A break from pensions this week? BBC Radio 4 is usually a source of good material when TV offers little or increasingly when driving. Last Sunday am engrossed in a radio play which turns out to be Beau Geste – something every schoolboy is supposed to have read. Remember the William stories by Richmal Crompton and later the James Bond ones but never got round to the P C Wren classic. Google reveals a site officiel for the Foreign Legion  http://www.legion-etrangere.com/ with information available in 15 languages to reflect the 136 nations from which its members are drawn. Legionnaire stories available on Amazon include Legionnaire by Simon Murray & The Naked Soldier by Tony Sloane but remembering the postal troubles, decide to order them on-line from Haringey Council Libraries and are available for collection three days later. Simon Murray’s book has a forward by Frederick Forsyth whose Day of the Jackal drew on his experiences in France in the early 1960s when Simon was in the Legion not to mention a glowing review from former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and it lives up to its plaudits.

22 February 1960 and over 30 ne’er-do-wells are reduced to 7 on the first day after the initial interviewing sergeant tells him it might be much tougher and less glamorous than he thought. Borne out next morning and the first week when duties are peeling potatoes and sweeping up. Further training near Marseilles leads to Algeria after initial training but only after one of the worst sea voyages I have ever read about. Couple of months after that brings a first suicide when a young Spaniard shoots himself.

Book is in diary form with the boring bits taken out and there are plenty of gaps. At times this was worse than the brutality which is as bad and sometimes worse than you imagined and dished out when tasks are not done to standard. Interesting mixture of camaraderie but not getting too close to other people either – you don’t really know them do you? Operations tracking down the fellagha who want a fully independent Algeria vividly show one of the Legion’s slogans: March or Die! and on an early patrol, 3 are killed but only after they have killed 5 and injured 15 soldiers in one company. Who were these guys? The Deuxieme Bureau (French MI5) wants to know which means showing the faces of the victims so they can be checked. No point in carrying a whole body back to camp where the Deuxieme Bureau guys are, just the heads will do. Three including the author are sent back for this grisly task and as the only cutting implement available is a penknife (wouldn’t a bayonet have been better?) this job takes 30 minutes. Carrying two decapitated heads on top of your kit is quite tiring and the heads are handed over. No point in bringing the third one as it is unrecognisable. Photos of the heads are taken and having served their purpose, are chucked away in the bushes. The returning soldiers put their kit back in their tents but end up the victim of probably the most grotesque practical joke ever. The soup cauldron appears unusually full although everyone else has eaten, so they are invited to help themselves. Just as they are about to take their first mouthful, one soldier puts his hand into the pot and pulls out one of the severed heads by its long black hair to the amusement of everyone….else (Use the Comments box if you can go one better here)

At the time of writing, there were over 30,000 Legionnaires but the current figures is 7,699 and the days when the Legion was the refuge of murderers and rapists appear to be gone. Checks are quite thorough these days involving Interpol for example, and everyone gets a nomme de guerre which can be dispensed with after one year when they can revert to their real name. There is no leave outside France for the first 5 years and the pay is not great  http://www.legion-recrute.com/en/salaires.php but then no one joins the Legion to become a millionaire. Desertion surprisingly is not despised but deserting with your weapon is and especially getting caught. Traditionally British and Germans have made up significant parts of the Legion to the extent that in the 1980s:

“the Legion saw a large intake of trained soldiers from the UK. These men had left the British Army following its restructuring and the Legion’s parachute unit was a popular destination. At one point, the famous 2eme REP had such a large number of British citizens amongst the ranks that it was a standing joke that the unit was really called 2eme PARA, a reference to the 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment of the British Army” (quoted from Wikipedia)

Recruitment of British legionnaires has not been helped recently by the physical unfitness of British youth being an obvious consequence of “dumbing down” in the school curriculum and sale of school sports fields. Mentioned this previously in:  http://www.georgeemsden.co.uk/2008/03/tango-and-bohemian-rhapsody/ where the blocks of flats in question near Old Street just near www.in2consulting.co.uk offices are nearing completion   http://www.bezierlondon.com/#/Contact/

Two final points. With government spending cuts coming at local as well as national level, don’t be surprised if local libraries close – use them or lose them, as libraries have always been a soft target in local government spending cuts. And, if you want to catch up on the first episode of Beau Geste  http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=beau%20geste