The only direct contact with the recruits reserved systematically for him was a French-language lesson that he taught daily in the multi-purpose room. Sure I don´t believe the Legion is like the SAS but I would have joined it to see & maybe enjoy the. About 1,000 people live in the vicinity, most of them members of a small indigenous group called the Wayampi. Legionnaires leaving after 20 years You can go to retirement after 19,5 years of service, but this law is going to change in the near future. The expendability can be measured. He stuck with me when I fell behind, helped me with the bivouacs, and quietly made sure that I survived. He left. One of them jumped into the river and escaped. There was a problem loading your book clubs. He grew up there going barefoot and hunting baboons in the potato fields. Between 1870 and 1871, more than 900 legionnaires died while reinforcing the French Army in the Franco-Prussian War. “We are here to help you,” Stevens would say. You just did! I love our live fire shooting every 2-3 months. To wash yourself. The embarkation port was a muddy embankment with a couple of open-sided shelters, where in heavy rain a team of legionnaires piled barrels of fuel and bottled water into two 45-foot pirogues. He is willing to die for a country that is not his. Brotherhood. Published on September 17, 2014 September 17, 2014 • 181 Likes • 35 Comments They were the pilots. A sort of nihilism took hold. The best book on the modern French Legion available. Two recruits who had been injured while running sat facing forward holding crutches. I wandered down to the river. This bar-code number lets you verify that you're getting exactly the right version or edition of a book. A half-dozen replacement legionnaires boarded the pirogues for the ride to Camopi. He said, “Go to the track!” They ran to it. The situation seemed serious enough to the government in Paris that it ordered the detonation of an atomic bomb at a Saharan test site to keep it from falling into the hands of rogue forces. Nonetheless, the smugglers never stint on the goods they deliver—including, for instance, frozen chickens in Styrofoam coolers, eggs, sausages, women’s makeup, live cattle and pigs, candy, cereals, Coke, rum, Heineken, suntan oil, animal growth hormones (for human use), marijuana, Bibles, pornographic DVDs, and in at least one case, according to Pogildiakovs, a battery-powered dildo. That went for every recruit I met on the farm. But Streso had an entire lifetime to think about. Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 30, 2014, a good account with lots of routine detail. Recently they have fought in Afghanistan, as members of the French contingent. Mentally they were having a hard time. pistols, the gendarmes took up the chase. “I am, you are, he is,” they said in ragged unison. Some of them make more money than I do.”. I asked if this was a particular worry now, with France pulling out of Afghanistan. Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2017. This is a good book about a more modern experience in the French Foreign Legion. It has a school, a French national post office and bank, a boardinghouse, a bar, a restaurant, and a general store. Member of the French Foreign Legion take part in a training assault on an airport. Jump for joy? I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It´s a hell of a social experiment also I must say. But on the bright side there will always be the struggle against clandestine gold miners in French Guiana. Streso’s father was a former Special Forces commando with an arsenal at home, so he could probably endure until selling out or retiring. The chairs took off and flew around. When I mentioned my surprise to Boulanger he said that the French love their army once a year, on Bastille Day, but only if the sky is blue. Boulanger whistled the New Zealander’s Senegalese tutor to his feet, and said to him, “We learned this last time. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 1/1/20) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 1/1/20) and Your California Privacy Rights. Two additional Legion regiments joined the rebellion, as did a number of elite units of the regular French Army. Hellgate Press; First Edition, First edition (January 1, 2010). R. Lawrence served in the 3rd company of the parachute regiment (2REP) from 2007 - 2011.The author served in the Foreign Legion during the War on Terror period and the book includes a chapter on the war in Afghanistan. Those worn by legionnaires are white—a color that is exclusive to the Legion and gives rise to the term képi blanc, often used to signify the soldiers themselves. It was discovered that these men, who were said to threaten civil society, could be induced to become professional soldiers at minimal cost, then exiled to North Africa to help with the conquest of Algeria. We passed a river landing—a former Legion camp where old ridgepoles remained nailed between the trees, and the ground was littered with trash, much of it fresh. This fit a pattern I had seen all day, of drivers barely bothering to slow as they passed the line of exhausted troops. The fight was escalating, and it didn’t matter why. First, you can’t see it, because it’s too dense. The teams who support them are equally ambitious. There are at least two wooden signs saying, LEGIO PATRIA NOSTRA. Enough. Who knows? He was a former Russian Army officer, a quiet observer who gave the impression of depth and calm, partly because he spoke no more than a few sentences a day. I'm especially glad you made it in the police back home. It was simplifying. Usually they angle for kitchen work—he didn’t know why. Master how to use