French Foreign Legion in popular culture

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The existence of the French Foreign Legion has led to a romantic view that it is a place for a wronged man to leave behind his old life to start a new one, but also that it is full of scoundrels and men escaping justice. This view of the legion is common in literature, and has been used for dramatic effect in many movies, not the least of which are the several versions of Beau Geste.

1 Music
- 1.1 Édith Piaf
- 1.2 Other
2 Books
3 Comics
4 Films and television
5 External links

[edit] Music

[edit] Édith Piaf

There is a French song originally created by Marie Dubas in 1936 but now mainly identified with Édith Piaf, called "Mon légionnaire", about a woman's longing for an embittered Legionnaire with whom she had a brief affair and who refused to tell her his name. The song was reprised by Serge Gainsbourg in the 1980's, the male voice singing the lyrics made famous by Piaf giving the song a strong homoerotic undertone. The new version of "Mon Légionnaire" was a hit on French dancefloors, both gay and heterosexual.

Another of Piaf's songs was "Le Fanion de la Légion" (The Flag of the Legion), describing the heroic defence by the garrison in a small Legion outpost attacked by Saharan tribes. Both songs were written by Raymond Asso, a Foreign Legion veteran who was Piaf's lover in the late 1930s, with music by Marguerite Monnot.

The Foreign Legion adopted still another Édith Piaf song as their own, "Non, je ne regrette rien" (I regret nothing), during the 1950s when members of the Legion were accused (not without reason) of atrocities and of being implicated in a failed coup d'etat during the Algerian War . Today it is still a popular Legion "chant" sung when on parade, adapting it to their unique marching cadence of 88 steps to the minute.

[edit] Other

Frank Sinatra performed a song called "French Foreign Legion" about joining up if a girl doesn't marry him.

The indie-rock band The Decemberists wrote a song called "The Legionnaire's Lament" on their 2002 album Castaways and Cutouts. The song describes the homesickness of a French legionnaire on duty on the Algerian-Morroccan border in the early 1900s.

In 1959 Chad Valley released the board game Sahara Patrol. This was a game for two players: who either took the part of the Foreign Legion or the Arabs, and fought for control of forts in the Sahara. A year later in 1960 the English card game manufacturer Pepys produced the Foreign Legion Card Game.

[edit] Books

[edit] Novels

P.C. Wren's 1924 Beau Geste tells the story of three brothers who run away to the French Foreign Legion.

In Biggles Foreign Legionnaire (1954) in W. E. John’s Biggles series set in the 50s, the eponymous hero and his protege Ginger join the Legion as part of an undercover operation trying to unmask a gang of multi-national arms dealers who are instigating war in global conflict zones.

The chronicle of Richard Halliburton's African flying adventure, The Flying Carpet, includes a description of the members of the Foreign Legion he befriends, plus several riveting anecdotes he hears from some of the older members.

Blood Money is a thriller about a former French Foreign Legionnaire, who must save the world. It is written by ex-Legionnaire Azam Gill from Pakistan.

The French Foreign Legion was one of the Hungarian novelist Jenő Rejtő's favourite subjects. Notable novels are The Three Musketeers In Africa or The Hidden Legion.

British publisher John Spencer & Co published 23 paperback / pulp novels in the "Foreign Legion Series" in the 1950's. These were written under pseudonyms such as Bruce Fenton, W.H. Fear, Jud Cary and Paul Lafayette. Great covers though!

[edit] Science Fiction/Fantasy

In Jerry Pournelle's Future History, involving a future soldier of fortune named John Christian Falkenberg, there is a central role to the CoDominium Armed Forces, which fights on all kinds of planets far away in space, and which had been created out of the French Foreign Legion and still keeps many of its traditions such as the aforementioned "Camerone Day".

Pournelle's fellow SF writer David Drake, the author of the Hammer's Slammers series, also bases his mercenary unit on the French Foreign Legion. More specifically, the Legion after the Second World War, when most of its members had fled from persecution from the Allied War Crimes Commission.

