Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 27, 1993 TAG: 9306270173
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICK McDOWELL THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BAGNOLS-SUR-CEZE, FRANCE LENGTH: Long
\ In this vine-draped corner of Provence in southern France, a platoon of the French Foreign Legion is tearing open a hillside, training to build bunkers capable of withstanding artillery and mortar fire in Bosnia.
Capt. Jacques Delemarle watches men shift dirt with pickax, tractor and grader. Britons, Americans, Russians, Turks, Ukrainians, Czechs, Slovaks, Chinese, islanders from Madagascar. All far from home. All serving a new flag.
"A man comes here completely uprooted," Delemarle says. "The Legion is now his family, his world. He defends the ideal of his new country - the Legion."
Today's Legion is more foreign than ever, with men from 110 countries serving farther afield than at any time since France lost its empire. Once the ultimate colonial corps, the Legion is evolving into a mainstay of a 1990s growth industry: United Nations peacekeeping missions.
Since last year, Legion peacekeepers have become casualties in Bosnia, thwarted the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and helped combat famine in Somalia. In the Gulf War, the Legion helped cover the allied left flank and cleared Kuwait City's beaches of Iraqi mines.
The missions reflect post-Cold War instability and France's policy, as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, of trying to keep a lid on it. France has 5,000 peacekeepers in ex-Yugoslavia, more than any nation.
That's a fraction of the nation's 280,000 soldiers. But nearly all others are conscripts doing 10 months mandatory national service. Public opinion would not tolerate them dying far from home.
By contrast, France created the Legion in 1831 as a professional, expendable enclave for foreigners. It conquered Africa and Indochina in the 19th century and still projects French power overseas.
The modern Legion numbers 8,500 men in 10 regiments of infantry, cavalry, paratroops and engineers. All are volunteers. They know that when France commits troops, they'll go first.
"We're a bunch of unnamed people," says legionnaire 1st Class Dany Mitchel, an Englishman. "If we die, France isn't put out."
Mitchel is one of the Yugoslavia-bound soldiers of the 6th Foreign Engineers Regiment whom Delemarle is training to construct bunkers, dig latrines and reinforce trenches.
The regiment's base resembles a ghost town. The skills of its 750 men are in great demand for the tasks of peacekeeping - building roads and bridges, clearing mines, destroying old munitions.
But they also know how to fight. When the Khmer Rouge briefly seized the Cambodian town of Siem Reap on May 3, engineers from the 6th Regiment traded shovels for rifles and raced to the Grand Hotel to protect tourists visiting the Angkor temples. The Khmer Rouge held back.
Though they killed Bulgarian, Japanese and Chinese peacekeepers to disrupt Cambodia's pre-election campaign, the guerrillas avoided Legion outposts, possibly not wishing to take on more than they could handle.
The biggest part of the regiment's work, however, has been training Cambodians to clear an estimated 1 million mines sown in a quarter-century of warfare.
"We can't tell refugees that it's OK until all the mines are cleared," Delemarle says. "If I tell you that an area the size of a soccer field has one mine or 500, the effect is the same - you're not going to move your family there."
Returning to the former French colony was the Legion's first tour in Indochina since 1954, when the Viet Minh annihilated legionnaires and paratroops at Dien Bien Phu, ending French rule.
Delemarle notes that the Cambodians, indifferent to most U.N. troops, mobbed his unit to touch the French flags on their sleeves.
"For them, the colonial period meant peace," he says.
The Legion has won wide praise in Cambodia. Reviews were mixed in Somalia, where 900 legionnaires served in the U.S.-led task force to stop clan warfare and feed a starving nation.
Deployed in Mogadishu, where guns abounded, the legionnaires quickly imposed their authority - posting roadblocks, stopping all vehicles and confiscating weapons.
A few nights later, a truck ran a roadblock. The legionnaires opened fire, joined by U.S. troops down the road. Several civilians were killed. An investigation showed that the truck's brakes had failed and couldn't possibly have stopped.
Journalists in Mogadishu remember that the Marines came in smiling, friendly and handing out candy. The legionnaires scowled and meant business. When swarming crowds interfered with their operations, a few legionnaires waded in swinging rifle butts to drive them off.
The legionnaires eventually were transferred to Hoddur, a less-populated area. Lt. Col. Richard Pau, Legion spokesman, dismisses suggestions of Legion misbehavior in Somalia.
