The French Foreign Legion (Simon Murray)

Cavalier Touch

 la légion étrangère au Tchad

l'aventure

2e Régiment étranger de parachutistes à Djibouti (Légion étrangère)

French Para

Soldiers & Women

"Soldiers and women. That's how the world is. Any other role is temporary. Any other role is a gesture."

Jeanette Winterson, The Passion (1987)

Histoire des parachutistes (Légion Étrangère)

French Paras: Honneur et Fidelité

'Puisqu'il nous faut vivre et lutter dans la souffrance'
Death From Above 

Les opérations du 2ème REP (French Foreign Legion)

Légion Étrangère en Afghanistan

Légion étrangère française: Côte-d'Ivoire 2003

la prière des parachutistes français en Algérie

Give me, my God, that which you have

left over. Give me that for which you

are never asked

I do not ask for wealth

Nor for success, nor even for health

You are asked so often, my God, for

all that

That you must not have any left

Give me, my God, that which you have

left over

Give me that which people refuse to take

from you

I want insecurity and restlessness

I want torment and brawling

And that you should give them to me,

my God,

Once and for all

Let me be sure to have them always

For I will not always have the courage

To ask you for them.

Mouthful of Rocks (Christian Jennings)

Christian Jennings attended Downside School. In 1984 he started a military career as a paratrooper in the French Foreign Legion. In this memoir, he recalls the training, the vicious routine beatings, the boozing and whoring during off-duty hours--and the scathing xenophobic views freely expressed by the various nationalities with which he soldiered. Posted to the African Republic of Djibouti, Jennings was mercilessly bullied by his immediate superior, a Spanish corporal, and went over the hill. Captured by bounty hunters while wandering across the East African desert, he found life in jail preferable to active duty in the 2nd Parachute Regiment. Given a second chance, he accompanied the regiment to France on field maneuvers and took advantage of another opportunity to desert. Successful this time, he was subsequently arrested on forgery charges and served a nine-month sentence. For the last ten years, Jennings has been a foreign correspondent covering military interventions, Special Forces operations and world conflicts in thirteen different countries. From 1999-2003 he was based in Kosovo and the Balkans and from 1994-1998 in Central Africa, where he reported on genocide, civil war, and humanitarian disasters from Rwanda, Burundi and Democratic Congo. Currently, Christian Jennings works and lives in Sarajevo.