Camerone Day 2024

Today the French Foreign Legion celebrates the 161st anniversary of the Battle of Camarone (Bataille de Camerone) that took place this day, April 30th 1863, in Veracruz, Mexico.  Camerone is one of the most famous “last stands” in military history and an event revered and celebrated in the Foreign Legion wherever they may be posted.

Bonne fête!

The theme of this year’s observance is the commemoration of the Foreign Legion in Indochina and the battles they fought in, from Son Tay to Dien Bien Phu which occurred 70 years ago.  ” The fall of the entrenched camp sounded the death knell for the French presence in Indochina where the Legion had been present since 1883. There are less than sixty survivors today. There were sixty-three of them in Camerone. Everyone fought, faithful to their oath to serve France, until the end, at all costs. The able-bodied and available survivors of Indochina will be in Aubagne, at the foot of the war memorial to honor the memory of the heroes of Camerone and that of the 12,602 officers, non-commissioned officers and legionnaires who fell in Indochina.” 

Colonel Grué will represent officers who fought in Indochina. The non-commissioned officers will be represented by Major Helferstorfer, former of the 2ème Régiment Etranger d’Infanterie and the 5th RE in Indochina and former president of the non-commissioned officers of the 1er Régiment étranger.  Legionnaire 1st Class Bosy, former of the Legion Engineering Companies and having spent three tours in Indochina, will represent all legionnaires.  Camerone celebrations will also pay tribute this year to the legionnaire sappers of 2e Régiment étranger de génie and 1er Régiment étranger de génie who celebrate the 40th and 25th anniversary of their establishment, respectively.
Both Colonel Grué and Major Helferstorfer, having served in the 5th RE, it’s also a symbol as the 5th RE will be reborn in Mayotte, replacing the Détachement de Légion étrangère de Mayotte on July 1, 2024.

The designated carrier of Captain Danjou’s hand (Porteur de la Main) and representative all of his brothers in arms for this year’s celebration is Foreign Legion veteran Bernard Grué who was born on 24 December 1924 in Bordeaux.  Grué joined the French Army in November of 1945, aspiring to become an officer.  After school and several requited assignments as an enlisted and NCO he gained his commission on February 1948 and selected the French Foreign Legion for his first assignment.  He boarded at Toulon on 18 November, landed at Oran the next day and was present at Sidi Bel Abbès on 20 November 1948. He was assigned to the motorized training group as a platoon leader.

On 22 May 1949, he boarded the SS Pasteur bound for the Far East. He landed at Saigon on 7 June, where he was assigned to the 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment. He then took command of post 41 located about 20 kilometers south of That-Khê, on a portion of the CR4. He was appointed to the rank of lieutenant on 01 October 1949.

On 16 and 17 September 1950 in Dong Khe, Lieutenant Grué was defending his small post from a coordinated attack by a much stronger enemy force.  This was the start of a longer series of battles known as the Battle of Route Coloniale 4.  On the morning of the 17th as the enemy breached the post’s defenses, Grué, rushing to a 57mm cannon and serving this weapon himself, repelled the assault by firing directly into the enemy forces and causing a  disorderly withdrawal of the Viet Minh rebels and leaving a dozen their corpses in place. On the morning of the 18th however, as his position was crushed by artillery and surrounded from all quarters, he fought hand to hand with the enemy until finally, wounded, he lost consciousness and was captured.  For four years, from September 1950 to August 1954, Lieutenant Grué was interned at Camp No. 1. Released on 28 August 1954, he was repatriated to health. He left Saigon on 10 September and arrived in Marseilles on 4 October. Evacuated on the val-de-Grâce hospital in Paris, he enjoyed recovery leave and end of the campaign until the end of March 1955.

Grué then attend training as an officer specializing in Eastern and Middle Eastern issues and was assigned to the General Staff of the Armed Forces in Paris in November 1955.  He had various assignments and schools and then, after learning Persian, he attended courses at the Iranian War School in Tehran.  From 1968 to 1971, he was Deputy Military Attaché in Moscow from 1972 to 1974, he commanded the 46th Infantry Regiment in Berlin, then took over the intelligence directorate at the External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service (SDECE) in Paris. He left the army in 1978 with the rank of colonel and made a second career in a large pharmaceutical group.  He has been married for 70 years this year to Marie-Odile, who waited for him during his captivity. He is the father of three children, Christine, Philippe and Anne-Marie, named after the well-known song of the 3rd REI.

