and besieged by over two thousand[1] Mexican infantry and cavalry units organized into 3 battalions, and was forced to make a defense in Hacienda Camarón. Despite the hopelessness of the situation they fought nearly to the last
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Franco-Prussian War
During the Franco-Prussian War, the Legion attempted to lift the Siege of Paris by breaking through the German lines. They succeeded in taking Orléans, but failed to break the siege.
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Colonial Warfare
During the Third Republic, the Legion played a major role in French colonial expansion. They fought in North Africa (where they established their headquarters at Sidi-Bel-Abbès in Algeria), Madagascar, and Indochina, where they participated in the celebrated Defense of Tuyen Quang in 1885.
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The World Wars
In World War I the Legion fought in many critical battles of the war, including the Battle of Verdun. The Legion was highly decorated for its efforts in the war.
The Foreign Legion was heavily involved in World War II, playing a large role in the Middle East and the North African campaign. The 13th Demi-Brigade was deployed in the Battle of Bir Hakeim. Interestingly, part of the Legion was loyal to the Free French movement, yet another part was loyal to the Vichy government. A battle in Syria saw two opposing sides fight against each other in a short engagement, and later on the Vichy Legion joined its Free French brethren.
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Indochina
Units of the Legion were deployed in French Indochina and fought in the Franco-Chinese War, and one battalion was the key component in the celebrated defense of the fortress of Tuyen Quang when it was assaulted by Chinese troops many times its number.
Units of the Legion were involved in the defense of Dien Bien Phu and lost a large number of their men in the battle. Towards the desperate end of the battle, Legionnaires formed the bulk of the volunteer relief force which were delivered by parachute to the base.
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Membership
While most of its commissioned officers are French, approximately 10% are former legionnaires who have risen through the ranks. The rest of the Legion is made up of men from a wide variety of nationalities, with French citizens representing 25-35% of the legionnaires. The foreign volunteers are primarily European. Before and during World War II, many Jews from Eastern Europe fled to France and ended up enlisting in the legion. Ironically, after the fall of the Third Reich, Germans (long a major presence in the legion) accounted for roughly sixty percent of the manpower, with many former German troops coming directly from WWII POW camps (Bernard B. Fall, a leading expert on French Indochina and author of Street without Joy and Hell in a Very Small Place, disputes this fact and claims that at most Germans only made up thirty-five percent of the Legion in the post-WWII period). The book Devil's Guard relates a former Waffen-SS member's brutal account of joining the Legion and fighting with fellow former SS against the Vietminh in Indochina. During the mid 1980s the Legion contained large contingents of British and Serbian nationals. Present day has seen a number of recruits from African countries.
The Legion's ranks historically tend to be filled with enlistees from countries undergoing some sort of crisis. In recent generations, however, many of those joining have come from middle-class backgrounds in stable prosperous countries such as Britain and the US (and indeed France itself).
Legionnaires can choose to enlist under a pseudonym ("declared identity") and a declared citizenship. This disposition exists in order to allow people who want to turn over a new leaf in their life to enlist. French citizens can enlist under a declared, fictitious, foreign citizenship (generally, a francophone one). After one year, legionnaires can regularize their situation under their true identity.
In the past, the Legion had a reputation for attracting criminals on the run and would-be mercenaries. In recent years, however, admission has been restricted much more severely and background checks are done on all applicants. Generally speaking, convicted felons are prohibited from joining the service.
After serving in the Legion for three years (out of a five-year initial enlistment), the legionnaire is allowed to apply for French citizenship. Furthermore, a soldier harmed in combat for France is also allowed to apply for French citizenship under a provision known as "Français par le sang versé" ("French by spilled blood").
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Composition
Previously, the Legion was not stationed in mainland France except in wartime. Until 1962 the Legion headquarters were stationed in Sidi-Bel-Abbès, Algeria. Nowadays, some units of the legion are in Corsica or overseas possessions, while the rest is in the south of mainland France. Current headquarters are in Aubagne, France, just outside Marseille.
