Chapter 3: Honneur et Fidelite

Although it was not unknown for legionnaires and officers to fraternize off duty it was not the norm. Both the Chevalier and I were in civilian clothes when later that evening he and I walked to a nearby quiet bistro/bar. It was an establishment I had not been in before, and had no idea of its existence. It obviously was not the haunt of frisky females looking for lusty legionnaires but more of a meeting and eating place for the locals. As we were walking to the bistro I had noticed Maurice was limping and now, seated comfortably in a quiet alcove, I asked if his wounded leg was healing OK.

“Things are progressing as well as can be expected. I am having physiotherapy and can walk quite well, although I have a slight limp as you’ve seen, but it will eventually go.” A look of sorrow slipped swiftly across his face. “However I will never be able to parachute again. The repair would give way when I hit the ground and I would be crippled for life. I’m fit for duty but not with BEPI or Two REP. I enjoy lecturing and will be quite happy to continue in that field, although I miss the closer comradeship of a combat unit.”

We ordered drinks and the Chevalier explained how I came to be on the promotion course. “I saw your name on the list of applicants and persuaded my boss to bump you up the list. Naturally that’s against the rules and is all I’m able to do for you as far as the course is concerned.”

I thanked him for what he had done. “But I hope I wasn’t put in someone’s place who had been waiting a long time to attend the course?”

He gave a shake of his head. “No. We can generally tell which applicants are going to last the course and those who will fail during the first two weeks. Those who have held positions in sedentary posts fall at the first hurdle, unless they have got fit for the course. This means that applicants who are fit but do not make the cut have to wait longer for their chance of promotion because of the amount of dead wood we have to cull during the first two weeks. I doubt many will drop out now; although it is a long and comprehensive course, teaching and then testing all aspects of military and many non-military skills.” We spent the rest of the evening swapping tales of what each of us had been doing since his wounding and subsequent Casevac from BEPI. It seems Maurice had kept an eye on me via Capitaine Draganov and knew I had re-engaged for another five years with the legion.

“So you’re a fifteen year man now, Philippe?”

I nodded. “Yes, I had to sign for another five years to get on the course, and if I manage to pass the course and get promotion I might sign on for another five.”

“I hope you are not trying to influence me into giving you a pass by promising to re-engage...” He saw the look of anger on my face and laughed. “I’m taking what our good friend and sadly missed colleague, Alfie Hinds, would call ‘the piss’, Philippe.”

He was absolutely right. Alfie would have acted in a similar manner as Maurice, given what I had said, and I grinned. “There’s a little bit of Alfie Hinds in us both,” I said and raised my glass. “To Alfie Hinds. A diamond geezer!”

The Chevalier clinked glasses with me. “Amen to that, whatever it means,” he said and took a large swallow of his Rhone red.

I enjoyed the four month long Sergent Promotion Course although at first it was difficult making decisions on one’s own.

‘A legionnaire does not think; he reacts’, was a credo hammered into us by rote and Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). Many and varied drills are imbedded into a legionnaire’s brain by repetition, and punishment when not known by heart. There is a SOP for everything. From ‘action to take when coming under effective enemy fire’ to ‘the duties and responsibilities of a sentry’, and countless other tasks in between. SOPs are drummed into a legionnaire’s brain until they become second nature – a conditioned reflex action in fact. This sort of conditioning is fine when facing bullets, bombs, and shells but is not conducive to widening ones appreciation of literature, music, or even civilian life. At first I found it difficult to apply my brain to solve a problem, rather than call up a relevant SOP from memory. However, I began to enjoy having to use my brain to resolve complex problems that had nothing to do with combat or warfare but were exercises in logic. I had been a gifted child with a high IQ and an enquiring mind, the reason for me being accepted at Grenoble University to study organic chemistry before my 16^th birthday. However, since leaving university, a rather precipitate leaving I will admit, my brain had been stultified as I learned by rote rather than by reasoning. On the promotion course I now had the opportunity to cast my mind free of SOPs. Of course this free thinking spell was short lived and only interposed between military themed activities, although I did have an intriguing paper task of organising a European wide football competition with two dozen competing teams, many venues in several countries, and a knock out system of progression to the Cup Final. (You may not be surprised that the winning team was Accrington Stanley F.C)

It became clear during the course that my organisational skills were far higher than my leadership and man management abilities. During one tactical exercise I foolishly led my platoon into a killing zone; had it been for real it would have ended in disaster and multiple deaths. The many tactical and administrative role playing exercises the aspirant on the promotion course were tasked with were an important part of the course, designed to tease out the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates and mark them for positions to come. I doubt even if promoted I would be put in charge of a combat platoon but on the other hand I would make an excellent commissary sergent.

