French Foreign Legion

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The French Foreign Legion heard its purpose spelled out in December 1883, when General François de Négrier reviewed the Second Battalion on the eve of its departure for Tonkin. His words became famous: Vous, légionnaires, vous êtes soldats pour mourir, et je vous envoie où l'on meurt! In English, that reads: You, Legionnaires, you are soldiers in order to die, and I'm sending you to where one dies!

  The men standing in that review were not French conscripts. They were foreigners serving a nation that was not their own, in a corps built for exactly that purpose.

  Why would a government create an army corps out of outsiders? What kind of man signs on, and what does he receive in return? How does a unit drawn from so many countries hold together under fire? And what becomes of such a corps when the land it called home is taken away?

  13313641

• 2. Founding Years

  ›

  On the 10th of March 1831, Louis Philippe, King of the French, created a new corps with ranks reserved for foreigners. Its raw material was close at hand. The Bourbon monarchy had recently disbanded its Swiss and German foreign regiments, and some of their former soldiers joined. So did men from shady backgrounds. The founding ordinance set a hard limit: the foreigners it recruited could serve only outside France.

  The reason lay across the Mediterranean. A French expeditionary force had occupied Algiers in 1830 and needed reinforcements. The new Legion was shipped over in detachments from Toulon. Its first men landed in late 1831, in the country that would shape its character and serve as its homeland for 130 years.

  At the outset the Legion was sorted by origin. Six national battalions were formed: Swiss, Poles, Germans, Italians, Spanish, and a combined Dutch-Belgian one. Smaller groups had no battalion of their own. Ten Englishmen recorded in December 1832, for example, appear to have been placed at random.

  Algeria did not greet the Legion kindly. It was often sent to the worst postings and handed the worst assignments, and its men were generally uninterested in the new colony. It served beside the Battalions of Light Infantry of Africa, formed in 1832. That was a penal unit of men with prison records who still owed military service, together with soldiers who had serious disciplinary problems.

  The Legion also labored on the land itself. Its men helped dry the marshes in the region of Algiers, part of the destruction of the colony's natural habitat. Its first service in Algeria ended after only four years, because it was needed elsewhere.

  1331322370

• 3. Camerone

  ›

  Captain Jean Danjou had a wooden hand, and after the 30th of April 1863 that hand became the most precious relic the Legion owns. The story begins with the French intervention in Mexico. Between 1862 and 1863, France sent an expeditionary force of 38,000 men by sea. It included two battalions of the Legion, and by 1866 there were six.

  Small cavalry and artillery units were raised from legionnaires serving there. The original plan was for the Legion to stay in Mexico for up to six years and form a core for the Imperial Mexican Army. Instead it withdrew with the other French forces in February and March 1867.

  On that April day, Danjou led a company of 62 legionnaires and three Legion officers. They were escorting a convoy to the besieged city of Puebla when three thousand Mexican loyalists attacked. The attackers were organised in two battalions, infantry and cavalry, numbering 2,200 and 800 respectively.

  Danjou, Sous-Lieutenant Jean Vilain and Sous-Lieutenant Clément Maudet made a stand in the Hacienda de la Trinidad, a farm near the village of Camarone. When only six survivors remained, and they were out of ammunition, they launched a bayonet assault. Three of the six were killed.

  The other three were wounded. They were brought before the Mexican commander, Colonel Milán, who allowed them to return to the French lines as an honor guard for Danjou's body. The wooden hand was later returned to the Legion. It now sits in a case in the Legion Museum at Aubagne and is paraded every year on Camerone Day.

  The whole Mexican campaign cost the lives of 6,654 Frenchmen. Of these, 1,918 came from a single regiment of the Legion.

  2629253513

• 4. Battlefields Abroad

  ›

  Around 1,400 legionnaires came ashore at Tarragona on the 17th of August 1835, and local people quickly nicknamed them Los Argelinos, the Algerians, after their previous posting. France had sent the Legion to Spain to back Isabella II's claim to the throne against her uncle. On the 28th of June 1835 the unit had been handed over to the Spanish government.

  Its commander promptly dissolved the national battalions to strengthen esprit de corps. He later raised three squadrons of lancers and an artillery battery from the existing men. The Legion was dissolved on the 8th of December 1838, when only 500 men remained. Many survivors returned to France and reenlisted in the new Legion, alongside numerous former Carlist enemies.

  On the 9th of June 1854, the French ship Jean Bart embarked four battalions for the Crimean Peninsula. Eight companies fought at the Battle of Alma on the 20th of September 1854. Reinforcements then raised the contingent to brigade strength, and as the Foreign Brigade it served in the Siege of Sevastopol through the winter of 1854-55.

