Thread: Recruits grow too soft for the Foreign Legion

Recruits grow too soft for the Foreign Legion

Adam Sage in Paris

The French Foreign Legion, once a magnet for the tough, the ruthless and the desperate, is struggling to cope with modern recruits wedded to family values and pining for the comforts of home.

The celebrated force has been depleted by a wave of desertions by soldiers who are more interested in singing lullabies and changing nappies than killing their enemies on the battlefield.

The new legionnaires, who tend to come from wealthy Western countries, notably France, no longer want to put up with the unit’s notoriously harsh lifestyle. Eastern Europeans, Asians and South Americans, on the other hand, are made of sterner stuff and represent a small proportion of the deserters.

“We’ve always had deserters, but they used to be during wartime in the fighting,” Lieutenant Grégory Gavroy said. “Now they leave to go and look after their families.”

A total of 286 men abandoned La Légion étrangère last year, he said. Just over half had been given permission to quit before the end of their five-year contract, and the rest deserted.

Last month 31 went on trial at a military tribunal in Nîmes, southern France, charged with “abandoning their post”, which carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison. The tribunal was lenient and handed out three-month suspended sentences.

“I deserted to look after my son who’s about to be born,” a legionnaire told Le Figaro newspaper. “I stand by what I did even though I’m not proud of it.” Another told the French daily: “I signed up for the legend of a unit that is unique in the world. The men I met there were always fighting over nothing and the atmosphere was rotten. After five months I took my bag and got on the first train home.”

The unit, founded in 1831 by King Louis-Philippe, is famed for welding the desperados who form its backbone into a feared fighting machine. Its recruits – men of all nationalities often fleeing their past – are subjected to discipline and conditions far tougher than those imposed on other parts of the French Army. They are often the first to be deployed to dangerous hot-spots. But Le Figaro said: “The legion is facing a generation of soldiers who do not accept the gap between the legionnaire’s life and civil life.”

Lieutenant Gavroy said that the all-male unit was offering new recruits easier living conditions. “We have to follow the evolution of society and people now want more comfort,” he said. “So we have given them telephones to call home, internet access and hot showers, which we certainly never used to have.”

However, this has failed to stem the flow of departures, notably involving legionnaires from EU countries.

Lieutenant Gavroy said: “We get people who come from China on foot or by bicycle to join the legion. Not many of them desert.

“But the Frenchman who’s come 20 kilometres down the road is a different matter. They come to see what the legion is like but it’s not an easy life here. You have to get up early and train hard. If they miss the comfort of home, they think they haven’t got much to lose if they leave.”

He added: “Legionnaires arrive on their own but more and more of them find families while they are here and they want to be with their families.”

Source: Recruits grow too soft for the Foreign Legion - Times Online