The sound of a sadistic sergeant yelling “Marche ou creve” (“March or die”) across the desert sands was playing in my head as I tried to enlist in the French Foreign Legion (“La Legion Etrangere”) a few days after my 18th birthday. Although you could sign up at any post office in France, my ship happened to be in Marseille, where the main recruiting office was located, and I presented myself to the authorities there early one morning in 1960. I had done my homework, and even knew what unit I wanted to be assigned to: the 2e Regiment Etranger de Parachutistes, one of the two elite parachute regiments.
You see, all my short life I had wanted to be a parachutist. You might have asked, “Well, why don’t you join the Army instead of the Navy?” My answer would have been: “Have you ever lived in Lumberton?” I wanted to travel. I wanted adventure. I had talked to some of my friends in the army, and I didn’t want to get stuck at Fort Benning, Georgia, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, or Fort Polk, Louisiana. I had seen enough pine trees, swamps, and corn fields to last a lifetime. I wanted to see the world. After a year in the Navy, however, things were beginning to get dull onboard ship, and I wanted to reboot my life. To my 18-year-old mind, the Legion seemed a good place to start.
I’d be the first to admit that I was a hopeless romantic, informed by myth, folklore, and by the limited international media available to me growing in rural Lamar County. I had read “Beau Geste” (1924), by P.C. Wren, in high school; and onboard my ship I had seen the movie, “Morocco” (1938), where a sultry Marlene Dietrich is in love with Gary Cooper’s legionnaire character. A news article here and there, obscure references in literature and history books, and my vivid imagination filled in the remaining gaps in my knowledge of this famous organization.
To be honest, I had absorbed and believed most every legend I’d ever heard about the Legion. For example, there was the ancient belief that behind every legionnaire there was a woman. I’d heard and believed the arresting story of an older legionnaire and a young lieutenant both killed in action who were discovered to have carried the picture of the same woman, proving that unknown to both, they were father and son.
I had read, and believed, that the Legion was peopled with stock characters: the Russian aristocrat, the Belgian sergeant-major who had fled into the Legion after stealing the regimental funds, the half-mad legionnaire who had tattooed obscenities on his hands to give his superiors an insult with each salute, the sergeant with a dark secret who one day commits suicide, even the rumor that recruits sometimes claimed to have committed a crime because they believed this was the only way they would be accepted.
I even knew, by heart, the first few lines of the famous ballad, “Bingen on the Rhine” (1867), by English author, Caroline Norton, a reference to which I’d come across in Stephen Crane’s short story, “The Open Boat” (1897), one of the few high school English assignments I’d actually read:
A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
There was a lack of woman’s nursing, there was dearth
Of woman’s tears.
But a comrade stood beside him, while his life blood ebbed away.
And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might say:
The dying soldier faltered, as he took that comrade’s hand,
And he said, “I never more shall see my own, my native land.”
After the 1830 revolution, King Louis-Philippe of France’s fear of foreign mercenaries in the French army led him to form, in 1831, the French Foreign Legion in hopes of getting rid of them. So began the history of one of the most legendary and mysterious military units in the world, an organization whose motto is “Legio Patria Nostria:” “The Legion is our Home.” When a man joins the Legion, he is no longer an Englishmen, a Russian, an Italian, or an American – he is a Foreign Legionnaire. If he has a passport, it is taken from him. He belongs to the Legion now. He must go where it sends him and obey its orders without question. It is his only family. If he successfully completes three of his five-year enlistment, he is eligible to apply for French citizenship. Of course, for the “unlucky,” there’s always “Francais par le sang verse “– or “French by spilled blood.” This is a provision in French law that gives legionnaires immediate citizenship if wounded in combat.
Although today’s Legion, consisting of around 8,000 volunteers from over 100 countries, is one of the world’s most professional fighting forces, its reputation in the early 1960s was a little “sketchy.” While it had performed heroically in France’s doomed effort to hang on to its colonies in Indochina after World War II, its membership, reportedly, still contained a few ex-Nazis, deserters from the Wehrmacht, Vichy collaborators, and an occasional criminal hiding behind an assumed name. In those days, if you were accepted into the Legion, you were given a new name, a new start, and few questions were asked about your past. Dark days, however, were on the horizon, especially for the parachute regiments.
In 1956, Morocco and Tunisia were promised full independence from France; but the French government had no intention of letting Algeria go. The people of Algeria decided to fight for their freedom, just as the Vietnamese had done so successfully. If you’d like to read about this fight, a wonderful place to start is “The Wretched of the Earth” (1961), a book by Frantz Fanon, who was an Algerian psychiatrist.
The fight against the Algerian rebels was led by the First and Second Regiments Etrangers Parachutistes, or 1er and 2e REPs. These two units had been formed in 1955 from Legion volunteers, and were tough, battle-hardened veterans who would fight to the death (Think Dien Bien Phu). In 1958, General Charles de Gaulle was President of France and, as it became clear that the war in Algeria could not be won, he promised that the rebels would be given independence in 1961. The Foreign Legion was horrified. Algeria was their traditional home (Sidi-bel-Abbes), and they had fought for over 100 years to keep Algeria French. Many legionnaires, particularly in the 1er REP, refused to obey de Galle and joined with the French settlers, the “pied noirs” (“black feet”), to continue the fight. The rebellion was soon crushed; Algeria gained its independence; the 1er REP was disbanded; and the entire Foreign Legion came close to being abolished.
