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French Foreign Legion soldiers were the toughest in the world

2018-07-10T09:42:04Z

BuckDenby8:

BOOK OF THE WEEK AT THE EDGE OF [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] THE WORLD by Jean-Vincent Blanchard (Bloomsbury �20) As a boy, I�d always more than half-wondered if the French Foreign Legion was an invention of Hollywood. Cary Grant and Gary Cooper capered about in the desert wearing those distinctive hats with the white hankies dangling down the backs of their necks. Laurel and Hardy ran away to join the Foreign Legion, as did Jim Dale in Carry On . . . Follow That Camel, which was filmed in exotic Camber Sands. Marty Feldman directed, co-wrote and starred in The Last Remake Of Beau Geste, with Peter Ustinov as the sadistic sergeant. A new book by Jean-Vincent Blanchard examines the legendary, vicious (and racist) French Foreign Legion, whose soldiers marched in 50C heat till their boots filled with blood Edith Piaf had a famous song about a night of hectic passion with a tattooed recruit, which she compared to (and I translate) �a thunderstorm through the sky�. And it is her image of the moody and uncompromising Legionnaire, attracted by the promise of �blood, bullets, bayonets and women in an Arab land�, that gets closest to the historical and psychological truth, as laid before us in this gripping, disturbing and controversial account of the Legion�s first century. For the all-volunteer corps of the French Army, founded in 1831, was neither comical, nor an excuse for high-spirited larks. It was brutal and often monstrous. Created to participate in France�s colonial expansion to Algeria, Morocco, Madagascar, Indochina and Mexico, �we scare people, we inspire fear and perhaps admiration, which is a little too thin a reward sometimes; but love, never�. RELATED ARTICLES Previous 1 Next Sex, soldiers and a very special relationship: Pals were... He was a doctor to royalty and collector supreme who created... Share this article Share Even the unique right to hire men regardless of their nationality was a cynical move. Since Napoleon and his casualties were still a living memory, the French government wanted an army �that could face danger and human losses without drawing the political backlash that French-born victims would elicit�. Out of this came the Legion�s legendary appeal to ne�er-do-wells, broken-hearted lovers, criminals, political refugees and �scions of aristocratic families leaving behind gambling debts�. Anyone physically fit was accepted, especially if they had teeth strong enough to bite the biscuit rations. No questions were asked at the headquarters in Sidi Bel Abbes, Algeria. The band of outcasts were fearless and had 'no families, no ideals' and 'no loves� �You can choose a new name if you like,� recruits were told. �We don�t ask for documents.� As mercenaries, the men fought for the Legion itself, united against everyone else. �Legio Patria Nostra,� ran the motto - the Legion is our country. �We don�t give a damn what we fight for. It�s our job. We�ve nothing else in life. No families, no ideals, no loves.� By 1900, there were 11,500 men in this band of scary outcasts. Blanchard calculates that between 1831 and 1962, when Algeria was grudgingly granted independence and the French left North Africa, approximately 600,000 people had joined up. It is chilling to discover that Jean-Marie Le Pen spent a formative three years in the Legion, and that recently a retired commander was arrested for making anti-Islam protests at Calais �The substantial majority of them were Germans or Northern Europeans,� we are informed. The rest were Belgians, Spaniards and Britons. There was one Turk, one New Zealander and lots of Americans during the Great Depression of the Thirties. Exhausting route-marches in Saharan temperatures of 50c with heavy backpacks, where �acid sweat burned your skin� and �you march with your shoes full of blood�, would not be my cup of tea. But, according to Blanchard, the typical Legionnaire was a man who found �redemption and an existential purpose through camaraderie and abnegation�. �Excessive revelry� was condoned by the generals, who believed �one did not build empires with virgins� A Legionnaire who was shot in the stomach and lying on the ground with his intestines escaping was heard to murmur to his captain: �Are you happy with me?