This text seemed controversial to me, so I read it carefully. But no, Antoine isn't settling scores or lamenting a golden age. With the experience of nearly forty years of service in the French Foreign Legion, he observes what is changing today, sometimes subtly, in customs, symbols, and points of reference.

His remarks may surprise or disturb. They are nonetheless sincere. They pose a simple yet essential question: how can we evolve without losing what constitutes the soul of an institution?
This text doesn't offer a ready-made answer. It invites reflection, and that is precisely why I felt it deserved to be read.

Finally, the text leaves me with a sense of generational loneliness. The loneliness of someone who honestly wonders if he has become an "old fogey" or if he is simply one of the last guardians of a certain coherence. This is a worried but honest account, written not to condemn the present, but to remind us that all modernization has a symbolic cost, and that this cost deserves to be faced head-on.
Louis Perez y Cid

Antoine Marquet (LCL. Te-er)

Perishable goods all have an expiration date. Like any animal, I too am perishable, and as this deadline approaches, without, fortunately, knowing the fateful date, I can feel myself becoming an old fogey, perhaps out of fashion. Perhaps wrongly, I am surprised—and sometimes worried—by the significant changes observed in the professional military world, and more specifically in the Foreign Legion, where I served for almost four decades. Each day seems to bring its share of new developments, some anecdotal, others more revealing. Read more...

This account is by our comrade Wolf Zinc, who recently passed away. With his characteristic attention to detail and understated humor, he recounts several episodes from his command at Ali-Sabieh in 1977.
Through these memories, sometimes comical, sometimes improbable, emerges the man he was: an officer attentive to his men, capable of remaining calm in the face of the unexpected, and always faithful to a certain sense of duty.
From pigs to cheetahs, and finally to the lion Chifta, these anecdotes reveal far more than they initially seem about daily life, the spirit of the Legion, and the responsibility of command.
To reread these pages today is to rediscover his voice, his gaze, and to share one last time those moments he knew how to describe with such simplicity and precision.
Louis Perez y Cid Read More...

The French Foreign Legion is often presented as a school of discipline, courage, and self-improvement. It is also, more discreetly, a school of the French language.

In these pages, our comrade Wolf recounts, with humor and unflinching clarity, how a military commitment became an improbable linguistic adventure for him. Having set out with no language skills, tossed about by accents, awkwardness, and sometimes absurd situations, he discovered French not in books, but through daily effort, the demands of command, and the camaraderie of arms.
This account is neither an academic lesson nor a pedagogical treatise. It is a lived experience, where the perfect word is imposed by necessity, where action often precedes speech, and where language is forged in action, sometimes at the cost of a well-placed burst of speed.

Through delightful anecdotes and service memories, the author pays tribute to this unique aspect of the Legion: its ability to transform men from other cultures into soldiers capable of thinking, writing, and commanding in French. A text that is at once funny, informative, and profoundly Legionnaire.

Louis Perez y Cid

By our comrade Wolf Zinc (Lieutenant Colonel) Read more...

This article was born from a departure, a breakup, but also from a clear-eyed look at a country beset by tensions, misunderstandings, and profound transformations. It is neither an indictment nor a manifesto, but rather the testimony of my friend Christian, who seeks to understand what he sees before him: a France that is changing faster than those who live there. Between weariness, anger, nostalgia, and a desire for peace, these lines recount an inner journey, that of a citizen drawn to the silence of the countryside after the tumult of the cities.

Louis Perez y Cid

“I thought my disgust with the world had reached its peak, but it has only grown. I can no longer even glance at the newspapers.” The stupidity, the cowardice, the malice on display make me wish for a new flood to engulf all these mediocre scoundrels. Only wild plants, mountains, the sky, and clouds are good.”
Alexandra David-Néel.

By Christian Morisot
For me, a new horizon is opening up after leaving Paris and its suburbs in the “93” (the infamous 93), where there are no problems for those who don’t live there… In fact, I hope to feel a little more at home in France. Here, the minds of young people, lacking direction, are too easily swayed by a pervasive discourse of hatred for the country where they live and where, for the vast majority of them, they were born. Read more...

Christian Morisot
In a book entitled “From the White Kepi to the Blue Helmet,” one of our comrades, a Legion officer, explains what prompted him to take early retirement: he couldn't accept the missions assigned to the Legion for the benefit of the UN.
Armed with this irrevocable decision, our friend took to the sea and sails the oceans, carried by the wind to a place he finds more acceptable.

Since then, after meeting him several times, I've done some research on the UN, the object of his resentment.

In reality, the United Nations is a new way of practicing the world's oldest trick: the politics of alliances, the politics of blocs. This is called idealism, cloaked in a veneer of apparent goodwill, humanism, and a supposed commitment to defending human rights, which makes this policy particularly odious. Read more...

By Antoine Marquet

It's probably age that's taking its toll…
Or, as the Normans say, "a coffin wouldn't recognize its own kind."
Recently, I wrote a post about the green beret. Many veterans—and not-so-veterans—are surprised to see this beret, born in the mud of rice paddies and the blood of battles in the Far East, now being given to reservists and even, without any hint of misogyny, to female personnel.

This now seems to be accepted; and yet, in Indochina, the indigenous fighters, who shed their blood in the Legion's ranks during the deadliest battles, were only allowed to wear the white beret.