Colonel Bernard Grué was a Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, officer of the National Order of Merit and holder of the War Cross for External Theater Operations with a palm and two bronze stars, a colonial medal and the Cross of Military Value.

The Commanding General of the French Foreign Legion provides his words on Camerone 2024.  Le symbole de tous les combats héroïques

French

I have a love-hate relationship with French.  Not the people of course, the language–la langue française.  I’ve always enjoyed listening to French being spoken as well as hearing it in music and over my many years I’m tried to learn what I can of it.  I remember when I was 17, listening (and repeating) phrases and vocabulary words from two cassette tapes that came with a small travel phrase book.  This was on my new fancy Sony Walkman (remember those?).  I was preparing then, in 1980, for my first trip to Europe.  I wore those tapes out while at the same time studiously working my way through the Berlitz French Self-Teacher.  Even to this day I remember much of what I learned and actually used in Paris, Lyon, Marseilles, and Nice.  When I was in the Army in Germany from 1985-1988 I wanted to keep going with my self-taught French and borrowed a copy of the Defense Language Institute (DLI) French Basic Course.  After a couple of months of those cassette tapes I then made a big mistake that haunted the rest of my time in the Army–I took the Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) for French and somehow scored a L 0+/R 1. It was certainly not good enough to pass but it did go in my records and from thereafter the Army thought I was a French linguist.  Several times I was selected for special assignments and temporary duty because of that stupid test.  I usually was able to convince the bureaucracy to pick someone else for those jobs but in 1993 I was sent to Somalia to back fill an interpreter position.  I kept at it (trying to learn French) for a while and my last time in Paris (1998) actually made me feel pretty good as my fumbling efforts were pretty successful in most situations and I was pleased with how many words and signs I understood.

But honestly, who am I fooling?  If you don’t keep at it you will forget it and I’m probably now no better now than I was when I was 17 working on the first lesson of that old Berlitz book.  When I retired from the Army and started this blog almost 14 years ago I told myself that I would learn French in order to read about the Foreign Legion in it’s mother language.  Well, that never happened either and I stopped trying and without Google Translator or Deepl I’d be lost on some of the French items I use on this blog.

Fast forward to right now and I’m now reconsidering things and have decided to begin French studies all over again.  I read a good book called “Flirting with French” by William Alexander that describes his attempts to learn the language at age 58.  Although, in the end he was not as successful as he wanted to be, he did say that the language learning process itself significantly improved his scores on cognitive testing.  It might just be good for my brain to start all over again and see what happens.  Another thing I’m seeing is the vast amount of resources one has today that can make the learning experience so much easier than the rote “listen and repeat” repetitive approach I used in the past.  There are several dozen online courses from the free and easy DuoLingo to the more structured courses like Rosetta Stone and Babble.  There is of course “the Internet”, flash card apps and speaking apps for your phone, YouTube videos and full courses, Podcasts, e-Books and e-Magazines, live radio from France on the web, MP3 files and players, steaming content with TV shows, news and movies in French with English subtitles, and even AI is breaking ground as an easy way to practice conversations.  So I think I’m going to have another go at French.  I’ve opened a notebook and started to write down every French word and phrase that I already know and am very pleased to find I have at least a 1,000 word vocabulary so far to start with.  So any tips and encouragement would be welcome.

BTW, here is a great video describing how the French Foreign Legion handles teaching French to new legionnaires.

Legion Pulp: Cold Steel

This Georges Surdez story appeared in the 01 August 1932 issue of Adventure.  It’s a nice concise tale of what happens when a long-serving Legionnaire butts heads with a prideful officer of the Native Infantry (better known as the tirailleurs algériens or simply Turcos).  Legion Adjutant Forbach comes up with a clever way to deal with newly arrived Lieutenant Lavoine who imposes his authority on a small garrison of Legionnaires as a way to exact a twisted sort of revenge on behalf of his Regimental Commander.  Ultimately, his petty punishments and discipline levied on the Legion detachment prove fatal on the battlefield.