traditional media and receive unlimited press to grow your business or personal brand! I will continue my reading with books recommended by the author, and in other reviews. The surprise, he said, was to find himself now as a soldier involved in suppressing Brazilians. There are no airplanes. Learn from your mistakes, take note of your successes, and break free from this sticky world. “He is under the table,” he said. Both were sheer walls of forest. Different times, different ways of procedures. Some of them deserted to join the OAS, an ultra-right terrorist group that launched a bombing campaign. Few of them speak much French. We need to stop, go back, and figure out where we lost the track. But I'm sure glad I did my own service in 2 REP (legion paras) many years ago, when the regiment was entirely different from what it seems to be like these days, according to this book. Learn how to be the Best Leader, Best Manager and run the most Successful Projects ever with the proven step by step methods in this book! His family had a farm in a remote valley of the Baviaanskloof Mountains in Eastern Cape province. But the officer’s conceit fit perfectly into the official paternalistic view. Seven actually came from France, but had been given new identities as “French Canadian.” After the recruits returned to the compound they had a while to wait before dinner. The jumping-off point for the mission is a hamlet called Saint Georges, on the wide, fast Oyapock River, which flows from south to north and forms the eastern border with Brazil. Will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Men who have been through winters on the farms insist as a result that you should never join the Legion then. He said, “Where are you?” They shouted, “We are on the track!” He directed them into a hedgerow. I have read every book on the French Foreign Legion that I can find. Those who charged into the imaginary tail rotor or committed some other blunder would have push-ups to do immediately, counting them off in phonetic French—uh, du, tra, katra, sank. The trip upriver took six hours, much of it spent bailing. How was being an American in the Legion? You must log in or register to reply here. They came from 30 countries. Then the sky opened up. © 2020 Condé Nast. TOTAL JOKE. Feeling betrayed and uprooted, he had drifted for three years until finding the Foreign Legion forever. This book is Evan McGorman's experience but goes further by explaining the nuts and bolts of Legion life. Did you do much live firing? If the idea of spending 12 weeks in boot camp is what keeps people from joining the Marine Corps, they should be thankful that it's only that long. This is a sensitive subject, and officially denied, but the history of defeat encouraged a reactionary culture in the Legion, where, beneath an appearance of neutral professionalism, the officer corps today harbors virulent right-wing views. There were weapon-disassembly-and-cleaning classes. Forget all your preconceptions about the French Foreign Legion. That was in Bamako, Mali’s capital, and it had gone a long way. He called the British Army the best in the world and said he would return happily if only it would have him back. The author is super trooper but many Officers /NCOs are thick stupid...but its a good read, Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 19, 2018. How do they decide what one should do in the regiment when you are new, and how is the training for service in a AMX/other vehicle? In 1883, in Algeria, a general named François de Négrier, addressing a group of legionnaires who were leaving to fight the Chinese in Indochina, said, in loose translation, “You! He directed another to crawl underneath. Perhaps not. Behind the base there is a runway that has been recently paved and could be used by small military transport airplanes in a pinch, though moving legionnaires by boat is cheaper and makes more sense. Over just the past two decades they have been deployed to Bosnia, Cambodia, Chad, both Congos, Djibouti, French Guiana, Gabon, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Kosovo, Kuwait, Rwanda, and Somalia. It was about do not ask questions, do not make suggestions, do not even think of that. It did not work out. We are dust from the stars. Use the Amazon App to scan ISBNs and compare prices. Before eating, the recruits drank large field cups of water, and inverted the empty cups on their heads to demonstrate the achievement. It won’t matter in a thousand years. He knew from experience that the recruits were doing well enough. Somehow he had managed to extricate himself from the mosquito netting and get to his machete in time. cervens.net: a French Foreign Legion Forum. The closest we came to finding anyone occurred when Stevens got lost with a detachment and stumbled onto the campsite of a lookout, who escaped into the forest. Smith in particular kept getting the sequences wrong. An idea grew up inside the Legion that meaningless sacrifice is itself a virtue—if tinged perhaps by tragedy. The men had been training since before dawn, and now they were standing in formation holding practice kepis wrapped in protective plastic, and being drilled on the upcoming ceremony by the vicious corporals. Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2014. JavaScript is disabled. He was the platoon commander, Fred Boulanger, 36, a muscular Frenchman with a military bearing and an air of easy authority. Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free. The men were drenched but did not care. 100 meters, 75, 50, 25. To the point where he describes strategies used to desert the Legion and make it back to your home country without a passport.