Beau Geste:
The French Foreign Legion

The more romantic and politically insensitive might want to consider joining the Legion. The Legion is, more or less, France's colonial houseworker, oppressing minorities, liberating missionaries and generally keeping the natives from getting too restless. The Legion knows it does France's dirty work and recruits accordingly. They will take all comers, preferably foreigners and men who will not draw too big a funeral procession. The Legion is tough and disposable.

The best example of the Legion's mindset is the single most revered object in their possession-the wooden hand of Captain Jean Danjou on display in the museum in Aubagne. Danjou lost his hand when his musket misfired and blew up. He then died with the 59 worn-out survivors defending a hacienda on April 30, 1864, in a small hamlet called Camerone in Mexico. His men, exhausted after a long forced march to evade the 2000-strong Mexican army, decided to die rather than surrender. His wooden hand was found by the tardy relief column and enshrined to commemorate his courage. Over 10,000 legionnaires died at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 in a similar debacle. One unit suffered a 90 percent loss at Cao Bang, only to have 576 out of 700 killed four years later at Dien Bien Phu.

A normal army would frown upon the lack of reinforcement, bad strategies and resulting waste of manpower. The Legion (like all of French Military history) myopically elevates folly into legend and attracts thousands of eager recruits every year. The basic lesson is that with only 75 percent of the Legion being French, they are considered disposable.

Despite its notoriety, the Legion is still the army of choice when young men dream of adventure. The Legion is the tough guy's army, tailor-made for Hollywood film scripts, home for intellectuals, criminals and outcasts. It's a close-knit band of hardy, brutal men who are either escaping misguided pasts or seeking adventure in exotic places and doing heroic deeds. The lure of the Legion is communicated to us via simplistic movies like Beau Geste, or simplistic books that romanticize its violence and bloodshed. What they don't tell you is that the Legion has always been brutal and ill-equipped. But you get to learn to be a professional killer and chances are high that you will use those skills on other people.

The Legion was created in 1831 by King Louis Phillipe to assist in the conquest of Algeria. The king correctly assumed that paid mercenaries would not complain about the conditions or political correctness in carrying out his orders. Since then, the Legion has been used to fight France's dirty little wars in Algeria, Indochina, Africa and the Middle East. Although there have been many heroic battles fought in some of the world's most remote and hostile regions, you are better served by reading the multitudes of books about the Legion. The reality today is that the Legion has been downsized and specialized.

The Legion is one of the few action outfits (like the former Selous Scouts of Rhodesia or Oman's mostly British army) which offers the professional adventurer a steady diet of hardship broken up by short bursts of excitement and danger. This format has attracted many of the world's best-trained soldiers, like the SS after WWII or Special Forces vets from Vietnam. The world of adventure is shrinking, however. Today the French Foreign Legion is made up of 8500 officers and men from more than 100 countries. They no longer have any ongoing wars that require constant replacements. They now focus on picking and choosing from amongst the world's tough guys to enable them to field soldiers who are fluent in many languages and specialities without the religious, political or ethnic barriers that hamper other peacekeeping or expedition forces.

There are 16 Legion recruiting centers in France, the most popular being Fort de Nogent in Paris. Just ask at the police station for the Legion Etrangere. The more focused head straight for Aubagne, just outside of the dirty Mediterranean port of Marseille. You will be competing with over 8000 other eager Legionnaire wannabe's for the 1500 slots available. East Europeans make up about 50 percent of the eager candidates these days. Candidates are tested for their intelligence and physical fitness, and special skills are a definite plus. If you just murdered your wife's boyfriend the week before, be forewarned that all candidates are run through Interpol's data banks and the Legion cooperates with them to weed out murderers. If you just want to escape the IRS or alimony payments, the Legion could care less. After all, what better inducement is there to staying after your third year in Djibouti than the thought of spending that same time in jail Stateside.

You won't be required to bring an ID or proof of anything; when you sign up, you will be assigned a nom de guerre and a nationality. Being Canadian is popular, and calling yourself Rambo is definitely an old joke.

You must pass the same general standards as the French Army, but then the Legion takes over. You will learn to march like a mule in hell-long forced marches with heavy packs; jungle, mountain and desert training. You can bail out during the first four months of training, but from then on, you will speak the thick, crude French of the Legionnaire and learn to be completely self-sufficient in the world's worst regions.

There is basic training in Castelnaudary (between Carcassone and Toulouse, just off the A61), commando training in St. Louis near Andorra, and mountain training in Corsica. Four weeks into your training, you will be given the Kepi blanc, the white pillbox hat of the Legionnaire. Unlike the Navy SEALs or Western elite forces, the accommodations are simple and the discipline is swift, and other than special prostitutes who service the legion, there is little to look forward to in the mandatory five years of service. Legionnaires can get married after 10 years of service.

Once you pass basic training, you will be trained in a specialized category: mountain warfare, explosives or any number of trades that make you virtually unemployable upon discharge (except in another mercenary army). French citizens cannot serve, except as officers. Those French officers who sign on do so for a taste of adventure. In troubled times, the Legionnaires are always the first to be deployed to protect French citizens in uprisings or civil wars.

With this international makeup, it is not surprising that Legionnaires today find themselves as peacekeepers, stationed in the tattered shreds of the French empire or with the U.N. You may be assigned to protect the European space program in Kourou, in the steamy jungles of French Guiana, or to patrol the desert from Quartier Gaboce, in the hot baked salt pan of Djibouti. When it hits the fan as in Kolwezi or Chad, you can expect some excitement, a quick briefing, an air drop into a confused and bloody scene, followed by years of tedium, training and patrol.

Since the Legion attracts loners and misfits, and because many of them spend their time in godforsaken outposts, it is not hard to understand that the Legion becomes more than a job. In fact, the motto of the Legion is "Legio Patria Nostra," or "The Legion Is Our Homeland," which describes the mindset and purpose. Many men serve out their full 20 years, since they are unable to find equally stimulating work on the outside.

When you get out, you don't get much other than a small pension, and the opportunity to become a Frenchman (Legionnaires are automatically granted French citizenship after five years). After a lifetime of adventure, and divorced from their homeland, the men of the Legion can look forward to retirement at Domaine Danjou, a ch,teau near Puyloubier (12 miles west of St. Maxim, north of the A7) in southern France, where close to 200 Legionnaires spend their last years. This is where the Legion looks after its own, its elderly, wounded and infirm. Here, the men have small jobs, ranging from bookbinding to working in the vineyards. Later, they will join their comrades in the stony ground of the country that never claimed them but for which they gave their lives. Remember, the Legion has always been disposable.