Happy New Year to all

[rpbcps]

 

Let us hope 2025 is kind to us all and our families .

 

 

[rpbcps]

Shutting down now and opening a nice bottle of wine produced at the Foreign Legion vine yard in France.

[John Dillinger]

That’s quite a tipple 👌 Happy New Year Richard 🎉

[68coupe]

3 hours ago, rpbcps said:

Shutting down now and opening a nice bottle of wine produced at the Foreign Legion vine yard in France.

Just out of curiosity, while in the Foreign Legion, given that there were members from around the world, did you all have to speak French? At least in an official capacity, or was it a requirement for enlistment?

Karl

[rpbcps]

All orders and commanders were give bi n in French, so you picked up key words quickly, or you paid the price for not doing so.

I did not speak much French when I joined, but quickly understood if you wanted rank, less fatigues and guard duties, you had to do courses, which were all in French. Good incentive to learn French.

We picked up loads of slang and bad words though, not school boy French, as you do in any army I guess. In the 1980's, the legion Para Regiment had a high percentage of English speakers, Irish, Brits, Americans, New Zealanders, Aussies, Canadians Danish and Dutch, so English was often used on radio transmissions, leading to a little of cursing from the officers "Parler français en service". At that time we had senior warrant officers who were native English speakers.

My former company commander used to like speaking English though, he became the General in charge of the French army a few years ago. 

I did know a few legionnaires that learned very basic French so could understand commands etc , they remained Legionnaires for their whole service, never gaining any rank.

The majority of the marching songs were in French, although some Legionnaires just learned the words not knowing what they were singing about. 

There are currently 150 different nationalities in the legion, see below.