Synopsis/ Excerpts for Legion of

Salazar, Jaime. Legion of the Lost: The True Experience of an American in the French Foreign Legion. Aug. 2005. 256p. NAL/Caliber, $23.95 (0-425-20283-6). 355.3.

This odd but not dull volume could be subtitled A Yuppie in the Foreign Legion. A yuppie is precisely what Salazar was, with a probable fast-track career before him, when he took advantage of being in Paris to join the legion. He survived the grinding, even brutal training, and for some while he also survived his comrades. They were the lost and the lonely from all over Europe, especially the less salubrious parts of it, and Salazar admits to having never been quite comfortable with them, for all the legion’s tight camaraderie. He also suspects that they were never quite comfortable with him, nor too unhappy when he deserted to return to his business career, able to say that he had proved something about himself to himself and to write a useful sketch of the contemporary legion and the mercenary scene in general, for readers interested in either information or thrills. —Roland Green

Ever wondered what would make a man walk from everything he knew for hard life of adventure and redemption under a new identity?

After leaving my high paying engineering career in the United Sates, I ventured to France on a mission to join the most infamous and secretive military unit.

As I approached the ominous medieval Fort de Nogent in Paris, I sensed an impending doom. I knocked on the large oak door

I slid it through the bars, the last time I ever saw the precious document, property of the United States government.

The massive door swung open to a gaping gateway into the unknown. Beyond was the lure of adventure in the most mysterious corps of warriors the world knew, direct descendants of the Christian Crusaders—the French Foreign Legion.

“Américain” the guard gestured, astonished that someone in my position wanted to join. “Are you certain you want to sign away five years of your life?”

Fighting for the Foreign Legion had the most profound impact of my life, pushing me past my emotional, physical, and spiritual limits. I volunteered with high ideals, filled with sugarplum dreams of bygone legionnaires such as Harvard poet and gentlemen Alan Seeger—my ideals were shattered when faced with the Foreign Legion’s brutal reality.

This book details every intimate aspect of my existence in the Foreign Legion, commencing with my quaint civilian backpacking days through France, detailing the thoughts that drove me to the Foreign Legion’s oak doors, through selection and onto the most barbaric training known to man—the proving ground known as “the farm.” Under such suffering, I forged lasting friendships, encountered dangerous enemies with a hatred for Americans and intellectuals, and discovered an iron fortitude I never knew existed in my soft civilian persona. Even after the first four months of black eyes, stitches, and blood-filled boots, life in a combat regiment also proved not to be a picnic along the Seine. Within the Foreign Legion, I learn everything as menial as driving a Jeep, to Ski Combat, to clearing mines with my bare hands—all taught with the Legion’s Spartan “teaching” techniques. On par with killing, the other essential skill taught was how to drink and brawl “Foreign Legion style.” These all become activities from which I barely escaped with my life. Some days the Foreign Legion made me feel like Nietzche’s Superman, other times I cursed the day I was born. Yet through all the backbreaking work and unjust violence, I desperately tried to find meaning to my existence in France’s “monastery of the damned.”

This is the story of the new millennium’s Foreign Legion, an army whose discipline has only been slightly tempered by demands of modern civil society. This is a frank “tell it like it is” personal account, the gritty tale of a man’s journey through a throwaway mercenary army. In a rite-of-passage into manhood, I experienced the real Foreign Legion, unknown to the outside world—confirming many myths, debunking others. This account describes in fine detail the iron methods used to transform the dregs of society into the finest killing machines, “devils not men,” while exacting a toll in return—their souls and humanity.

This account describes how the Foreign Legion fosters brotherhood bound by blood—and vicious abuse by enemies. The reader meets a vast array of amazing and hilarious characters, comrades for life with fascinating histories—from brave moralists to blood-criminals and thugs. I discovered that a legionnaire’s life is one of extremes and contradictions—my experience was peppered with violence, alcohol, and mindless work that sucked the life from the most motivated men. Dangerous training and Devil’s Island-like labour was followed by wild drunken Henry Miller-like sexual excursion through aristocratic cities such as Paris and Cannes. And yes, I discovered that the mysterious man under the képi blanc allures European women.

But the dehumanising reality of the Foreign Legion eventually forced me to make a decision that forever altered the course of my destiny—escape.

This shocking, yet touching story takes the reader into a modern true life Beau Geste. If one truly wants to know the Foreign Legion of today, this is the only book that will reveal the answers.