  Equipment was scarce and cholera struck the Allied force. The Russians nicknamed the legionnaires the leather bellies, after the large cartridge pouches on their waist-belts. The final assault on Sevastopol came on the 8th of September 1855. Two days later the Second Foreign Regiment marched through its streets with flags flying and the band playing.

  Legion casualties in the Crimea were 1,703 killed and wounded, out of total French losses from battle and disease of 95,615. The campaign proved the Legion could fight in European warfare. It also welded two separate foreign regiments into a single body.

  In 1859 the Legion fought in Italy with the rest of the Army of Africa. Its two foreign regiments served in Mac Mahon's Corps and did particularly well against the Austrians at Magenta on the 4th of June and at Solferino on the 24th of June. The 2nd Foreign Regiment lost its commanding officer, Colonel Chabrière. In gratitude, the city of Milan awarded a commemorative medal of deliverance in 1909, and it still decorates that regiment's flags.

  French law kept the Legion out of metropolitan France except in a national invasion. It was therefore absent from the Imperial Army that capitulated at Sedan in 1870. The Second Empire fell, and the new Third Republic was desperately short of trained soldiers.

  On the 11th of October 1870, two provisional battalions disembarked at Toulon, the first time the Legion had served in France itself. They tried to break the German lines around Paris. They retook Orléans but could not lift the siege. After France capitulated in January 1871, the Legion helped suppress the Paris Commune, which was crushed with great bloodshed.

  Farther afield, the First Battalion sailed for Tonkin in late 1883. It formed part of the attack column that stormed the western gate of Sơn Tây on the 16th of December. Two Legion companies then led the defence in the Siege of Tuyên Quang, from the 24th of November 1884 to the 3rd of March 1885.

  In January 1885 the 4th Battalion was deployed to the French bridgehead at Keelung on Formosa. In March 1885 it helped Colonel Jacques Duchesne's offensive capture the Chinese positions of La Table and Fort Bamboo.

  In Africa, King Béhanzin of Dahomey ordered attacks on villages near Grand Popo and Porto-Novo in 1892, and France declared war. A battalion under commandant Faurax Montier marched from Cotonou toward Abomey, the Dahomean capital. The march took two and a half months, with repeated battles against Dahomean warriors, especially the Amazons of the King. Béhanzin surrendered and was captured by the legionnaires in January 1894.

  In 1895 a battalion drawn from the First and Second Foreign Regiments formed the backbone of the column sent against Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. Queen Ranavalona III promptly surrendered. The Legion lost 226 men, and only a tenth of them died in combat. Tropical disease took the rest.

  The island was not fully pacified until 1905, under Joseph Gallieni. The queen was deposed in January 1897 and exiled to Algiers, where she died in 1917.

  The last great resistance came from Samori Ture, ruler of the Wassoulou Empire. He had fought the French colonial army since 1882 and beat it at Woyowayanko on the 2nd of April 1882, despite French heavy artillery. A Legion battalion of two companies from the 2nd Foreign Regiment helped break his hold on the Niger, notably with a victory at the fortress of Ouilla. On the 29th of September 1898, Commandant Gouraud captured Samori, who was exiled to Gabon. That ended the Wassoulou Empire.

  1331323423

• 5. Two World Wars

  ›

  On the 3rd of August 1914, a reported 8,000 volunteers applied to enlist at the Legion's recruiting office in Paris. War had been declared on the 29th of July, and foreigners living in France were called on to support their adopted country. Many would have preferred the regular French Army, but the Legion was the only option immediately available.

  Some of the volunteers came from Alsace and Lorraine. Germany's annexation of those regions in 1871 had already sent men from there into the Legion, which offered them French citizenship at the end of service.

  The Legion fought in Artois, Champagne, the Somme, the Aisne and Verdun in 1917. It suffered heavy casualties in 1918 and also served in the Dardanelles and on the Macedonian front. It was highly decorated for its efforts.

  The idealistic young volunteers of 1914 differed sharply from the hardened men of the old Legion, which made blending them difficult. Even so, both groups fought and died together. At Belloy-en-Santerre, during the Battle of the Somme, the poet Alan Seeger was mortally wounded by machine-gun fire. He cheered on the rest of his advancing battalion.

  The Legion left the war as one of the most highly decorated units in the French Army. In 1919 the government of Spain raised a Spanish Foreign Legion modeled on it. General Jean Mordacq wanted to rebuild the French Legion as divisions with cavalry, engineers and artillery, rather than infantry alone. Decrees of 1920 established cavalry and artillery regiments. The Legion played a major part in the Rif War of 1920-1925, and by 1932 it numbered 30,000 men in six multi-battalion regiments.

  The Second World War cut the Legion's ranks along the same lines as France itself. The 13th Demi-Brigade, formed for service in Norway, was in the United Kingdom at the time of the Armistice in June 1940. It went on to join the British 8th Army in North Africa and distinguished itself at the Battle of Bir Hakeim in 1942.

