The Foreign Legion Fights Again

At Camp Raffali in Corsica, officers and men of the Deuxeeme REP (Second Foreign Parachute Regiment) listened in silence to radio newscasts from Zaire. There was no sign of mourning when Foreign Legion casualties from their unit were announced, even though punishment squads of delinquent recruits were already digging graves in a military cemetery near the legion's paratroop base. "If they get you, they get you," said a veteran. "One legionnaire is worth 20 of the opposition."

For the battle-hungry members of the world's most-storied fighting unit, last week's 650-paratroop rescue mission in Shaba represented a rare chance to relive a glorious and bloodied past. Not since 1970, when a group of commandos put down a modest rebellion in the African Republic of Chad, had the Foreign Legion seen action in the field. Nowadays, most legionnaires spend their time on such mundane tasks as putting out forest fires in Corsica, constructing roads in French Guiana and guarding French nuclear testing sites in Tahiti.

Created in 1831 by King Louis-Philippe, the legion was conceived as a force of foreign mercenaries battling for France abroad. Declared Louis's Minister of War: "So they wish to fight --then let them bleed and shovel sand in the conquest of North Africa." The legionnaires spearheaded France's colonial ambitions--conquering Algeria, subduing Morocco, then going on to incursions in Mexico and Indochina. In victory, the legion created a legend. In 1837, one battalion seized the supposedly impenetrable Algerian citadel of Constantine, perched atop a 1,000-ft. crag. Half a century later, another Foreign Legion battalion defeated 10,000 devil-worshiping Dahomey troops, including units of ferocious, bare-breasted women who shot, knifed, bayoneted and bit off the noses of the legionnaires. Even in France's humiliating defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, the legionnaires electrified their adopted country by their heroism in the face of overwhelming enemy forces.

Then came the Algerian war. The legion's strength was near its postwar peak of 40,000, and as the struggle became increasingly unpopular at home, the now disbanded First Parachute Regiment joined the generals' putsch against Charles de Gaulle. After De Gaulle accorded Algeria its independence in 1962, the legionnaires disinterred their most illustrious dead from their desert graves and transported their pink Saharan granite Monument aux Morts from 118-year-old headquarters in Sidi bel-Abbes in Algeria to metropolitan France, together with their battle-worn flags, standards, regimental colors and a multitude of medals and decorations. These tokens of the legion's past now repose at its new headquarters at Aubagne, ten miles east of Marseilles.

Today, the Foreign Legion has a total strength of 8,000 men. It is an elite strike force whose members have been trained for counterterror and commando-type operations. The Second Parachute Regiment, for example, which recaptured Kolwezi, is expert in night combat, alpine warfare, urban cleanup operations, amphibious landings, demolition and sabotage. The average age of recruits: 22. Virtually all the legion's officers are French. Technically, French nationals are forbidden to enlist in the legion, but many do, pretending to be Belgians, Swiss or Canadians. Although the new legion tries hard to exclude professional thugs and officially refuses to accept men accused of major crimes, it still offers its recruits a new identity that protects them from the police.

After their first five years of service, foreigners are eligible for French citizenship.

Basic training remains rigorous. "For the first four months I thought I had died and gone to hell," says a Scandinavian recruit. "The legion was intent on breaking me down until I could neither think nor move until somebody ordered me to." Officers think nothing of ordering a legionnaire to run--not march--through 35 miles of mountain country, and then having the man practice parachute drops the next morning.

But legionnaires dismiss reports

that officers at a disciplinary camp in Corsica forced prisoners to lick a parade ground clean of dog feces. "Today's legion is different," says one veteran of Algerian days. "Discipline is not what it was. The old ways are no longer acceptable. We are commandos now--exceptionally fit and capable commandos--but we are not the supermen of legend."

Perhaps not. Although recruits are constantly being reminded of legion tradition, there are usually about 200 deserters at large at any time. As a commander once declaimed: "You legionnaires are soldiers in order to die and I am sending you where you can die." Today, the French army is not so quick to send them to that fate. Early this year a number of commandos left the legion --in order to join the Rhodesian army.

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