French Foreign Legion

[dragos]

In my opinion, the Foreign Legion is a remarkable example of military structure, a good balance between efficiency and cost. In the past global conflicts, it proved not to be crucial in the outcome of the war, but as the conflicts tend to become regionalized, it is the best intervention and strike element. It's efficiency is given by the fact that the military of the Foreign Legion always put on the first plan the military skill, then the country or the goal for which they are fighting (in history, the Legion earned the prestige of being the refuge of the scoundrels of society, as they can get a new identity after their service is over). For those reticent towards a military force made by mercenaries: the Legion functioned for more than 170 years (established in 1831), and took part in the the most conflicts a country can have (1 in 10 legionnaires died in action since its establishment).

[mabadesc]

[quote]the Legion earned the prestige of being the refuge of the scoundrels of society, as they can get a new identity after their service is over[/quote]

Some romanian "legionari" enlisted in the French legion and fought in Indo-China after they fled Romania and WWII ended.

[dragos]

All colonial wars fought after WW2 were lost, and the legionnaires came out with "bloody hands" (denoting their cruelty in battle).

[johnny_bi]

Actually today there are a lot of Romanian legionaires... And they are pretty nice guys (I talk about the guys I know) ... They didn't flee, they tried to enliest because of money and adventure... I know a couple of them... One of them (he served around 7 years in Legion) told me some strange strories about some special injections they made in Yougoslavia in order not to feel fear ... about some coup d'etat they were involved in, "dirty work" ... and so on... Even if he was almost drunk it was impossible to find out some more information.

Does someone else has more information, stories, etc about legionaires ? I mean Romanian legionaires... I mean true stories :wink:

[Dénes]

See, for ex., the following link (in Rumanian): http://www.evenimentulzilei.ro/investigati...?news_id=140440

[johnny_bi]

Denes, I was almost about to say ... "Except the story I read in ~Evenimentul Zilei~"...

[Dr_V]

I can tell you a quite funny story, not about a legionaie, but about a guy that wanted to be one and dropped off. This guy is a wu-shu (kung-fu) fighter from Bucharest and he was 2 times national champion on the medium 65-70 kg cathegory. He has the rank of "instructor" in wu-shu, that is the equivalent of a black belt in karate and it's a preaty good fighter.
After winning the nationals for the 2nd time, he decided he wants some adventure (I believe he'd seen too many movies) and enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. As you probably know, the Legion has a testing period in wich the volontaires are evaluated and they also have the right to redraw their option. Well, this guy resisted only 3 weeks of training there. As he surely is a well trained sportsman, you can imagine how high are the standards and hou rough the training is.
He returned home 5 kg thinner, exhaused and full of bruses and scratches, to the amusement of us all. He declared that the Legion is a nutt-house and the instructors are wild dogs. Even now, almost 4 years since then we still make fun of him on that account. The cockie national wu-shu champion that hoped to impress everybody with his techniques was knocked down by an instructor there in 30 seconds at his first hand-to-hand combat training class. He was so shocked that he redrew even from the wu-shu championships and now works peacefully at a newspaper.

[dragos]

In a recent documentary it was stated that the current standard service in legion include 2 weeks in the jungle of Venezuela. They say there are disease of jungle that cannot be found in any medical manual, they are unknown to modern medicine !

[Dr_V]

[quote]Dragos:
They say there are disease of jungle that cannot be found in any medical manual, they are unknown to modern medicine ![/quote]

That is only partially true. It's true that the jungle diseases (infections with tropical exotic germs) aren't found in most medical manuals, 'cause they're so rare in the "civilised" world that the don't worth mentioning. A general medic or an internist can't learn everything and the manuals focus on most usefull things. But there are publications for the expert contageous diseases specialists (infectionists) that cover most of those diseases. Certainly more then 99,9% of the doctors don't know a thing in that area, the true infectionists are very few.

Also there still are a few tropical diseases that aren't fully studied or even not studied at all. You see, the sympthomes of such diseases are very similar and you need a big laboratory to identify the exact germ. Usually the disease is progressing very fast and many patients die in 2-3 days, when a complete lab analysis takes more then a week, that in the rare case when you have access to such a lab in the jungle.

But you can't say that are diseases "unknown to medicine". They're known about, but not fully understood and classified. Of course this doesn't reduce the death rates for the patients...

------

I have an example to ilustrate my oppinion for one that has no medical training. You know what the flue is (rom= gripa) and generally how it affects a man. Maybe you suffered yourself a few episodes in your life. Well, the flue germ is a virus that has 3 main subtipes and each subtipe dousins of variants. There are more than 200 variants of flue and each year are discovered a few more. In addition, the known variants mutate and create new types as we speak. Well, at least 10% of the variants produce totally different sympthomes than the "common" flue and a medium internal diseases specialis won't recognise them. Classifieing the flue variants is a gigantic effort that never stopps. Why? Because the flue can be deadly and that happends more often than you'd think. In 1957 there were 70.000 deaths because of the flue in USA only and even today 0.8% of the cases are severe, with lethal risks [Harrison ed. 14]. And we're talking of a well known germ, acting in the most civilised countrys.

[mabadesc]

Wow, I had no idea the french legion was still operational to the extent it is. How does it rate against special troops like the SAS, Delta Force, Spetsnatz, Israeli special forces, etc...?

[quote]Usually the disease is progressing very fast and many patients die in 2-3 days, when a complete lab analysis takes more then a week, that in the rare case when you have access to such a lab in the jungle.[/quote]

These are usually hemorrhagic fever retroviruses (types of Magdeburg, Ebola, etc...) and they're too "hot" to be dangerous because their host dies in 2-3 days - as stated above.

For an individual, obviously it's bad (he dies), but for large numbers of people it doesn't represent a major risk because the disease's incubation period is very short, and therefore it doesn't have time to transform into an epidemic. That's why the outbreaks are usually isolated and only last a few days.

[mg 42]

actually, after 1989, the majority of the Legionnaires is coming from former Eastern Block coutries : Romania, hungaria, Serbia, Slovakia etc.

[dead-cat]

[quote]
Wow, I had no idea the french legion was still operational to the extent it is. How does it rate against special troops like the SAS, Delta Force, Spetsnatz, Israeli special forces, etc...?
[/quote]

it's not the same thing and shouldn't be rated as such. some describe it as "elite" unit. i doubt they benefit from the latest and best technology, given that none of its regular ranks are french nationals during the first 5 years.

from what i read, it's a connon fodder unit. warcrime suspect also.

[mabadesc]

I just brought up the comparison because admission and physical training in the foreign legion seem very stringent, much like the special forces.

[dead-cat]

QUOTE

I just brought up the comparison because admission and physical training in the foreign legion seem very stringent, much like the special forces.

not even so. read the various recruitment sites. something like 50 pushup, running 3km in under 12mins etc are required.nothing you shouldn't be able to do after you graduate from highschool.
i could do all of the above at that time (now of course not anymore) and i wasn't even remotley physically developed.
they can't push the limit up too high, coz they'll end up eventually without recruits. whatever you need to accomplish afterwards you will be trained to be able to later. they just check if you're normally developed. 3km in 12 mins isn't all that difficult if you did at least a bit of sports. so nothing impressing

same goes for the psycho test which (i heared) features questions like "do you like nature? do you have alot of friends?" etc. guess if the IQ req. is too high they'll end up without recruits again. remember it's not the best and brightest who join the legion. it's often ppl who are not really good at much and want to live a life of an adventurer and enjoy being a moving target.

[mabadesc]

thanks dead-cat, I didn't know that.