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French Foreign Legion soldiers were the toughest in the world

2018-06-20T22:20:06Z

ChadAlonso6410:

BOOK OF THE WEEK AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD by Jean-Vincent [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html du lịch Bắc Kinh] 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 [http://www.google.com/search?q=questions&btnI=lucky 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 there may have been many more, disguised in the record as death from 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 [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] 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

Tuesday March 15

2018-06-19T03:12:49Z

ChadAlonso6410:

Today is Tuesday, March 15, the 75th day of 2016. There are [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] 291 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 44 B.C. - Roman dictator Julius Caesar is assassinated by a group of Roman senators including Cassius and his friend Brutus. Caesar had been forewarned of the 'Ides of March.' 1493 - Christopher Columbus returns to Spain, concluding his first voyage to [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] the Western Hemisphere. 1603 - Samuel de Champlain, French navigator and explorer, sails for the New World. 1776 - U.S. Congress resolves that authority of British Crown should be suppressed. 1848 - Hungarian [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] intellectuals stage bloodless revolution in Budapest against Austro-Hungarian empire. It is put down by Russian troops the next year. 1874 - France assumes protectorate over central Indochina region of Annam, which breaks off vassalage to China. 1875 - The Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York City, John McCloskey, is named the first American cardinal by Pope Pius IX. 1894 - France and Germany agree on boundaries between French Congo and Cameroon. 1903 - British conquest of northern Nigeria is complete. 1913 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson holds the first open presidential news conference. 1916 - U.S. force of 12,000 soldiers under Gen. John Pershing is ordered to Mexico to capture revolutionary leader Pancho Villa. 1917 - Czar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates after humiliating defeat by the Germans. The Russian state and military begin to dissolve. 1919 - The American Legion is founded in Paris. 1937 - The world's first blood bank is established at Chicago's Cook County Hospital by Dr. Bernard Fantus. It is a breakthrough for surgical procedures and emergency treatments. 1938 - Nazi Germany seizes Czechoslovakia with little resistance, after having annexed the Sudetenland, with its fortifications, the previous year. 1989 - Soviet Union's President Mikhail S. Gorbachev calls for rapid measures to ease chronic food shortages. 1991 - Serbian President Borisav Jovic resigns after the collective presidency fails to declare a nationwide state of emergency. 1992 - A second earthquake in a short time strikes eastern Turkey, killing an estimated 800 people. 1993 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin offers, after a meeting with U.S. President Bill Clinton, to surrender part of the Golan Heights to Syria. 1999 - Rosemary Nelson, a Northern Ireland attorney who represented Catholic clients in several high-profile cases, is killed by a car bomb. The outlawed anti-Catholic group Red Hand Defenders claims responsibility. 2003 - Rebels led by ousted army chief General Francois Bozize capture the Central African Republic's capital, Bangui, and the international airport while President Ange-Felix Patasse was out of the country. Bozize declared himself president. 2005 - A French court convicts six men in an alleged plot to send a suicide bomber into the U.S. Embassy in Paris, wrapping up a trial that shed light on the spread of Islamic radicals in Europe. 2006 - A Spanish boat recovers the bodies of 24 people believed to be African migrants floating in waters off the coast of Mauritania, hundreds of miles (kilometers) south of the Canary Islands. 2012 - Dozens of Iranian banks are blocked from doing business with much of the world as the West tightens the financial screws on a country it wants to prevent from developing nuclear weapons. 2014 - Malaysia's leader says the jetliner from his country missing for more than a week was deliberately diverted and continued flying for more than six hours after severing contact with the ground. 2015 - Philippine troops capture the leader of a Muslim rebel group in the south who had been linked to bombings and a beheading and accused of protecting two terror suspects wanted by the United States. Today's Birthdays: Andrew Jackson, U.S. president (1767-1845); Charles de Montalembert, French author (1810-1870); Jules Chevalier, French priest/founder of Sacred Heart Missionaries (1824-1907); Henri Saint Cyr, Swedish equestrian/Olympic gold medalist (1902-1979); Harry James, U.S. bandleader (1916-1983); Judd Hirsch, U.S actor (1935--); Sly Stone, U.S. singer/musician (1943--); will.i.am, U.S. rapper/musician (1975--); Eva Longoria Parker, U.S. [http://Www.foxnews.com/search-results/search?q=actress actress] (1975--). Thought For Today: Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose - Billie Holiday, American singer (1915-1959). Advertisement

Vietnam seeks support for maritime freedom

2018-06-19T01:15:27Z

ChadAlonso6410:

France and other countries should help to keep the peace in the disputed South China Sea, Vietnam's president told AFP Wednesday, as unease grows over China's increasingly muscular approach in the key waterway. China claims most of the sea where it has built up reefs capable of hosting military equipment, [http://wideinfo.org/?s=sparking%20ire sparking ire] from competing claimants, including Vietnam, and raising fears of potential armed conflict. Speaking to AFP ahead of a visit by French leader Francois Hollande next month, Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang said he hopes France and others will help to diffuse regional tensions in the waterway, which it calls the East Sea. Vietnamese president Tran Dai Quang speaks during an interview with AFP at the presidential palace in Hanoi on August 24, 2016 �Hoang Dinh Nam (AFP) "We highly welcome the cooperation from France and other nations in the process of maintaining peace and stability in the region and the world and on the East Sea," he said, speaking from the presidential palace, the former residence of the Indochina governor during French colonial rule. Hanoi and Beijing have traded diplomatic barbs over disputed island chains and waters in the South China Sea and in 2014 China moved a controversial oil rig into contested territory, prompting riots in Vietnam. The strategic waterway, also claimed by the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan, is rich in energy reserves, fishery resources and is a busy shipping route. Quang's comments come after French Defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in June he would ask European countries to conduct coordinated patrols in the South China Sea. France and the United States have sent naval ships to the sea in recent months and have vowed to send more, angering Beijing. The Vietnamese president, whose role is mostly ceremonial, said Hollande's visit would help to boost military ties between the former colonial foes, as Hanoi has rapidly increased its defence budget in the last decade. "Several directions for cooperation will be strengthened and opened, like... ensuring security, safety and freedom of maritime and aviation," Quang said in a statement to AFP after the interview. He added that Vietnam wants more unity in the regional 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has failed to forge a [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html vtr.org.vn] unified front against Beijing's militarisation in the sea. "We have been active together with countries in the ASEAN community to increase unity, considering this an important structure to contribute to maintaining regional peace," he said. Last month Manila won its case against Beijing at a UN-backed tribunal in the Hague which rejected China's claims to most of the sea. Beijing boycotted the hearing, and has refused to recognise the ruling, and ASEAN has sidestepped the issue, failing to comment directly on it at a meeting of ministers last month. Diplomats say Beijing has deftly courted Laos and Cambodia to split the bloc and blunt unified criticism. France and Vietnam signed a strategic partnership agreement in 2013, which included boosted defence cooperation. Filipino and Vietnamese protesters display anti-China placards during a call [http://www.vtr.org.vn/cam-nang-du-lich-bac-kinh-5-ngay-4-dem.html tour bắc kinh từ hà nội] on China to respect their rights in the disputed South China Sea, in front of the Chinese consular office in Manila on August 6, 2016 �Ted Aljibe (AFP/File) Advertisement

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2018-06-19T01:15:22Z

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