FOREIGN LEGION

French Lgion trangre, a military corps consisting originally of foreign volunteers in the pay of France but now including large numbers of Frenchmen. Its officers are nearly all from the French army, and a foreign-born legionnaire becomes eligible for French citizenship after serving one enlistment (five years) with good conduct. Upon enlistment the recruit takes an oath to serve not France but the legion, and the organization's unofficial motto, Legio patria nostra (The legion is our fatherland), further tells the legionnaire where his first loyalty lies. Often romanticized by novelists (as by Percival Christopher Wren in Beau Geste ), who pictured the legion as a haven for criminals, forlorn lovers, and unhappy noblemen serving under assumed names, the organization is actually a highly disciplined professional army that has been in almost continuous combat since its founding by law on March 9, 1831. Because the legion keeps secret a volunteer's past, it has had more than its share of the aforementioned types, but the man who wears the traditional white kepi headdress is more likely to be a European professional soldier who prefers fighting with the legion to garrison duty with his own army. Every major European war since the 1830s has swelled the legion's ranks with volunteers from unmustered forces. (After the Falklands War of 1982, British recruits rose to 10 percent of the total.) Founded by King Louis-Philippe as an aid to controlling French colonial possessions in Africa, the legion established its headquarters at Sidi bel Abbs, Algeria. During its history its forces have fought or been stationed in such places as Spain, the Crimea, Italy, Mexico (where it supported the ill-fated emperor Maximilian), Dahomey (now Benin), Morocco, Syria, and Indochina. Although formerly prohibited from being stationed in metropolitan France during peacetime, it did serve there in World Wars I and II. After the French collapse in World War II, units of the legion escaped to join General Charles de Gaulle's Free French forces. In 1961 one regiment of the legion supported insurgents in Algeria against the French government and, despite its outstanding combat record, was disbanded in disgrace. In 1962, with the coming of Algerian independence, the legion for the first time moved its headquarters to metropolitan France, to the town of Aubagne, near Marseille. The Legion publishes a monthly magazine, Kepi Blanc (White Kepi). Additional reading James Wellard, The French Foreign Legion (1974); Hugh McLeave, The Damned Die Hard: The Story of the French Foreign Legion (1974); Tony Geraghty, March or Die: A New History of the French Foreign Legion (1987); and Douglas Porch, The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History of the Legendary Fighting Force (1991).