"Since we've been in Hoddur, there hasn't been a single attack against a military convoy," Pau says. "They know very well we're not going to tolerate one."
The Legion's tough, no-nonsense approach feeds a fearsome reputation that is a major psychological weapon. The mere dispatch of a company is often enough to quell rioting in an African country or send rebels fleeing into the bush.
Peacekeeping fits Legion traditions of fighting and building infrastructure in foreign lands. But it's frustrating work.
A mortar round in Sarajevo killed a legionnaire in February and wounded several others. It was fired by Bosnian Muslims, whom the U.N. forces are trying to protect.
Pau commanded a non-Legion peacekeeping unit at Vukovar, a key Croatian town captured by Serbs after a punishing siege.
"Each side was as bad as the other," Pau recalls. "Babies nailed to walls, people smashing others' heads on railroad tracks, cutting off fingers and gouging out the eyes of prisoners before exchanging them."
Delemarle's legionnaires are heading to the same neighborhood. Taking a lunch break from reinforcing their bunker, they converse in rough-and-ready French most learned in four months of basic training.
Ask a legionnaire his name, he'll often give a nom de guerre or no answer at all. Ask why he joined, the reasons range from mundane to vague to colorful but incredible.
Take Mitchel, a freckled, lanky lad from a rough corner of London. At 23, the average Legion age, he's new to military life - as two recently closed earring holes attest.
"I was taking a trip around Europe," he says. "I got mugged in Marseille. Got a bit drunk and fell asleep in the train station. My wallet and train ticket were stolen."
Mitchel says he stowed away on a train headed for the English Channel. He reached Paris before the conductors spotted him.
"There was this sign in the station, `Join the Foreign Legion.' I told them that's what I was doing. It's fate, really."
Taken to a recruiting station, Mitchel caught the Legion's eye when he cited a background in construction. The Legion these days wants engineers, photographers and computer technicians.
Otherwise, it can afford to be choosy. Of 7,000 applicants each year, 1,500 are accepted. Forty percent are French. First-time enlistment is five years.
Contrary to popular belief, hardened criminals need not apply. The Legion checks with Interpol to ensure applicants aren't wanted.
Having had a brush with the law isn't necessarily bad from a Legion point of view. A soccer hooligan, for example, may have fighting spirit.
Legionnaires may enlist under false names. But those turning up at a recruiting post without papers have a harder time getting in.
"This is another great fiction of the Legion, the anonymous character without a past," says American military historian Douglas Porch, author of a well-researched Legion history.
"They know about these people before they take them in," Porch says. "They don't mind people who've had minor scrapes with the law, because that's somebody who needs the Legion."
Need makes legionnaires loyal. The Legion bills itself as family and country, something an alienated, uprooted man can feel passionately part of, enough to die for. It follows through for those who serve, operating retirement homes for invalids and the elderly.
If the backgrounds of the enlisted men remain murky, the officers are France's best and brightest. They can expect opportunities to distinguish themselves in combat and move up the ladder.
"It's the only French military unit that has a world reputation," Porch says. "You get a reputation as a tough hombre if you can command a unit of desperadoes."
The Legion denies its men are mercenaries in the classic sense, pointing to a high re-enlistment rate and low pay - $283 per month starting, $849 after a year's service.
But that's hard currency to the Eastern Europeans, many veterans of shrinking armies, who have made up 30 percent of the recruits since the Berlin Wall fell.
There are also regular meals, the chance of French citizenship after the first enlistment and a pension after 15 years.
There are other rewards - adventure, refuge, rehabilitation, the status of belonging to an elite unit.
But the enormous personal capital to be drawn from the Legion's mystique can have a down side.
"People think it's either terribly romantic or cutthroat," says Warrant Officer Christopher Newell, 30, a well-spoken Briton.
He recalls having breakfast at a hotel. An elderly English couple asked if they could join him. When they asked what he did, Newell replied that he was a soldier on leave from a nearby base.
"I didn't know the British army had any bases in France," Newell remembers the man saying.
"Well, I'm not in the British army," Newell replied. "I'm in the Foreign Legion."
Neither man nor wife said another word. They hurried through their breakfasts, folded their napkins, and left.
Keywords:
PROFILE
by CNB