During the course we fired on the ranges at Canjeurs, the largest military training area in Europe, where I had used my chain saw to such good effect. The 3rd Foreign Construction Company (3ème Compagnie de Construction Etrangère, 3 CCE) with whom I had briefly served, were the men who had helped build the huge complex, and a plaque at the entrance to the training area proudly proclaimed the fact.

I passed the Sergent Promotion Course in the top quarter of the class and was thus promoted to sergent immediately. Those who passed further down the order of merit would have to wait several months until they received their sergeant stripes. After the ceremony of awarding the new rank insignia to those who had graduated cum laude the Chevalier and I shared a few drinks in the quiet bistro/bar in Aubagne we frequented. I was expecting to re-join BEPI in Djibouti but the Chevalier surprised me.

“You are being transferred to OneRE,” he informed me. He saw my look of surprise, disappointment, and dismay. “No, not back to Les Pionniers de la Légion étrangère or the Ceremonial Unit but to a newly formed unit that will come under the general command of the Regiment, as does many other of the administrative functions of the legion, such as postings, pensions, and recruitment. You and I are to be members of the Foreign Legion Inspectorate Department.” (le département d’inspection de la légion étrangère, DILE)

For the next three years my feet scarcely touched the ground as DILE visited practically every unit of the Foreign Legion. I had no idea how widespread was the Legion, which had detachments of one sort or another not only in Metropolitan France but also in several French overseas territories, many of which I’d not heard of. The remit of DILE was to ensure that all units of the Legion followed the correct procedures when carrying out the tasks assigned. As the Chevalier explained the Legion, kept at arm’s length from the bureaucracy of the French Army — and often the French Republic — had evolved its own methods of doing things, and individual units had been left to their own devices. No one in authority questioned the methods as long as the tasks given to the Legion were accomplished successfully. Over time this laissez-faire attitude had percolated through the command structure and into the Administrative and Commissary branch where chicanery and downright roguery was taking place.

A new broom had been installed in the Élysée Palace, and a new breed of bright eyed, bushy tailed, politicians with MBAs and high ideals now had their hands on the levers of power, and the Legion were in their sights. Hence the DILE, formed to ensure all legionary administrative tasks were carried out cost effectively, efficiently, and without any graft attached. Something that the governmental bureaucracy of the Republic might try to emulate but never has.

As can be imagined having the DILE snooping in the files and turning over stones did not go down well with the unit under inspection and DILE had to step circumspectly and lightly. DILE’s reputation was not helped by the name of the officer in charge of the unit, Lieutenant Colonel Tomas Torquonde, which led to the sobriquet les Torquemades being applied to the newly formed unit. Fortunately a degree of thought had been employed to make DILE more acceptable to the Legion. To wit: having a Lieutenant Colonel as the senior officer of the unit to stress the importance of the DILE, plus he would outrank most if not all of the commanders of the units inspected; and by appointing Lieutenant Maurice Champignon (the Chevalier had been promoted on joining the Instructional staff at Quartier Vienot) as one of the Inspectors.

The Chevalier was a hero to the Legion. If someone of his stature and character was part of the inspection team then — or so it was hoped by the powers-that- be who had initiated the DILE — those being inspected would think the rest of the team must be okay as he, the Chevalier, would never work with people who would stoop so low as to rat on a fellow legionnaire. Even so, members of the DILE were treated with a deal of suspicion and scarcely concealed disdain. However, during the time I spent with the unit few legionnaires were charged with criminal acts although there were several instances of petty pilfering and feathering of own nests by commissary staff.

My main task with DILE was instruction rather than detection. I would scan the working methods of the commissary section within the unit and make suggestions as to how the method in use could have ‘value added’ and be made ‘more transparent,’ two terms widely used by the MBA wielding politicos at the Luxembourg Palace. Devising and installing an efficient filing system ensured proper records were maintained and were easily accessible. Much of the bad practise was due not so much to greed and larceny, which of course were often in evidence, but by losing and misfiling documents through ignorance and the primitive filing systems in use.

