FIGHTING AT NARVIK

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 191, 10 May 1941, Page 7

FIGHTING AT NARVIK

Experiences Of Foreign Legion

“With the Foreign Legion at Narvik,” by Capitaine I’ierre 0 Lapie, translated from the French by Anthony Merryn (London; Murray).

It is fitting that Major P. C. Wren, who has done so much to clothe the Foreign Legion with romance for a hero-worshipping world, should write a foreword to Capitaine Lapie’s book. One senses that Capitaine Lapie is one of Major Wren's heroes come to life. He is still under 40 years of age and obviously a man of many parts—now Governor of Chad Territory, formerly journalist, barrister, and member of the French Tarliamenl, but pre-emi-nently a soldier —surely a figure to stir the imagination. In this book he writes a true story of adventure with the legion, a legion wearing berets and scarfs instead of sun helmets and white drill .tunics. After landing in Norway news was received that the Germans had over-run Holland and Belgium and the Battle of France was begun. The men of the legion wished heartily to be in the thick of it, but there they were playing in a sideshow that'no one was particularly interested in except the Norwegians themselves. They endured and fought and died or went on struggling, each doing his gallant and quite disinterested best. Narvik was captured and the Germans were cleared from the surrounding country. They did what they were sent to do and just as they finished their task they were withdrawn, sick at heart and hating to admit to the Norwegians.that they were deserting them.

Capitaine Lapie makes no comment on the whys and wherefores of the campaign. He aiid his comrades had few illusions as to its importance after the Battle of France began, but this did not prevent any one of them from giving all that wa.s rc<juired of him. This is not a long book, but the author has written with great, sensitivity and clearly reveals the strange contrasts that abounded —beauty and death, courage and futility, tragedy and comedy—a piece of real campaigning told by an artist.