There are nine regiments and one independent sub-unit :
Mainland France
1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment (1er REC), based in Orange (armoured troops)
2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment (2e REI), based in Nîmes,
1st Foreign Engineer Regiment (1er REG), based in Laudun;
2nd Foreign Engineer Regiment (2e REG), based in St Christol,
1st Foreign Regiment (1er RE), based in Aubagne (Legion headquarters),
4th Foreign Regiment (4e RE), based in Castelnaudary (training);
in Corsica,
2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment (2e REP), based in Calvi;
French Overseas Territories and Overseas Collectives,
3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment (3e REI), based in French Guiana,
Foreign Legion Detachment in Mayotte (DLEM);
Africa
13th Foreign Legion Demi-Brigade (13 DBLE), based in Djibouti.
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Current Deployments
These deployments are current as of November 2005
Operations exterieures (other than at home bases or on standard duties)
Martinique - (Protection) - 2e REG / 2e Compagnie, RCS;
Paris, France - VIGIPIRATE - 2e REI / 2 units, EM; 1er REG / 2 units;
Montpellier - VIGIPIRATE - 2e REI / 1 unit;
Perpignan - VIGIPIRATE - 2e REI / 1 unit;
Guyane - (Protection) - 3e REI / 3e Compagnie; 1er REG / RCS;
Côte D'Ivoire - (Intervention) - Operation LICORNE - 1er REC / 5e Squadron;
Mayotte - (Prevention) - DLEM;
Iles Glorieuses - (Prevention) - DLEM;
Djibouti - (Prevention) - 13e DBLE; 2e REI / CAC, RCS; 2e REG / 1er Compagnie, RCS;
Kosovo - (Intervention) - 2e REG / BATFRA.
Afghanistan - (Intervention) - 2e REG / URH;
Training Operations
2e REP - France (Corse) - Regimental Exercise
1er REC - France (Provence/Alpes-Cotes D'Azur and Languedoc-Roussillon) - Ex. Amphibie " Melaoria II"- Exercise "PC Garrigues "Palmex II";
2e REI - France and United Kingdom - La Courtine, Ex. Cambrian Patrol and CIECM;
3e REI - Guyane - Stage Combat en Milieu Equatorial;
4e RE - Exercise Antarès with 17e RPG.
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Notable Members of the Légion Étrangère
Capitaine Danjou
Milorad Lukovic
Dimitri Amilakhvari
François Faber
Ante Gotovina
John F. "Jack" Hasey
Ernst Jünger
Pierre Koenig
Arthur Koestler
André Lalande
Raoul Lufbery
Hélie de Saint Marc (former resistant deported to Buchenwald, participated in the Algiers putsch)
Pierre Messmer
Simon Murray
Cole Porter (falsely claimed to be a member while living as a playboy in Paris)
Alan Seeger
Susan Travers
HRH Peter I of Serbia
HRH Prince Aage of Denmark
HSH Prince Louis II of Monaco
James Waddell of New Zealand, Lt-Col during WWI
Max Deutsch, Austrian composer
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The Legion in popular culture
The existence of the French Foreign Legion has led to a romantic view that it is a place for a wronged man to leave behind his old life to start a new one, but also that it is full of scoundrels and men escaping justice. This view of the legion is common in literature, and has been used for dramatic effect in many movies, not the least of which are the several versions of Beau Geste. The Legion is also depicted in the U.S. comic strip Crock and the UK comic strip Beau Peep.
There is a French song made famous by Edith Piaf called "Mon Legionnaire", about a woman's longing for an embittered Legionnaire with whom she had a brief affair and who refused to tell her his name. The song was reprised by Serge Gainsbourg in the 1980's, the male voice singing the lyrics made famous by Piaf giving the song a strong homoerotic undertone. The new version of "Mon Légionnaire" was a hit on french dancefloors, both gay and heterosexual.
Another of Piaf's songs was "Le Fanion De La Legion" (The Flag of the Legion), describing the heroic defence by the garrison in a small Legion outpost attacked by Saharan tribes. Both songs were written by Raymond Asso, a Foreign Legion veteran who was Piaf's lover in the late 1930's.