But all that now seems to be nothing more than a trifle.
A new era is dawning: the awarding of the green and red pennant to a non-Legionary unit.

For years, the 5th Mixed Pacific Regiment, predecessor to the 5th Foreign Regiment, included personnel from the Engineering and Ordnance Corps: they wore the green beret.

Later, as the 5th Foreign Regiment, it held sway over all elements of the French Army assigned to Mururoa or Hao, even if these units were not mixed. Thus, a Marine Corps unit and a Signal Corps unit were part of the 5th Foreign Regiment's Signal Corps headquarters. They lived within the regiment like Legionnaire companies, but—proud of their heritage—they kept their regimental pennants in their respective branch colors. Read more...

By Christian Morisot
Legion veterans, like others, often, aided by nostalgia, tend to succumb to the "things were better before" or "in my day" mentality... We can laugh about it. Active duty personnel certainly do this, but still…
Like any living organism, the Legion cannot and must not remain static. It must constantly adapt to new standards, regulatory changes, the evolution of the society around it from which it draws its human resources, and the inevitable march of time… One of its main strengths, it has always seemed to us, is the considerable weight of its traditions which, like the philosopher's stone meant to transform base metals into silver and gold, transform, through a unique alchemy, the human diversity that comes to us from the Legion units. Therefore, "More Majorum!" "In the manner of our ancestors" is, as everyone knows, the motto of two of our regiments, and not the least of them: the glorious Demi-Brigade and the equally famous 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment (2nd REP). The monuments of these two regiments bear witness to this. But still…
The veneration of our elders and the transmission of traditions guarantee a mindset that, embracing both modernity and change, results in the esprit de corps that so many envy… But still…
Without any nostalgia, but with clear-sightedness, we are astonished by certain facts that would once have offended the intelligence and decorum of the Legionnaires and that today seem to have quietly crept into people's minds. Read more...

By Antoine Marquet

I just read on Facebook the dismay of a former platoon leader who "dared"—poor fellow!—to politely offer his opinion on another veteran's page about a general highly regarded by that veteran. He was immediately insulted, harassed, and then blocked, without even being given the right to reply. A fine display of open-mindedness toward a fellow legionnaire who served under the general in question, while the one who was crying out like a startled virgin was already retired… and undoubtedly less entitled to give his opinion. The triennial congress of the FSALE and its affiliated associations was held this summer at the 4th Foreign Regiment, the Legion's philosophical crucible, where the common herd who had the courage to "walk through the door" is transformed into a legionnaire. Then, within his future regiment, he becomes a seasoned soldier, hardened daily by demanding training that prepares him for the toughest battles.

Then comes the return to civilian life. A new world opens up to him, and he can, if he wishes, join an association of former legionnaires.

Read More...

By Captain (ER-TE) Louis Perez y Cid

We are full-fledged officers, drawn from the ranks, volunteering as legionnaires and selected from within the Legion itself. In short, "home-grown" officers, deemed reliable.
Since its creation in 1831, the Legion has had to appoint Off-TEs. In 1832, experience showed that selection by rank was effective. This tradition continues to this day.
Our existence has, among other benefits: allowed young legionnaires to find someone who speaks their language, and offered the most ambitious the hope of a career based on merit.

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What I learn from my illustrious elders, these old legionnaires, discreet and modest in light of their military experience, is the need they feel for what they call "prioritizing the Brotherhood." This intimate and vital need to give meaning to what they have experienced and to what we are experiencing. Especially when we are confronted, and this is increasingly the case in our contemporary world, with absurd and difficult-to-accept situations.

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First and foremost, this text is not intended to fuel controversy or challenge institutional decisions regarding the symbols of the Foreign Legion. It is intended, above all, as a historical and memorial reflection on an emblem that, over the decades, has acquired a symbolic significance far beyond its simple uniform.
The green beret is a powerful marker of identity, tradition, and sacrifice. Evoking its history means evoking the journey of generations of legionnaires, both French and foreign, who have contributed to building its legend. This is therefore not about judging contemporary usage, but rather about recalling the profound meaning and origins of this symbol, forged through hardship and combat.

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The anniversary of the end of the First World War is coming up. November 11, 1918. On that day, the armistice was signed at 5:15 a.m., marking the Allied victory and the total defeat of Germany.
In fact, the "ceasefire" took effect at 11:00 a.m., prompting peals of bells and ringing throughout France, announcing to the population the end of the war that left more than 8 million dead, disabled, and maimed.

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This year, our association once again participated in the 83rd anniversary of the deportation convoys from the Milles camp to Auschwitz, presented as a "duty to remember."
But what does this expression, often heard during ceremonies on July 14, November 11, or at Camerone, really mean?
Are they right to speak of a "duty to remember"?

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How many people are there who consider themselves unimportant, who hope to rise in the social ladder and are crushed by communities that won't give them the slightest chance?
This woman had left such a vague impression that no one even remembered her name in the community where she had stayed as a legionnaire's companion.
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Director of the Foreign Legion's Institution for the Disabled in Puyloubier, my duties required me to make numerous visits to the various workshops. During one of these visits, I visited my friend Louis, who was the head of the ceramics workshop...
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The LÉGION ARTS association website officially opens today.
Légion’Arts Éditions specializes in the creation, promotion, and distribution of books, comics, and graphic novels dedicated to the Foreign Legion. Read more...