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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 1948559" data-attributes="member: 26473">Campaign Briefing - Bienvenue à la Légion ÉtrangerThe train arrives in Sidi-bel-Abbès under an empty blue sky. Brilliant sunlight floods the town, glaring off whitewashed walls and casting deep shadows inside doorways and windows. The January air is warm and dry, foreshadowing the brutal heat and aridity to come. No breeze ruffles the palms along the boulevard opposite the train station, nor the flags of the légionnaires standing at attention as the recruits debark the train, contracts in hand.Sober sergeants in white képis, red epaulettes on the shoulders and blue sashes around the waists of their khaki uniforms, organize the gaggle of men into a rough semblance of a formation. The orders are given in French and translated into a dozen tongues – German, Italian, Spanish, English, Polish, Greek among them – by the recruits as curious children watch from doorways, giggling and pointing. The men, some in suits, others in dungarees and shirt-sleeves, are brought to ragged attention at a word from one of the sergeants, and an officer with decorations in rows upon his chest, identifying himself as Capitaine Trumelet, speaks to the assembled initiates.“Bienvenue à la Maison-Mère de la Légion Étranger,” he says in a firm voice – welcome to the home of the Foreign Legion. “Like those who came before you, you will serve with all the strength of your body and all the force of your soul, ready to give up the supreme sacrifice. You will always cherish in your hearts these words: Legio patria nostra – the Legion is our fatherland.”Lead by the sergeants, the recruits trudge down the broad palm-lined avenue, the Boulevard de la Republique, past shops and bars and houses in the simple French provincial style – indeed, at first glance Sidi-bel-Abbès looks to be more like a town in Languedoc than a gateway to the Sahara. At a café two men play dominos as a half-dozen others kibitz, sipping strong coffee. From inside a restaurant wafts the sounds of a radio broadcasting a news program, the words lost in the stamp of the recruits’ feet on the pavement. Past a small park and garden where a group of children enthusiastically kick a dusty football a sign announces that the avenue is now the Boulevard de Général Rollet. It ends at a long, low building. Under the watchful eyes of a trio of sentries in olive-drab battledress armed with submachine guns, and through an iron gate, the recruits enter the barracks’ ground. The sergeants lead the men along a shaded walk past a monument, a great metal globe on a marble base, flanked by the figures of four stone legionnaires in the uniforms of a century ago – a curious gold star can be seen on the globe, in what must be southern Mexico.The recruits once again assume a formation at the sergeants’ direction in the shadow of the red stone barracks and halls of the compound, the orders coming faster and sharper – now slow compliance is met with a biting rebuke. A training company and platoons is organized, and each unit in turn receives a medical examination and a severe haircut before fitting for uniforms. A meal in the mess hall and barracks assignment concludes the recruits’ first day as legionnaires.The next day starts early.In the pre-dawn darkness obscenity-spewing sergeants turn out the recruits for physical training, a three-mile run as a warm up to standing at attention for an hour on the barracks’ ground, all the while deriding the trainees’ ancestry and hygiene in ways that can be understood regardless of language barrier. A regrettable breakfast is followed by more drill, inspections, more drill, an equally unfortunate lunch, more drill, instruction, a lamentable dinner, and more drill, all accompanied by the sergeants and their unique, often scatological, insights on those who mistakenly believe themselves worthy of dying on behalf of their Legion, all under the relentless African sun.The next day is the same. And the next. And the next.At first the instruction is rudimentary – military protocol and French lessons for those who do not speak it already, the latter presumably to make sure that the sergeants’ trenchant observations are unambiguously understood. Soon the recruits are allowed to hold a rifle, but only for purposes of drill – the sergeants refuse to put a dangerous weapon in the hands of anyone as questionable as these trainees, of course, at least until each recruit can take it apart and put it back together with his eyes closed while singing “<a href="http://www.lalegion.de/mp3/le_boudin_32.mp3" target="_blank">Le Boudin</a>,” so time is spent mastering these skills as well.Eventually someone, Captain Trumelet perhaps, forces the sergeants to relent, to their obvious disgust, and the recruits begin training with live weapons – rifles, submachine guns, machine guns, some heavier weapons like the recoilless rifle and the mortar, even hand grenades and other explosives. As the sergeants clearly resent this opportunity for the recruits, they compensate by demanding more physical training, long marches with full packs that take the recruits across Sidi-bel-Abbès, from the neat orderly European streets to the sprawling village nègre, the Arab quarter with its smell of roasting lamb and sheep dung, its bustling market under canvas awnings along the Rue de Montagnac, its strings of laden donkeys, and the chatter of many tongues – Arabic, Berber, Hebrew, and Spanish as well as French. Beyond the town itself lies the rugged Oued Mekerra, the recruits introduction to the unforgiving terrain of Algeria, a place that the sergeants clearly relish as the recruits are relentlessly driven along its sandy washes and up its rocky walls, kilometer after kilometer.Unsatisfied with the natural challenges presented by the Algerian countryside, there are obstacle courses as well – log barriers to scramble over, barbed wire to crawl under, ropes to climb, trenches to leap, often accompanied by the staccato of a submachine gun or crack of a rifle fired seemingly inches over the recruits’ cringing heads.Not all is marching, running, and climbing, however – there are daily inspections, kitchen duty, latrine duty, and guard duty in the middle of the night, trembling in the desert chill. There is also instruction in the history of the Legion: its founding in 1831 by King Louis Philippe, the conquest of Algeria – which would become the Legion’s home thereafter – campaigns in the Crimea, Italy, Mexico, and Indochina, the Franco-Prussian War, the world wars, and countless battles across North and West Africa – Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Dahomey, the Sudan, Madagascar. In the Salle d’Honneur the recruits stand before marble tablets engraved with the names of the names of the regimental commanders and of officers killed in action, paintings depicting the battles of Camerone and Tuyen Quang, and a glass case with a curious and morbid artifact: the wooden hand of Captain Jean Danjou. Captain Trumelet himself tells the recruits the story of Capitaine Danjou and the hacienda Camerone in 1863, how three officers and sixty-two légionnaires fought over two thousand Mexican soldiers, how the last five legionnaires fixed bayonets and charged the enemy rather than surrender themselves, their honor, and the honor of the Legion.Days become weeks, weeks become months. The sergeants bark less – not because they like the recruits more, but because the recruits give them less reason to, though anyone who makes a mistake receives the customary derision and punishment. More time is spent with the lieutenants, who heretofore have been all but invisible. The recruits drill in the field for days at a time, living in tents, practicing maneuvers under the steady gaze of the officers and the inexorable glare of the sergeants. Blistering days and chilling nights are spent scrambling over hills and through oueds as the recruits begin to not only behave like a unit but move like one as well. Not all of the recruits that arrived on the train in January are present anymore: some quit, others are sidelined by injuries sustained during training, a few desert outright – no one is sent to look for deserters, and indeed the sergeants seem relieved they're gone and perhaps a little disappointed that some of the other recruits didn’t follow them. One morning, after returning from a grueling march the previous day, the recruits are called to attention, and under the gaze of the paternal Captain Trumelet, the men are issued the képis blanc. The sergeants then reward the recruits by parading them around the barracks ground in their new white hats for the rest of the day.On the last day of April, the recruits are drawn up on the barracks ground in their dress uniforms, all in white kepis, red epaulettes, and blue sashes. The rest of the 1ere Regiment Étranger is present as well, anciens, the veterans, alongside the bleus of the training company. Together the regiment celebrates the battle of Camerone along with the completion of training by the recruits, who now carry the rank and the responsibility of légionnaire.The drinking begins immediately after the formation is dismissed.</blockquote>

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