Yet another SF depiction is Frank Herbert's Man of Two Worlds (1986). Part of the story takes place on Venus, with a war occurring on the planet between the French and their Foreign Legion and the Chinese. Foot soldiers on both sides wear armored suits made of inceram, an incredibly heat-resistant material, to protect them from the planet's surface temperatures. Any damage to a soldier's armor which allows the Venusian atmosphere inside results in his body literally boiling into vapor.

In British comic fantasy author Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, the "Klatchian Foreign Legion" parodies the French Foreign Legion (the region of Klatch itself being roughly analogous to the Middle East/North Africa). It is generally regarded as a "place men go to forget", and appears to be very effective in this, as evidenced by its members' frequent failure to recall its name, or in many cases, their own names. It is jokingly described as "Twenty years service and all the sand you can eat."

Science Fiction author William C. Dietz has written a future history where the Legion is now the official armed forces of the "Confederacy", a multi-species political entity. The books to date are: Legion of the Damned, The Final Battle, By Blood Alone, By Force of Arms, For More Than Glory, For Those Who Fell, When All Seems Lost (2007), When Duty Calls (2008). The Legion in Dietz's novels still celebrates Capitaine Danjou and the Battle of Camarón.

The Night's Watch in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series is a military organization similar to the romantic view of the French Foreign Legion. Many of the members of The Watch are sons of nobles with little claim to their father's holdings or criminals that chose lifelong service with The Watch instead of suffering the typical punishment for their crime (usually execution). One of the tenets of the organization is that all men are equal once they "take the black", regardless if they were noble or commoner before joining.

Robert Asprin's Phule's Company novels revolve around a "Space Legion" that any being can join. They choose a new name and their crimes are erased.

[edit] Autobiography

Ante Gotovina's biography The General, written by Croatian writer Nenad Ivankovic, is mainly about Gotovina's life in the Legion.

Additionally, Legion of the Lost, an autobiography by Jaime Salazar published in 2005, chronicles his experience as an American citizen who joined the legion out of boredom and disenfranchisement from white collar America.

Milorad Ulemek wrote a partially biographical novel, Legionar (Legionnaire), describing his early years in the French Foreign Legion.

[edit] Comics

Mickey Mouse joined the Foreign Legion in a 1936 story by Floyd Gottfredson

In the 1960s, the British boys' comic Eagle featured a popular adventure strip called Luck of the Legion, set in the classic period before WWI, of soldiers in blue coats, white kepi covers, white scarves and white (or red) trousers marching across endless desert under the gaze of treacherous Arab warriors.

The long-running British war strip Charley's War spent many weeks telling a side story about the exploits of a Legionaire called "Blue", most of which was based around the Battle of Verdun.

The Legion is also depicted in the U.S. comic strip Crock and the UK comic strip Beau Peep.

Snoopy, from the Peanuts comic strip, often imagines himself as a member of the Foreign Legion, usually defending or reclaiming Fort Zinderneuf (a reference to Beau Geste).

In a French sci-fi comic Aquablue, the hero, Neo, must defend himself and his people against the Légion, an Earth Special Force which uses the same uniforms as the Légion Étrangère.

In the manga and anime Area 88, the protagonist, Shin Kazama, was tricked while intoxicated into joining the French Foreign Legion to serve in a mercenary airforce in the fictional Asran Kingdom of North Africa. The office that handled his contracts was located in Paris, France.

Jeremy MacConnor, the main character in the Australian comic Platinum Grit, is depicted wearing a French Foreign Legion hat.

The long-running King Features Syndicate daily comic strip Crock, by Bill Rechin, Don Wilder and Brant Parker, was created in 1975 and depicts the French Foreign Legion

Jean-Paul "Frenchie" DuChamp, sidekick of the Marvel Comics hero Moon Knight, is an ex-legionnaire.

