Inside the French Foreign Legion

Among the world’s elite fighting units, the French Foreign Legion remains one of the most unique and most mysterious. Open to volunteers from around the world (men from some 140 countries have filled its ranks), the Legion boasts an illustrious and exciting military history stretching from Europe to Africa and Latin America, from Vietnam and Algeria to Afghanistan; features a notoriously difficult selection and training process, accepting approximately 2 percent of applicants; and has traditionally required soldiers to enlist under assumed names. Soldiers swear allegiance not to France, but to the Legion, which has been romanticized in literature, song, and action movies as a place for men to prove their mettle or start their lives over. In this colorful, highly readable book, a blend of firsthand experience and interviews with former legionnaires, N. J. Valldejuli gives an insider’s perspective on what it means—and what it takes—to be a legionnaire. Valldejuli, an English-born