March or Die: France and the Foreign Legion

by TonyGeraghty (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1986

  $3.29

• Used

  Paperback
  1987

  $3.29

  Why does France still retain the Foreign Legion, a unique fighting force of men drawn from a hundred nations and no common culture? More important, why do they need France? In this text, Tony Geraghty analyses the legend and re-examines the battle honours of the Foreign Legion, and his revelations illuminate the darker side of its historic relationship to the motherland. Called into being in 1831 as a device to absorb the footloose veterans of Napoleon's old armies, the French Foreign Legion subsequently won astonishing victories in the farflung battlefields of Spain, the Crimea, Algeria and Morrocco, Italy, Mexico, Syria, Indo-China, Madagascar, and West and Central Africa. Tony Geraghty spent many years researching the annals of this elite force and interviewing legionnaires and ex-legionnaires throughout Europe.