  Part of the Legion joined the Free French and another part served the Vichy government. Germany even folded German legionnaires into the Wehrmacht's 90th Light Infantry Division in North Africa. In the Syria-Lebanon Campaign of June 1941, legionnaire fought legionnaire at Damascus, where the 13th Demi-Brigade clashed with the 6th Foreign Infantry Regiment.

  The 6th was dissolved on the 31st of December 1941. A thousand of its rank-and-file later joined the 13th Demi-Brigade.

  1337384064

• 6. Indochina

  ›

  No fewer than 72,833 men served in Indochina during the eight-year war that began in 1946. The Legion's numbers swelled with veterans of the Second World War. Many were French-speaking former German soldiers, including men from Alsace-Lorraine, for whom a military career was no longer possible in Germany. They made up as much as 60 percent of the Legion in Indochina.

  The popular image of the Legion as a refuge for war criminals deserves care. French policy was to exclude former members of the Waffen-SS, and candidates were refused if they showed the blood type tattoo or even a scar that might hide it. Bernard B. Fall, a supporter of the French government, called the notion that the Legion was mainly German a canard. He estimated the number of Germans never exceeded 35 percent, perhaps 7,000 out of 278,000 men at any one time, with an average age of about 23.

  Not every legionnaire stayed loyal. Stefan Kubiak deserted and fought for the Việt Minh after witnessing the torture of Vietnamese peasants by French troops.

  The Legion paid a heavy price: 10,283 dead in combat, made up of 309 officers, 1,082 sous-officiers and 9,092 legionnaires. One unit above all became linked with the war. The 1st Foreign Parachute Battalion sailed to Indochina on the 12th of November 1948 and was annihilated twice. On the 17th of November 1950 it parachuted into That Khé and took heavy losses at Coc Xa. It was reconstituted on the 1st of March 1951.

  On the 21st of November 1953 the reconstituted battalion jumped into Dien Bien Phu, where it lost 575 killed and missing. The fortified valley fell on the 7th of May 1954 at 17:30. The garrison included French regulars, North African units and locally recruited Indochinese units. Yet the battle has become tied above all to the Legion's paratroops.

  Today the couple of hectares of battlefield are corn fields around a stele that commemorates the dead. The battalion was reconstituted a third time on the 19th of May 1954 and left Indochina on the 8th of February 1955. It had received five citations and the fourragère of the colors of the Médaille militaire. On the 1st of September 1955, in Algeria, it became the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment.

  7113434648

• 7. Losing Algeria

  ›

  In 1961 the Legion's homeland of 130 years was about to be taken from it, and the cause was its own elite regiment. From 1954 to 1962 the 1st and 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiments fought the National Liberation Front and the Armée de Libération Nationale. They served under the 10th and 25th Parachute Divisions respectively. Operations included the Battle of Algiers and the Battle of the Frontiers, fought by 60,000 French and Legion paratroopers. In 1959 the Legion mounted offensives in the mountains, among them Operations Jumelles, Cigales and Ariège.

  The 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment was under Pierre Paul Jeanpierre. In April 1961 it rallied to the generals' putsch and played a leading role in it. The Legion's image as a professional and non-political force was tarnished. The regiment was dissolved on the 30th of April 1961 at Zeralda.

  Algerian independence in 1962 forced the abandonment of the barracks command center at Sidi Bel Abbès, established in 1842, and the Legion found it traumatising. On hearing the elite regiment was to be disbanded, its legionnaires burned a Chinese pavilion acquired after the Siege of Tuyên Quang in 1884.

  The Legion carried its relics to France, including Captain Danjou's wooden hand and the remains of General Paul-Frédéric Rollet, called the Father of the Legion. Also removed were the remains of Prince Count Aage of Rosenborg and of Legionnaire Heinz Zimmermann, the last fatal casualty in Algeria.

  The soldiers left their barracks singing Non, je ne regrette rien, a 1960 Édith Piaf song. It has remained part of Legion heritage ever since.

  President de Gaulle considered disbanding the Legion altogether. Then he remembered the Marching Regiments and that the 13th Demi-Brigade had been one of the first units to declare for him in 1940. He weighed the Saharan units' service as well. He chose to cut the Legion from 40,000 men to 8,000 and relocate it to metropolitan France.

  The Legion kept going overseas. In 1969 it intervened in Chad, the first operation after the Algerian War. In May 1978 it fought at Kolwezi in Zaïre, and in 1981 it joined the Multinational Force in Lebanon.

  In September 1990 several Legion regiments went to the Persian Gulf as part of Opération Daguet. The Legion force, made up of 27 nationalities, protected the Coalition's left flank. It took As-Salman Airport against little resistance, and the ground war ended after a hundred hours with very light Legion casualties.