Cold Steel is a pretty typical story from Georges Surdez with well developed characters and a realistic and logical setting in Morocco and the Foreign Legion.  Unlike other writers of Foreign Legion pulp fiction like J. D. Newsom, Robert Carse and Bob DuSoe, Surdez doesn’t have his legionnaires make glorious last stands with only one or two survivors holding out until relief arrives.  Instead, he often uses the action and chaos of battle to resolve the personal conflicts and issues that have arisen in the earlier parts of the story and Cold Steel follows that pattern.

Cold Steel

If you want to download the full issue of Adventure where this story appeared it is available on the Internet Archive here.

Legion Pulp: Kismet in Picardy

This month’s Foreign Legion pulp story is from the 10 December 1928 issue of Short Stories Magazine.  The author is Don McGrew (or Donald Francis McGrew, 1886-1955), an early and fairly prolific author for the pulps and other magazines who draws upon his personal life of world wide adventure and experience as a soldier who served in the Philippines, along the Mexican border and in France during WWI as an artillery officer.  Many of his stories are military related and take place in areas he is familiar with.

Kismet in Picardy is a good, fast moving tale of a wayward American, Vance Rutledge, who finds himself, one step ahead of the law, in the Foreign Legion at Sidi Bel Abbes…a loser in love, broke and cut off from his rich father.  To make matters worse he acquires a sworn enemy on his very first day in the Legion–a Lieutenant Von Bissemer from some forgotten Teutonic aristocracy who has connived his way to officer rank due to his relationship with a beautiful and well connected native woman.  McGrew plays fast and easy with the Foreign Legion and North Africa as far as realism goes but he produced a good story that has all the basic Legion tropes.  The yarn is narrated by another nameless Legionnaire who relates the entire strange account from his vantage point as witness and participant to the events.  It begins as a garrison tale, moves to some desert action involving the Legion against the marauding Tuareg, and finally to the trenches of France where the final showdown occurs.

Kismet in Picardy

Legion Pulp: Haunted Mountains

Here’s another story of the Hell’s Angels squad of the French Foreign Legion penned by Warren Hastings Miller.  It appeared in the October 1932 issue of Blue Book Magazine.  The squad appeared regularly in this pulp for several years after beginning in 1927 with the story Loot.  The squad features Sergeant Texas Ike, Corporal Criswell from Michigan, Anzac Bill, Mr. Dee (Count di Piatti), Calamity Cyclops (the one-eyed sharpshooter and Mora the Spaniard. The command element (often the foils to the squad) is Commandant Knecht and Lt. Hortet,

This story has some eerie elements concerning the haunting of a tribal grave site and the investigating of the location by the Legion.  It quickly devolves into a running battle (with some well placed machine guns) against the Ait Khebbash tribesmen.  Oh, and there are some French Camel Corps (Méhariste Sahariennes) led by a Captain Ressot involved in the adventure that for a while are rendered immobile with rear of the spirits of the mountain).  It’s a good, fast moving tale.

Haunted Mountains

NOTE:  The full Blue Book Magazine issue that featured this story is available on the Internet Archive here. 

AI Fails

Here’s a quick post showing some of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) projects that I was working on recently.  Around last Christmas I was trying out various AI websites to generate what I hoped would be a beautiful computer generated image for posting to the blog.  I was asking for a tranquil scene of a small Foreign Legion fort, located in the Saharan desert on Christmas night.  So my requests to the various AI engines were variations of something like this...”create an image of a small French Foreign Legion desert fort on Christmas night”.  I also tried to get Open AI’s GPT 4.0 to make some Legionnaire pictures-with the right uniform and kepi-blanc of the classic Beau Geste style. Well, these attempts were for the most part a failure.  Take a look at this pathetic work from the feverish AI brain….

Here are the attempts by GPT4.0 to create a French Foreign Legion Legionnaire and a kepi blanc (using multiple variations of words to describe that iconic headgear).  Epic fail if you ask me.  Check out the AI’s idea of the flaming grenade insignia and the guy with the wacko hat and double butt-stock rifle.