Alien Legion, created by Carl Potts (Marvel Epic Comics) depicts a military unit called Force Nomad, called Force Nomad and comprised of the "dregs of the universe". It mirrors the French Foreign Legion in many respects, right down to a heroic figure whose prosthetic hand is considered a holy relic to the unit.

[edit] Films and television

P.C. Wren's Beau Geste has been the basis for three movies in 1926, 1939 and 1966, one parody in 1977 and one BBC mini-series in 1982. The stories all feature three brothers who hide out in the French Foreign Legion. The Carry On team added their version of the story in Follow That Camel in 1967.

The 1939 comedy, The Flying Deuces is one of the most popular films to star the duo Laurel and Hardy. The film begins with the pair joining the Foreign Legion and much of the comedy comes from their experiences. Laurel and Hardy had made an earlier comedy set in the Foreign Legion, Beau Hunks, in 1931.

In 1951 Burt Lancaster stars as a Sergeant in the Foreign Legion in the movie "Ten Tall Men."

In the 1952 animated cartoon Little Beau Pepé, Pepé Le Pew tried to join the Foreign Legion and evacuated a desert fort with his stench. The usual chase with a stripe-painted female cat followed.

In 1962, Stewart Granger starred in the Italian made Marcia o crepa, released in the U. S. as Commando and in the UK as The Legions Last Patrol. Captain LeBlanc (Granger) leads a group of men across the desert to capture a rebel leader during the Algerian independence war. The haunting theme music was a number 4 chart hit in the UK the following year.

March or Die (1978), (also known in France as Marche ou Crève) stars Gene Hackman as Colonel Foster, an embittered Legion veteran of the Legion's heroic RMLE who returns to Algeria from the Western Front shortly after the end of WWI. He is ordered to chaperone an archaeological expedition into hostile Arab territory. The film also stars Max Von Sydow, Catherine Deneuve, Terence Hill and Ian Holm.

In the The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles episode Tales of Innocence a young Indiana Jones joins the French Foreign Legion in Morocco during World War I

Legionnaire (1998), starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, depicted the Foreign Legion's battles against Algerian berbers. In the 1990 film Lionheart, Van Damme stars as a Legionnaire who deserts in order to help his sister-in-law and niece after his brother is killed.

In Savior (1998), Dennis Quaid is a former Legionnaire who has become a mercenary for the Serbian militia. Before joining the French Foreign Legion, he was Joshua Rose, an U.S. Marine on embassy duty in Paris. His wife and son are killed in a cafe bombing by an Islamic terrorist. In a fit of revenge he storms into a mosque and shoots worshippers. In order to avoid arrest he joins the Foreign Legion. He soon tires of the boredom of peacekeeping and leaves the Legion to become a mercenary.

The Mummy (1999), starring Brendan Fraser, begins with Fraser's character, Rick O'Connell, a member of Foreign Legion and fighting in ruins of Hamunaptra (City of the Dead).

Beau Travail (1999) by Claire Denis adapts Herman Melville's novel Billy Budd to take place in today's Foreign Legion. While stationed in Djibouti, a sergeant-major feels increasingly threatened by a popular new recruit. The tension inevitably erupts between them, causing irreparable changes. Even though its dreamlike imagery resists explicit explanation of legionnaire life, the film does much to convey the corp's rigorous physical training and the resultant fraternity between the disparate soldiers.

The Foreign Legion was mentioned in the movie Secondhand Lions as an excuse for the two main characters' disappearance from America for upwards of thirty years.

Most recently, the Legion was revealed in a contemporary (July 2005) documentary Escape to the Legion, commissioned by the British television channel, Channel 4. In this four-part series, 11 volunteers with Bear Grylls explored the myths, romanticism and rigours of basic training in the French Foreign Legion.

Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion starred Buster Crabbe and ran on the NBC network from 1955 to 1957. Crabbe played Captain Mike Gallant. His real life son, Cullen, played his ward, "Cuffey" Sanders. Fuzzy Knight played a comic sidekick. It was shot on location in North Africa, Italy and France.