Solidarity in the French Foreign Legion

By Louis Perez y Cid
Solidarity is not born of joy. It is born of pain. We feel closer to those with whom we have suffered than to those with whom we have succeeded. Happiness flatters the ego. Adversity, however, forges bonds between men. In every collective victory, a touch of bitterness creeps in. Each person assesses their contribution, compares themselves, sometimes feeling wronged. Families are torn apart over inheritances, groups fragment after success, movements disintegrate once power is seized. Triumph divides. Misfortune unites.
The cohesion of a core group is forged elsewhere, in the memory of a shared ordeal. It is there that the individual fades into the background, giving way to the body. In the French Foreign Legion, this memory has a name: Camerone.

It is not a happy myth. It is a defeat, an agony, a loyalty unto death. But this is precisely why it is the foundation of Legionary solidarity. Victory is not celebrated here, but sacrifice. Not success, but loyalty in the face of adversity.

The etymology states it plainly. Sympathy and compassion mean "to suffer with." In the Legion, solidarity is not an abstract feeling. It is a lived experience, passed down, and remembered. It is the invisible bond that unites those who have fallen, those who still suffer, and those who continue to serve.

This is why, in the history of the Legion, great acts of solidarity always arise after wars. After the mass graves of 1914, General Rollet worked for the wounded veterans, and following the financial crisis of 1929, the Legionnaire's House was built in Auriol. After 1945, Colonel Gaultier continued this fraternal work. And after Indochina, the war that General Coullon would call the "genocide of the French army," General Koenig gave the Legion the institution of the Invalides in Puyloubier, a refuge for the wounded and veterans.
Each time, the same logic prevailed: pain calls for mutual support. Loss calls for loyalty. Nothing is theoretical. Everything is visceral.

This solidarity transcends the time of service. It continues among veterans, in associations, in magazines, in Képi Blanc, a link between those who still wear the uniform and those who have left it without ever leaving the Legion.

It is also crystallized in stone. The Foreign Legion's war memorial, financed by the legionnaires themselves and their veterans, is not an official monument imposed from above. It is an offering.
In Sidi Bel Abbès, it was called "the Inkwell." In Aubagne, it became known as "La Boule" (The Ball). Whatever the name, it is the fixed point around which collective memory revolves.

For Legionnaire solidarity is neither a discourse nor a moral code. It is loyalty. Loyalty to the dead. Loyalty to the wounded. Loyalty to those who, one day, held on to the very end.
In the Foreign Legion, we don't unite because we won together.
We unite because we suffered together.