I recently stumbled upon a nice old-time radio episode from The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which features the famous duo traveling to North Africa to solve a case of a missing person who may have joined the French Foreign Legion (to disappear of course). The show features the voices of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce–the same actors who stared in several of the feature length Sherlock Holmes films. I grew up watching these movies on Chicago’s WGN Sunday television line-up which also featured Charlie Chan and other notable detective heroes of the silver screen. Just hearing these voices brings back some nice memories. The script can be found here and information about the radio show here. You can listen to this episode at the Internet Archive or by clicking the link below.
Jack, ever heard of this guy?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Waddell_(French_Foreign_Legion)
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If I recall he is one of the few foreign officers of the Foreign Legion (Danish Prince Aage is another) to attain Battalion level command. What an amazing war record. They don’t make many men like Waddell nowadays.
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Regarding foreign-born officers in the French Foreign Legion: According to the Foreign Legion website, about 10 % of all officers begin their careers as enlisted men and are promoted through the ranks. It is my understanding that these officers mostly serve in administrative/logistical billets, typically, they don’t command fighting units.
There are exceptions, though. At least two legionnaires made it to general in the last century. The first one was Hugo Geoffrey (1919-2007). He was born as Hugo Gottlieb into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. Gottlieb left Austria in 1938 after the Nazis took over and joined the Foreign Legion. Gottlieb fought in Indochina and he was a POW. He became an officer and he commanded the 13e DBLE from 1965 to 1968. Gottlieb/Geoffrey made it to general and he ultimately retired in 1979 as a press spokesperson in the French Ministry of Defense.
A more recent case is Vittorio Tresti, an Italian who joined the Legion in 1958. Tresti was a sergent-chef by 1966 and then became an officer. From 1987 until 1989, he commanded the 3e REI in French Guyana (if I’m not mistaken, he can be seen and heard briefly in a TV documentary from 1989(?) → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-JEdeWKNuk , starting at about 10:43, I’m almost certain that’s Tresti).
Tresti ended his career in 1996 as a two-star general (by that time, he served in the regular French army). As of recently, General Tresti is still alive and active in veteran affairs.
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