FOREIGN LEGION FIGHT ON

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 39, 15 February 1941, Page 18

FOREIGN LEGION FIGHT ON

I AM writing from somewhere in the South of England, from a large camp with rows of large Army huts lining the four sides of a big parade ground. Around is the gentle English countryside, fresh and, calm on this lovely summer day, says a correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian." One would never associate this setting with the French Foreign Legion.) On the films and in "thrillers" the setting for Foreign Legion melodrama is usually some oasis on the confines of the Sahara. Yet they are here in England, the sinister men of the' Foreign Legion—and they do not look too sinister. \ They are a grand lot of fellows. With a number of other journalists I was taken round the camp by the colonel and have spent several hours here talking to the men. The colonel has three or four rows of decorations, and all the men speak of him with great admiration.

"When we launched our first great attack on Narvik on May 13 the colonel was right in front," said one Legionary, "and he has been right in front in every action. A grand fellow. He's not like some other officers. There was one chap, a Russian captain—he would stay a couple of miles behind while we attacked."

In the colonel's office is a large Nazi flag which the Legion captured at Narvik. They had a hot time at Narvik, aft these men of the Foreign Legion. They landed there on May 3 and 4; they launched their first big attack on May 13; and on May 28 th~y entered Narvik.

"We were not the first to enter," I was told. "We politely let the Norwegians enter the town first, but it is really we who took it. Then, less than a week later, the evacuation of Narvik was ordered. We nearly wept with rage and disappointment, for the Germans, by that time were running like rabbits, and in a couple of days we would have chased them across the frontier into Sweden.

"Well, we had a pretty tough time, but in a way it was worth it. We lost a lot of our men, of course. There were days when the German bombing and machine-gunning was terrible. We ihad no planes, and for four and a half days we could get no food and no munitions, and we had to subsist on what we captured from the Germans. We slept in holes in the ground covered up with blankets, but there was still a lot of snow and it was cold. Fortunately we captured a good supply,of German food, a lot better than what the French troops usually get."

After the evacuation of Narvik the men of the Foreign Legion were sent, not to England but to Brittany. Their campaign in France was of short duration. They landed at Brest expecting to be sent east to defend Rennes against the Germans, But it was too late. A reconnaissance party, mostly composed of officers of the Legion, went ahead, but was nearly trapped by the advancing German columns, and escaped to England in small ships from a port in the south of Brittany. The greater part of the men re-embarked at Brest without having seen any fighting.

Such, briefly summarised, is the story the men of the Legion have been telling me today in different languages and with a variety of accents. They are men of every age, of every typesome small and undersized, though full of muscle, others large and handsome, some as tough-looking as any film Legionary, others perfectly gentle to look at. For instance, the pale-faced

lanky Rumanian. How he had got into the Legion from Rumania, of all places, I did not like to ask. One does not ask Legionaries such questions. There was also a wistful-looking Armenian who, like many others, had won the Croix de^ Guerre for great bravery at Narvik.

In the canteen I also met an unusually handsome officer, blond and blue-eyed and with a perfect public school manner, who turned out to be a Caucasian prince. He had been in the

Legion for 14 years, and his prowess at Narvik was proverbial.

The most cheerful fellows in the Legion were the Spaniards and the French.

There are French in the Foreign Legion. In the canteen I sat down at a table with three Legionaries. "Are you Spanish?" I asked. "No," one of them said, "we are all three French. 1 am from Carcassonne, and one of my pals is from Brittany and the other from Rouen."

The lad from Carcassonne—young,

dark-eyed, and full of fun—was as talkative as any son of the sunny Midi. In a quarter of an hour he told me a hundred things, most of which I forget. He said that when' a Frenchman wanted to join the. Legion he merely registered as a Swiss or a Belgian; no details were asked. "Only afterwards you've got to put yourself in order with the colonel. Jacques — the Breton —registered as a Belgian, and we two entered the Legion as Swiss citizens. Of course, I've never seen Switzerland in all my life," he laughed. "But the coloned didn't mind."

He asked me if I knew Carcassonne, and was1 very pleased when I did. He promised me some grand wine when I went to see him there after the war. "Pity about wine," he reflected. "We have never been as comfortable in all our lives as we are out here. Only wine is a great thing, and there isn't any. We are told a lot of Australian wine is on the way, but it hasn't arrived yet. In Morocco we used to drink an awful lot of wine. Here we get some beer, but we don't much like it. And tea—well, it's just poison. My stomach won't stand it."

Before settling in the South of England the Legion had been stationed for some time near a Midlands town. "Could you tell me," the Carcassonne lad said, "how much it would cost to go to X. It's a shame, you know. They won't give us any reduction on the railways, and it would be so nice to go to X—l've got five sweethearts there. C'est'gentil, les sweethearts Anglaises." They are satisfied with their army huts and with the canteen. The food is a compromise between French and British army food. ' They get the same meat as the British, but more vegetables cooked in the French manner by men of the Legion. One of the Legionary dish-washers I saw was a bright little Spaniard. He came from Cordova, had fought right through the Spanish war, retreated into France after the Catalonian collapse, and was interned at Argeles. He was quite happy now, though the cold and snow in Norway, he said, had made him very homesick.

The Foreign Legion, like other foreign troops in Britain, is paid on the same scale as British soldiers. To ordinary French soldiers the sum of 2s a day! is a great improvement on the lid. plus free tobacco and a few other minor advantages they used to get in France. But most of the Legionaries, who are professional soldiers, were paid on a higher scale, which after a few years' service reached 15 francs a day, so, financially, they are not much better off than in French

In the same neighbourhood there is another camp with soldiers of the Regular French Army in it. Both camps are under the same command, but the purely French camp is still being formed. French recruits are being trained there, chiefly by officers of the Chasseurs Alphas, who also had fought in Norway. Most of the men of these crack regiments have, however* expressed the wish to return to France, all the more so as the homes of most of them are in unoccupied territory.

The sinking of the Meknes appears to have had a considerable effect on the French soldiers anxious to go home. It has made them angry and has made them realise the utter ruthlessness of the people into whose hands Petain and his men have placed their country's fate. With German oppression becoming worse, a great many volunteers are expected to land in EngJ land or in North Africa, where the psychological possibilities of renewed resistance are growing.