De Galle relented, however, and the larger Legion units were repositioned all over France and the remaining colonies. The 2e REP was moved to Corsica, where it has evolved from being purely parachute infantry into a modern, multi-faceted “rapid response force” which can protect French interests all over the world. No longer the “red-headed stepchild” of the French Army, new graduates of their “West Point,” Saint-Cyr (Ecole Speciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr) vie for assignment to the Legion as they consider it a “plum posting” advantageous to their careers. The current specializations of the 2e REP are a snapshot of the overall organization of the Foreign Legion today: 1st company, urban and night fighting; 2nd company, mountain warfare; 3rd company, amphibious warfare; 4th company, explosives and snipers; Scout and Support company, anti-tank, mortars; 5th company, shock specialists/maintenance.
About 1963, I was having lunch in a restaurant in Calvi, near the 2e REPs new headquarters in Corsica, when the door burst open and a group of four legionnaires, submachine guns at the ready, walked into and slowly around the room, stopping before every diner, and giving each careful scrutiny. Satisfied, but obviously not finding the poor soul they were looking for, they left the restaurant. My life passed before my eyes.
I finally did achieve my goal of becoming a military parachutist. After I became an officer, I had the duty on my ship one night in San Francisco, and I had access to the AUTOVON, a toll-free telephone which allowed me to call anyone in the Department of Defense worldwide. In about ten minutes, I had tracked down the Army officer in the Pentagon who controlled the quotas to the Airborne school (Jump School) at Fort Benning, Georgia. He laughed and said, “When do you want to go?” I picked a date, but I had a problem. I had yet to “run it up the flagpole” – I hadn’t asked the Old Man if I could go. After all, it would involve a month’s absence from the ship: a week to get organized and to Georgia, then Ground Week, Tower Week, and finally, Jump Week where I would get my five jumps and my wings.
My real problem was that there was no valid reason for him to approve my request, plus he would be liable to pay my jump pay for at least three months. He was an old curmudgeon who didn’t suffer fools lightly and was known for throwing supplicants out of his stateroom. So, with fear and trepidation I outlined my request and reasons for wanting to go. He looked at me for a while, smiled, and said: “Tell you what, Benny, if you are crazy enough to go, I am crazy enough to send you.” And so, I was off to Fort Benning. Several years later, I had talked my way into the Navy’s Second Class Diver/Scuba School at Subic Bay, Philippines, but the Commanding Officer I had then was not as accommodating. Three months was too long to be gone from that ship.
When I arrived in Georgia, I immediately noted several similarities between the Army jump school and what I knew of the French Foreign Legion. For example, there was a mass “weeding out” of candidates on the first day. While it didn’t reach the 80% attrition rate of the Legion, I’d say we lost at least a fourth of our class immediately because they couldn’t pass the initial physical tests, and probably less than half of the remainder completed the course because of injury, fear of heights, lack of motivation, etc. To quit, all you had to do was walk away, no questions asked.
The instructors were fair, but very severe, as I imagined them to be in the Legion. This was during the height of the Vietnam War, and all our sergeants, the “Black Hats,” had just returned from combat tours. While I never saw any actual “thumping,” the margin of training error was miniscule, and would open you up to extreme verbal abuse, more pushups than you can imagine, and more extra running than you thought you could endure. It was July, and every hour, to cool us off, they would march us through big, outdoor showers with our clothes and boots on, but I still threw up most days.
The Legion is known for its unusual marching speed. It marches at a slower pace than other French military units, taking 88 steps per minute compared to the standard 120. This unique cadence, which dates to 1831, gives the Legion a powerful and majestic symbol. If you’ve ever been in Paris on Bastille Day, you’ve seen them marching down the Champs-Elysees, traditionally bringing up the rear of the parade. The Army jump school, on the other hand, introduces you to the famous “Airborne Shuffle,” which is a low-impact middle ground between a walk and a run. It is typically about a 9-minute mile, and woe to the unfortunate soul who lagged behind the formation during a training or early morning run. When I was there, it was an automatic “drop” from the course.
Finally, there’s the singing. When the 1er REP loaded the ships departing Algeria in “disgrace,” they reportedly were singing Edith Piaf’s 1959 song, “Non, je ne regrette rien” (“No, I regret nothing”); however, there was always a tradition of singing in the Legion. In fact, that’s one of the main ways French is taught to non-French speakers. Leaving jump school, I had a whole repertoire of our daily running cadences which I remember to this day. Here’s the start of one of my favorites:
Here we go, all the way.
Here we go, every day.
Signed my name on the dotted line,
All I do is double time.
C-130 rolling down the strip.
Airborne daddy gonna take a little trip.
Stand up, hook up, shuffle to the door,
Jump right out and count to four.
If my main don’t open wide,
I’ve got another one by my side.
If I die on the old drop zone,
Box me up and send me home.
As far as joining the Legion, I never got past the two eyeballs scrutinizing me through a peephole in the huge door to the compound. I guess the legionnaire on the other side took one look at my unimpressive, tow-headed, 149-pound self and, although I couldn’t make out all his French, he said something to the effect of “Come back when you have some hair on your chest.” He was really saying: “You are trying to write checks with your mouth that your body can’t cash.” I know he did me a favor, and I was a foolish teenager, because to enlist in the Legion, I would have had to desert from the Navy, and renounce my American citizenship, drastic steps which would have put me in federal prison if I had ever returned to the States.
Much later in my career, while I was the aide-de-camp to an admiral in Washington, D.C., I wrote a letter to all the foreign naval attaches in town and asked them to send me parachute uniform insignia from their counties. I ended up with a collection of over 100 which are now framed and hanging in my library, with my 42 books on the French Foreign Legion, alongside my U.S. Army Airborne School diploma. Some dreams never die.
Light a candle for me.
—
Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