The first assignment of DILE was to somewhere I had never heard of and had no idea where it was. The Comoro Islands are an archipelago at the northern entrance of the Mozambique Strait, the body of water that separates the island of Madagascar from the East African mainland. At one time Madagascar and the Comoro Islands were under French rule but first Madagascar had become independent as the Malagasy Republic and then most of the Comoro Islands relinquished French rule. Mayotte, one of the Comoro Islands, remained under French rule/protection when the majority of the islands gained their independence from France. One of the main tasks of the Legion detachment on Mayotte was to deter immigrants landing from the other islands in the Comoros group and Madagascar, aka The Malagasy Republic. Although Mayotte is dirt poor by French standards, to the other inhabitants of the area it is a mixture of El Dorado and Paradise, which gives some glimpse as to of how poor and poverty stricken were those former French colonies now independent and free of their of their colonial masters. The fact the people of these independent states wish to get to Mayotte by hook or by crook to share the more affluent lifestyle of those poor folk still under the rule of France says all that needs to be said.

All in all the six weeks I spent on Mayotte was a pleasant experience.

The HQ of the Legion detachment (Détachement de Légion étrangère de Mayotte, DLEM) was not on Mayotte but situated at Dzaoudzi, on the rocky outcrop of an island known as Pamandzi, or Petite Terre, that is joined to Mayotte by a man-made causeway, the Boulevard des Crabes.

The climate of Mayotte is warm, humid but bearable, although the average annual rainfall is 1,000 mm (40 inches).Naturally, the vegetation is both lush and abundant, as were the females. The population is comprised predominantly of Malagasy people who originated on the large island of Madagascar. There have been many invaders/visitors to the Comoro Islands over time, including Arabs, Portuguese, French and British and there is a tradition that the Chinese Admiral Zheng He’s fleet arrived in the Comoros in 1407. Consequently there are a number of exotic and strikingly mixed race females and, hoping to snare a Frenchman and become a French citizen, they are very open to European males, as are their legs. Naturally, legionnaires take as much advantage of these females as the females do of them. However, as legionnaires are forbidden to marry, very few local girls get to France; but they live in hope, much to the delight of visiting males.

Most of the time DLEM were engaged in keeping illegal immigrants from landing on Mayotte, with a varying degree of success. However the local inhabitants had no wish to be engulfed by people from the other Comoro islands or Madagascar and any illegals who evaded the Legion were soon discovered and removed.

One of the advantages Mayotte inhabitants received with a permanent Legion detachment, was a market for their produce. Fresh fruit and vegetables are a welcome addition to the basic Legion diet, and farmers always get a better price for their produce from the Legion than the locals would pay. This was fine until the crops failed, when the higher paying Legion took all the produce available. We of the DILE made it directive that the Legion price would be only a small percentage above the local market price. This may well have upset the farmers but ensured there was no lack of food when crop failures occurred. It also stopped the commissary sergent from making a small fortune.

After a pleasurable and female company rewarding six weeks on Mayotte DILE returned to Aubagne where a full report, in triplicate, was submitted to Legion HQ. After spending a month revising and resubmitting our reports at Aubagne, the next destination for DILE was Corsica and 2 REP. Their base was now renamed Camp Raffalli and had grown in size since my time at the parachute school. 2 REP were suspicious of us at first, but soon realised we were not the Inquisition, but merely ensuring the systems they used were fit for the purpose and/or were followed correctly. As was usual in any military unit the supply section had some extremely convoluted procedures that ensured that SNCOs of the commissary branch usually retired with more cash than those employed in other trades. An SNCO was discovered over-fattening his retirement fund and he’d had his wrist slapped and was fined but no other action taken other than the local produce buying procedure amended to scotch a return to the bad old ways.

After the reports for 2REP had been submitted and approved DILE were dispatched to French Guiana, an overseas department/region of France on the northern Atlantic coast of South America. After an eleven and a half hour flight in a chartered Air France Boeing 707, made bearable only by the sight of a quartet of female cabin staff with perky breasts and pert buttocks sashaying up and down the aisles pushing trolleys, we arrived in Cayenne the capital of French Guiana.