LEGIONAIRES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 228, 25 September 1940, Page 5

LEGIONAIRES.

GUESTS OF BRITAIN.

CORPS OF MYSTIC HEROISM.

LONDON, August 20.

The French Foreign Legion perhaps exietti in most people's imagination as a body of large and powerful men, since its record of daring and endurance ie one of the world's great stories. Some hundreds of the battalion or so of these warriors now in southern England, however, are smallish fellows. But tough is a very inadequate word for them. They are nearly all ae brown ae the Museulman from Egypt Who told me that he and hie one fellow Mussulman in the camp, a Turk, said their prayers regularly, but wished Allah would grant them tropical shorts again instead of the hot khaki British battle dress they wear now; their skins are like leather, their lithe bodies have no spare ounce of fleeh and they marched on their parade ground and ran about on their duties or pleasure* under the hot sun as though invigorated still by the cold of Narvik, whence they came after capturing and reluctantly evacuating the Norwegian port.

[ Trophies of Glory. Officers and men of the Legion, of 42 different nationalities, are encamped near the main organisation of General de Gaulle's forces, to which are now being added many Frenchmen from the Meknee. The colonel commanding the I Legion in Britain is another surprise, small and beepectacled, with an almost though not quite concealed limp from a wound in the thigh and a much-scarred forehead from several trepanning operations. He himself could not tell you how many times he has been wounded; twice he fell into the hands of the Germane in the last war and got away again, and in tliics war, having led hie men into Narvik, he subsequently I took some of them into France, where, jl was told, hie daring tactics sometimes [took him just ahead of the advancing

Nazis, sometimes behind them. The glory of his tiny office is a great swastika flag captured from a German warship in the Norwegian campaign. The Legion got five more, but these have been sent to their headquarters in Morocco to be preserved with the rest of their trophies. The colonel has had the palms added to his Croix de Guerre ten times; he wears five rows of medal ribbone and many more he has lost on his travels. Those he still has have been washed and turned by a gallant English woman who was an. ambulance driver with the Third French Army and, a refugee, is now driving over here for the Legion. Her people are still in France, the country of her adoption. The heroic tale she quietly told me of the efforts of her unit to cope with transporting the wounded before the great German advance makes this Anglo-French lieutenant a worthy Legionaire herself. She lovee the Legion and worships the colonel, just liKe all the men.

"He Shall Never Be Ashamed." I asked a Polish Lcgionaire how he got along with the colonel; he just looked after the limping, retreating figure like an adoring dog after its master. "There goes a man," was all he said. That was one of the several Poles I spoke to; they have no idea what has become of their families now, those that have families. All the Legionaire> speak French. I saw them off duty in their canteen and chatted with many. They were all emiles, grateful for every comfort the English have given them, quiet and well behaved. The man behind the bar told me there were no drunks among them and that they always behaved like gentlemen. Among the officers only one or two retained their picturesque kepi; several had berets like the colonel. Some were tall and many were handsome, one or two with a fringe of beard on their bronze faces like film warriors. One French officer had a mother and father, a wife and five tiny children scattered about France, with no tidings of any of them this many a day. The youngest, baby he had not even seen, but knew only of its safe arrival in the world. |"A son," he said. "And it i& for him that I am here. He is young France. He shall never be ashamed." This man's breast, too. was strung across with medal ribbons, and now I come to think;

of. them all I cannot remember one, officer or man among them who wore no decoration for valour.

The Legion's Mascots. Almost as much a mascot with the Legionaires ae their black cat and rabbit is the charming little French boy who helps, in their canteen. He told me his home is in the Basses Pyrenees and that he had last heard from his people many weeks ago. He is about fifteen and learned English so well at school that he speaks it almost without a trace of accent. When he got awav to England and the N.A.A.F.I. (Navy, Army and Air Force Institute) gave him a job he was very keen when he found it was with the Legion. For a boy whom fortune had severed from his home and friends he was a shining example of the fortitude and cheerfulness of the France that is fighting on. He modestly attributed all this to the Legionaires, and undoubtedly the spirit of those wonderful men is infectious. I met no one who had anything but admiration for i them.