Finally here are some halfway decent results… not quite what I wanted but nice in their own unique ways.

I’ll probably keep plugging away at this project.  I suspect my amateur ability to interact with the AI programs is so poor that I’m not getting any good results.  I did try giving images for the programs to work from but that didn’t seem to make a difference. Hope you have a couple of good laughs.

Legion Pulp: An Enemy Debt

Not all Foreign Legion stories appeared on pulpy pages.  Some authors like Georges Surdez and P.C. Wren had their Legion tales appear in the slick magazines such as Collier’s Weekly, Everybody’s, McClure’s, Cosmopolitan and some lesser known magazines such as that produced by the Elks and the American Legion.  An Enemy Debt is from the American Legion Monthly from February 1928.  The author, Perceval (Richard) Gibbon (1879-1926), born in Wales, was was an “author and journalist, serving for the Rand Daily Mail in South Africa, as well as for other publications. Gibbon had traveled to South Africa in 1898, moved to the war front and became the representative of a syndicate of colonial newspapers at the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War”.  He was also a war correspondent during WWI covering the Italian Front and after the war he served on the high seas in the Merchant Navy.  He was a fairly prolific author of mostly short stories which appeared in British and American slick magazines.

An Enemy Debt is certainly unlike the normal action packed pulp stories.  Although short it contains a well developed character, a German, who finds him self a deserter from the Legion by accident.  He decides to head north to make his escape and evades capture for fourteen days before stumbling on a small farm run by a German immigrant family–which was common in Algeria then. The pretty daughter shelters him for some days and he takes care of the bedridden grandmother.  It’s been said that Gibbon is known for his ending plot twists and this is no exception.

The original copy for this story was pretty washed out and the words are hard to read in places.  I boosted contrast and played with the lighting but that helped only a bit.  So here is a grayscale, black and white and color versions and you can select which one looks better.

An Enemy Debt

An Enemy Debt B&W

An Enemy Debt COLOR

Merry Christmas! Joyeux Noël! Щасливого Різдва!

Merry Christmas to all of the followers of this blog, regular readers and random visitors.  I hope you all have a happy and wonderful 2024–may it be productive and bring many good surprises.  Lets pray, again, for peace on earth and for all of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Legionnaires who are currently deployed to protect our civilization from the forces of darkness and evil (that mean you, Putin!).

Legion Pulp: Strictly Private

This story appeared in the September 10th, 1930 issue of Short Stories and was written by J. D. Newsom–a prolific pulp writer with many Foreign Legion stories to his credit.  It’s one of his tales where the fighting takes place between the legionnaires and not against the restless tribes.  The sub-title sums up the story best—You Can’t Bully Legionnaires–Not Even if You’re Commanding Officer of a Little Desert Outpost on the Edge of the Great Sahara. 

Strictly Private

Legion Pulp: The Devil’s Own

Here is another Panther paperback from the 1950’s offered up in lieu of a pulp fiction story for this month.  The author of The Devil’s Own is Alex Stamper which was a house pseudonym used by James McCormick for several of the books he wrote for Panther’s Foreign Legion series. Other Foreign Legion titles with the Alex Stamper byline include Desert Glory, Halfway to Hades, Glory Squad, Fort Terror, Sand and Sudden Death, Aux Armes, Legionnaires of France, Guns of the Legion, Traitor at Al Kida, Revolt at Zaluig (Arthur Kent), Lost Patrol, Blood on the Flag, The Devil’s Captain, This Legion of Despair, Men of Doom, and Penal Battalion.  These were all published in the early 1950’s.  Many thanks to Eugene for providing these Panther paperbacks.

This is a typical Foreign Legion story from Panther at the time which is heavy on the action and light on historical realism.  This one involves three legionnaires, Bob Banks (Englishman), Buzz Wein (American) and Sen (half English, half Chinese)–different as can be, that come together to track down Arab renegades. Interestingly enough there is a pesky Foreign Legion Sergeant named Lajaune whose reputation appears as early as the first page.

Here is a link to the .cbr version of the book.  The .pdf is below…

The Devil’s Own