� This is the kind of stoicism that was expected. �Excessive revelry� was condoned by the generals, who believed �one did not build empires with virgins�. Sex with prostitutes was encouraged, despite the risk of venereal disease, as were heavy drinking and brawling. How hilarious it must have been to terrorise the natives - the Legionnaires �can hardly keep beating, so hard they laugh�, ran a report. The French government maintained that this imperial experiment was to bring �reason, progress, science, culture and freedom� to backward jungle regions and wildernesses' The French government maintained that this imperial experiment was to bring �reason, progress, science, culture and freedom� to backward jungle regions and wildernesses. The Legionnaires were expected to fight �in the professed name of civilisation and� - here comes the catch - �in the name of racial superiority�. While we can applaud their achievements as engineers - digging and building roads, constructing forts and laying telephone lines - the fact remains that, for these mercenaries, �the gift of French civilisation� in practice meant the opportunity for the savage conquest of African tribes and, in Indochina, the Vietnamese patriotic resistance. Legionnaires went about �civilising the barbarians of this world with cannonballs�. Villages were pillaged and burned, the women raped, the men decapitated. �We were allowed to kill and plunder everything,� recalled a soldier. �We went to the villages and surprised the people in bed.� One Legionnaire received no censure when he made a tobacco pouch from cured human skin. Nevertheless, killing civilians must have taken its toll - indeed, Legionnaires were among the most screwed-up soldiers in history. In a group of 350 men, 11 deaths were put down to suicide, but [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] there may have been many more, disguised in the record as death from [http://www.Automotivedigitalmarketing.com/main/search/search?q=disease disease]. The belief was: �It is better to be dead than go through hell.� The Legionnaires were expected to fight �in the professed name of civilisation and� - here comes the catch - �in the name of racial superiority� There was alcoholism and much illness - typhoid, tropical fever, dysentery, malaria. In Legionnaires� hospitals, a coffin, slathered with quicklime, was placed in readiness under a patient�s bed. It was said of a soldier about to die that he was off to �eat bananas by the roots� - i.e. be buried in soft soil. The deliberate hardship was not unlike that of a religious order, with its renunciation of worldly comforts - though entertainment involved lots of drag shows. Legionnaires made �splendid female impersonators�. Homosexual activity was commonplace, as you�d expect with �5,000 young solid males, boiling with vigour and vitality� at a loose end in the fort. When Kaiser Wilhelm tried to discourage Germans from joining up by publishing articles warning against sexual abuse in the desert, men with Heidelberg duelling scars raced to enlist. As 43 per cent of the corps was German, perhaps it is no surprise the Foreign Legion didn�t rescue France when the country was occupied by Nazis during World War II. The French government maintained that this imperial experiment was to bring �reason, progress, science, culture and freedom� to backward jungle regions and wildernesses Blanchard�s story concludes with the centenary of the corps in 1931, the parades and so forth. I am keen to read a further volume about post-colonial activities, particularly because, since 1962 when Sidi Bel Abbes was abandoned for a new HQ in Marseille, 50,000 men have felt the need to run away and join the Legion. It is chilling to discover that Jean-Marie Le Pen spent a formative three years in the Legion, and that recently a retired commander was arrested for making anti-Islam protests at Calais. Advertisement