The Foreign Legion adopted still another Edith Piaf song as their own, "Je ne regrette rien" (I regret nothing), during the 1950s when members of the Legion were accused (and not without reason) of atrocities and war crimes during the Algerian War. Today it is still a popular Legion 'chant' sung when on parade, adapting it to their unique marching cadence of 88 steps to the minute.
Ante Gotovina's biography The General, written by Croatian writer Nenad Ivankovic, is mainly about Gotovina's life in the Legion.
In the 1960s, the British boys' comic Eagle featured a popular adventure strip called Luck of the Legion, set in the classic period before WWI, of soldiers in blue coats, white kepi covers, white scarves and white trousers marching across endless desert under the gaze of treacherous Arab warriors.
The Foreign Legion of the WWI period was also portrayed in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
Most recently, the Legion was revealed in a contemporary (July 2005) documentary Escape to the Legion, commissioned by the British television channel, Channel 4. In this four-part series, 11 volunteers with Bear Grylls explored the myths, romanticism and rigours of basic training in the French Foreign Legion.
Additionally, Legion of the Lost an autobiography by Jaime Salazar published in 2005, chronicles his experience as an American citizen who joined the legion out of boredom and disenfranchisement from white collar America.
Legionnaire, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, depicted the Foreign Legion's battles against Algerian berbers. In the 1990 film Lionheart, Van Damme stars as a Legionnaire who deserts in order to help his sister-in-law and niece after his brother is killed.
The Mummy, starring Brendan Fraser, begins with Fraser's character, Rick O'Connell, a member of Foreign Legion and fighting in ruins of Hamunaptra (City of the Dead).
The 1939 comedy, Flying Deuces is one of the most popular films to star the duo Laurel and Hardy. The film begins with the pair joining the Foreign Legion and much of the comedy comes from their experiences. Laurel and Hardy had made an earlier comedy set in the Foreign Legion, Beau Hunks, in 1931.
"March or Die" (1978), (also known in France as "Marche ou Crève") stars Gene Hackman as Colonel Foster, an embittered Legion veteran of the Legion's heroic RMLE who returns to Algeria from the Western Front shortly after the end of WWI. He is ordered to chaperone an archaeological expedition into hostile Arab territory. The film also stars Max Von Sydow, Catherine Deneuve, Terence Hill and Ian Holm.
In science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle's "Future History", involving a future soldier of fortune named John Christian Falkenberg, there is a central role to the CoDominium Navy, which fights on all kinds of planets far away in space, and which had been created out of the French Foreign Legion and still keeps many of its traditions such as the aforementioned "Camerone Day".
Pournelle's fellow SF writer David Drake, the author of the Hammer's Slammers series, also bases his mercenary unit off of the French Foreign Legion. More specifically, the Legion after the Second World War, when most of its members had fled from persecution from the Allied War Crimes Commission.
In Savior, Dennis Quaid is a former Legionnaire who has become a mercenary for the Serbian militia. Before joining the French Foreign Legion, he was Joshua Rose and an U.S. Marine on embassy duty in Paris. His wife and son are killed in a cafe bombing by an Islamic terrorist. In a fit of revenge he storms into a mosque and shoots worshippers. In order to avoid arrest he joins the Foreign Legion. He soons tire of the boredom of peacekeeping and leave the Legion to become a mercenary.
Snoopy, from the Peanuts comic strip, often imagines himself as a member of the Foreign Legion, usually defending or reclaiming Fort Zinderneuf.
In a French sci-fi comic Aquablue, the hero, Neo, must defend himself and his people against the Légion, an Earth Special Force which has exactly the same uniform as the Légion Étrangère.
The indie-rock band The Decemberists wrote a song called The Legionnaire's Lament about a homesick legionnaire during the first world war.
Frank Sinatra performed a song called "French Foreign Legion" about joining up if a girl doesn't marry him.
In the manga and anime, Area 88 the protagonist, Shin Kazama, was tricked while intoxicated into joining the French Foreign Legion to serve in a mercenary airforce in the fictional Asran Kingdom of North Africa. The office that handled his contracts was located in Paris, France.
Milorad Ulemek wrote a partialy biographical novel "Legionar" (Legionnaire) describing his early years in teh French Foreign Legion.
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