The French Foreign Legion by Douglas Boyd

I and two other NCOs and about twenty Vietnamese were sent over to the airfield to get it ready for our Mohawk aircraft that were going to be based there. I remember two points that are applicable here: first the 1st Cav Div was based initially at Ankhe. I found that portion dealing with Viet Nam after World War II very interesting, since I was there in 1965-66.

The author did an outstanding job in doing his research for the book.

There have been few books that I got from Amazon that I found hard to put down, this was one. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Follow us on Twitter: and on Facebook via. For more information on our titles please sign up to our newsletter at Each week you will receive updates on free and discounted ebooks. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. His published fiction and non-fiction, translated into many languages, includes three novels set against a Legion background: The Eagle and the Snake, The Truth and the Lies, The Honour and the Glory. RAF Russian linguist, international businessman, music impresario, BBC Television Producer/Director, Douglas Boyd has been writing full-time since setting up home in a medieval farmhouse in south-west France thirty-five years ago. Praise for The French Foreign Legion 'A tight and fascinating history of the nearly two centuries of the Legion's activities.' - Brig Anthony Hunter-Choat (UK's senior ex-legionnaire) Perhaps the greatest praise of the book is the fact that legionnaires liked this history of their incredible army so much that they elected author Douglas Boyd an honorary ex-legionnaire. This is a world where fact exceeds the wildest fiction: men fighting literally to the last bullet at Camarón in Mexico in 1863 cooks and clerks with no parachute training volunteering to be dropped into beleaguered Dien Bien Phu in 1954 with the intention of dying beside their comrades the paras who mutinied in Algeria to bring down the government of France the heroes who dropped on Kolwezi to rescue thousands of European hostages. Training is so tough that five recruits out of six are rejected, never to wear the coveted white kepi. Founded in 1831 to fight France’s colonial wars without spilling French blood, this mysterious army is today a world-class fighting force. What attracts men from 136 different nations to embrace the harsh military code of an army that requires them to lay down their lives for a country not their own, if ordered to do so by politicians whose language many of them hardly speak? Douglas Boyd’s history of the Legion answers that question, with fifteen historic photographs and eleven battle/campaign maps.

The French Foreign Legion by Douglas Boyd