WWII sacrifice of Free French defending Hong Kong

2018-06-29T13:02:35Z

BuckDenby8:

Seventy-five years ago, a handful of idealistic "Free French" took up arms to defend the British colony of Hong Kong in a futile battle against Japanese invaders. But their sacrifice, though largely unknown in their homeland, is not forgotten in Asia. There are six names on the worn stele that pays tribute to them in a corner of the British military cemetery in Stanley, on a hill in the south of Hong Kong island. A French flag is draped over a memorial at the [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] Stanley Military Cemetery, dedicated to French civilians who died fighting with the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps against the 1941 Japanese invasion of the territory �Isaac LAWRENCE (AFP) "I do not see why these people should be forgotten," says Francois Dremeaux, chairman of the Hong Kong committee of French Remembrances of China. "My job is to make their memory live by giving it meaning," adds the history teacher, who helped oversee a ceremony dedicated to them last week. Dremeaux, who has written a thesis on the French presence in Hong Kong in the interwar period, feels there is much to learn from these men, who in 1941 chose to fight in a battle some 10,000 kilometres (6,000 miles) from their homeland. Hong Kong was a British enclave, and there was nothing forcing them to defend it, he adds. "We cannot even say they were defending their colony," Dremeaux said. "They defended an idea, freedom, and did it of their own free will, which makes their sacrifice even more noble." Apart from representatives from the French consulate and army, those attending the modest commemoration were largely students from the French international school where Dremeaux teaches. The group sang 'Le Chant Des Partisans', the anthem of the French Resistance -- a tune rarely heard on the shores of the South China Sea. - Dissident consul - By June 1940, many in the French community -- which numbered around 400 in the late 1930s, had already fled to Indochina. Those who remained largely rallied to the Gaullist Resistance cause. While the French embassy in Beijing was loyal to the pro-Nazi Vichy regime, in diplomatic correspondence Hong Kong consul general Louis Reynaud railed against the "treason" of the armistice Germany demanded and stamped his official telegrams with "V" for victory. A "Free France" committee was set up in Hong Kong with about 20 active members to recruit volunteers, turn merchant sailors on stopover in port or prepare propaganda broadcasts. Then on December 8, 1941, hours after their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded Hong Kong, which had been living under the threat of the imperial forces since they seized the nearby Chinese city of Canton -- modern day Guangzhou -- three years earlier. Some of the Frenchmen joined the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps established by Britain to support regular forces vastly outnumbered by the Japanese. - Bayonet wounds - Dremeaux picks up the trail of the Free French at several key moments in the 17-day "Battle of Hong Kong", including the fight for the island's sole power plant. While only six names are on the stele, Dremeaux believes around ten took a stand against the Japanese. Among them was Armand Delcourt, a 42-year-old merchant who came to Hong Kong in 1926 and married a Eurasian woman of Japanese and Scottish origins, Captain Roderic Egal, who was in transit from Shanghai when the invasion began, Henri Belle, a sailor passing through Hong Kong who took up arms, and Paul de Roux a director of the Banque d'Indochine. Egal and Belle were both captured and sent to prison camps, the latter dying in captivity. Roux did not fight but set up a resistance network. He was arrested and tortured, before committing suicide to prevent the enemy forcing him to talk. [http://Www.Fool.com/search/solr.aspx?q=Delcourt Delcourt] was wounded by two bayonet blows on December 21 while defending a strategic hill pass and executed two days later, shortly before the governor surrendered on Christmas Day. On January [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh 5 ngày 4 đêm từ Hà Nội], 1942, brutalised by the Japanese, his pregnant wife gave birth prematurely in a Hong Kong church to a girl who for decades would not know the circumstances of her father's death. "I did not know the full circumstances of my father's death until much later when I was in Australia and received the letter from my father's close friend Carlos Arnulphy who had managed to trace me," Monique Westmore, who now lives in Melbourne, told AFP by email. "I would have loved to have known my father but when I read the documents that are attached (to the letter) I understand that he was a man of great principle -- I do sometimes ask myself 'why did you go knowing that your wife was hugely pregnant and also you weren't exactly a young man?'," Westmore wrote. "The battle of Hong Kong was a total disaster and many people lost their lives." His military death notification praised him as "a continuous example of courage and enthusiasm" in an [http://En.Search.wordpress.com/?q=unequal%20battle unequal battle] who "cheerfully made the supreme sacrifice, confident in the final victory of France." For Dremeaux, the path chosen by Armand Delcourt resonates strongly today, "a time of withdrawal" when countries are increasingly looking inward. "He was married to a Japanese woman, lived abroad and gave his life for Free France," he said. "To be patriotic is not a contradiction with being open to the world". Graphic on Japan's invasion of Hong Kong in December 1941 �-, - (AFP Graphic) French historian and teacher Francois Dremeaux poses for a photo after a memorial service at the Stanley Military Cemetery in Hong Kong �Isaac LAWRENCE (AFP) The French Consul General of Hong Kong Eric Berti (3rd R), along with military personnel and members of the public, attends a memorial service at the Stanley Military Cemetery �Isaac LAWRENCE (AFP) Advertisement

User:BuckDenby8

2018-06-29T13:02:29Z

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