French Foreign Legion
In 1989, this writer had occasion to interview four-star General William Childs Westmoreland, now 86, formerly U.S. military commander in South Vietnam and at the time of the interview a retired Chief of Staff of the Army. Read more
French Foreign Legion
Early in the morning of July 1, 1916, a mist blanketed the lolling hills of the Somme region of northwestern France. Read more
French Foreign Legion
The German mountain troops were dug into their shallow, frozen foxholes waiting for the enemy ski troops to appear across the horizon. Read more
French Foreign Legion
With the exception of the French Foreign Legion, the concept of the mercenary, or soldier of fortune, seemed extinct after World War II. Read more
French Foreign Legion
By the spring of 1943, the Nazi deaths camps in eastern Poland—Sobibor, Belzac, and Treblinka—were running out of victims. Read more
French Foreign Legion
Near Marseilles, at Aubagne, stands the modern home of the French Foreign Legion. Its spotless grounds include a massive stone pile, the Monument aux Morts, which commemorates the Legion dead of the past 175 years. Read more
French Foreign Legion
On November 28, 1947, a converted North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber crashed in the Algerian desert, killing all aboard. Read more
French Foreign Legion
The waters of the South China Sea shimmered in the sunlight on the morning of April 15, 1847. Read more
French Foreign Legion
“I am not a collector of deserts,” Mussolini declared regarding his imperial ambitions. Instead, he would be a loser of them, most publicly in North Africa and, in one of World War II’s least-known campaigns, in East Africa. Read more
French Foreign Legion
Modern military camouflage has gone high tech, with digicam or “digital camouflage” being the preferred pattern for soldiers in the field. Read more
French Foreign Legion
When Brig. Gen. Joseph-Pierre Koenig, commander of the 1st Free French Brigade, surveyed the area he had just been ordered to defend, he must have been mightily discouraged. Read more
French Foreign Legion
On a moonless night in January 1944, in the Haute Savoie region of southeast France, the drone from the engine of a RAF bomber could be heard in the distance. Read more
French Foreign Legion
Among the French soldiers awaiting the signal to assault German positions at Belloy-en Santerre during the Battle of the Somme, American poet Alan Seeger no doubt contemplated his probable fate on July 4, 1916, ironically the holiday celebrating the independence of his native United States. Read more
