Here is a small collection of news items I’ve collected from the web about the Foreign Legion. These clippings are often very interesting and frequently serve as a launching point for further research into the names and events mentioned. For example the short article on Frederick Farrar’s redeeming his reputation in the First World War is about the former domestic chaplain (at Sandringham) to King George who fled England in late 1911 after a scandal over another woman (immorality) and instances of drunkenness. They actually put out a warrant for his arrest but he was one step ahead of the coppers. One wonders where he hid for those years from late 1911 until he popped up on the battlefields of France as a decorated legionnaire in 1916? Rumors had him in Northwest Canada or hiding underground in London. A more reliable article indicated he left for Austria with his wife but after the scandal broke, his newly wed American wife, Nora Davis, returned to the United States with her well known brother Richard Harding Davis but there was never any mention of Farrar following after her. I would like to believe that when he fled to Europe and possible France, as one newspaper speculated, he actually went and joined the French Foreign Legion to bury his indiscretions and start anew. Also, the mention of George Ullard in his role of trench line troubadour in “Strenuous Life in Foreign Legion” (page 9) is confirmed in several other contemporary articles. He seemed to enchant the Germans in the opposing trenches with his singing on several occasions prior to his death.
I hope you enjoy reading these as well as I did.
Mon Legionnaire 