  Since 2015 the Legion has also taken part in Opération Sentinelle in metropolitan France.

  1352555631

• 8. Strangers Become Soldiers

  ›

  Legionnaires today make up some 7-8 percent of the French Army's strength, and its members come from 140 countries. Most enlisted men come from outside France, while most officers are French. About 10 percent of the officers are legionnaires who rose through the ranks. Many recruits come from Eastern Europe and Latin America, and one of the largest national groups is the Poles.

  To stop any single nation from turning the Legion into a Praetorian Guard, any national component is kept at about 25 percent of the total. As of 2024, Belarusian and Russian citizens may no longer join, because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

  Identity has always been negotiable. Legionnaires were once forced to enlist under a pseudonym called a declared identity, so that men wanting to restart their lives could do so. Frenchmen could enlist under a fictitious foreign citizenship, often Belgian, Canadian or Swiss. Since September 2010, recruits may use their real identities, and those who chose declared ones can regularise their situation after one year.

  After three years' service, a legionnaire may apply for French citizenship. He must serve under his real name, have no problems with the authorities, and have served with honour and fidelity. A legionnaire wounded in the line of duty may apply at once. That provision is called Français par le sang versé, French by spilled blood.

  The Legion does not accept women. The one official female legionnaire was Susan Travers, an Englishwoman who joined the Free French Forces in the Second World War, became a member of the Legion afterward and served in Vietnam. In October 2000 it was announced that women would no longer be barred. A month later the announcement was retracted and blamed on a miscommunication.

  Recruits may be aged from 17 and a half, with parental consent, to 39 and a half. After one to three days at an information center, they go to the recruitment center in Paris for one to four days. There they sign a five-year service contract. Selection follows in Aubagne, lasting seven to 30 days, with psychological and personality tests, logic tests with no education requirement, a medical exam, physical tests and interviews.

  Basic training runs 15 to 17 weeks in the 4th Foreign Regiment. It opens with four to six weeks at The Farm, La Ferme, an introduction to military life. Then comes the Képi Blanc March, 50 kilometers over two days in full kit, followed on the third day by the ceremony in which recruits receive the white kepi.

  Mountain training takes place at Formiguères in the French Pyrenees. The course ends with the Raid March, 120 kilometers to be completed in three days. French is taught daily throughout.

  A new recruit earns a monthly salary of €1,572 plus food and lodging, and receives his own new rifle. According to Legion lore, that rifle must never be left on a battlefield.

  The Legionnaire's Code of Honour, adopted in the 1980s, is recited in French only. Its first article calls each legionnaire a volunteer serving France with honour and loyalty. Its second calls every legionnaire a brother in arms whatever his nationality, race or religion. Its last article says that in combat a legionnaire acts without passion and without hate, respects defeated enemies, and never abandons his dead or his wounded.

  The regimental flags carry a motto no other French unit bears. Instead of Honneur et Patrie, Honour and Fatherland, they read Honneur et Fidélité, Honour and Fidelity. The Latin motto Legio Patria Nostra means The Legion is our Fatherland. Adopting the Legion as a fatherland does not mean giving up a birth nationality. The Legion must obtain a legionnaire's agreement before placing him anywhere he might have to serve against his country of birth.

  The 4th Foreign Regiment calls itself the crucible of the Legion and the regiment of the strong-minded. The 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment's second motto is Être prêt, Be ready. The 2nd Foreign Engineer Regiment's is Rien n'empêche, Nothing prevents.

  The Legion's pace is just as unusual. Other French units march at 116 steps a minute, but the Legion marches at 88, a pace its men call the crawl. Because of that slowness, the Legion is always the last unit to pass in any parade, including the Bastille Day Military Parade in Paris on the 14th of July.

  Its band normally plays the march of any regiment except the one on parade. The Legion also refuses to split in two as it approaches the presidential grandstand, as other French units do, so that its unity is preserved.

  The popular belief that the pace conserves energy under the hot Algerian sun is wrong. The official explanation is that it hails back to the march step of the Ancien Régime foreign regiments, ancestors of the Legion. The pace regulation does not seem to have been instituted before 1945.

  One tradition is bearded and carries an axe. The Pionniers, the Legion's combat engineers, wear large beards, leather aprons and gloves, in the manner of Napoleonic sappers. The French Army disbanded its regimental sapper platoons in 1870, but in 1931 the Legion restored its Pionniers to mark its hundredth anniversary.

  That anniversary was scheduled by Colonel, later General, Paul-Frédéric Rollet for Camerone Day, the 30th of April 1931. He is credited with creating much of the modern mystique of the Legion by restoring or creating many of its traditions.

  When the Pionniers open a Legion parade, they commemorate the sappers who once opened the way for the infantry. Behind them the marching song of the Legion, Le Boudin, is sung by legionnaires standing at attention.

  7680647385