THE “SUICIDE COMPANY”

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3447, 19 November 1932, Page 3

THE “SUICIDE COMPANY”

WAN’S DESERT RACE. DEATH DRAMA OF THE LEGION. Gibraltar, September 29. A young Scotsman has just arrived here destitute and ill after months of the severest fighting against wild desert tribes, and months of gambling with death as a member of the French Foreign Legion. He has been taken to hospital suffering from exposure. And this young man, to whom has come adventure in its wildest and most thrilling form, was a graduate of Stanford University, in the United States. His name is Robert Young and he is 22. His mother is a wealthy American. Young left his Hollywood home owing to a family disagreement, and joined the Foreign Legion at Versailles in March last year. Of the 19 months during which he has been in the Legion, all except four have been occupied in the fiercest fighting. He and other recruits, after severe training, were sent from Fez, Morocco, last June to fight against the wild Tuareg tribes. The men marched 600 miles in three weeks, each carrying 1401 b. of pack and 400 rounds of ammunition. Then Young became a member of the famous “Suicide Company”—a body of men specially selected to undertake the most hazardous exploits; a company which, because of the dangerous nature of its work, is wiped out of existence often eight times a year. Train Wreck Escape. No chance of escape presented itself until the wreck last month of the train which was carrying 500 officers and men of the Legion, when it fell into a ravine in Algeria. Young was in this train, and a former British Army sergeant named Ben Overil died in his arms. Then the opportunity of escape came. Young and an Italian, without food or water, set out to trudge 125 miles to liberty. They had with them a machine-gun, but even so, they dared to travel only under the shelter of darkness, and their journey took them five nights. Often, weak from the want of food and in the last stages of exhaustion, they had to run for their lives from wild bands of Arabs. The last of these chases ended at the frontier river. Both men were desperate. Young dived into the water. The Italian hesitated for an instant and was shot dead when within sight of liberty. From the river Young was able to reach Melilla, a seaport on the coast of Morocco. Then he got by boat to Malaga, Spain, and thus here.