We were all dispatched back to Aubagne after Castelnaudary, where it all started in the Legion for us about 5 months ago. All 40 of us with a few extras from other sections that got delayed for Ventilation process, (Ventilation seems like we were about to get some hot air blown onto us but actually means in this context, being transferred to regiment or in some cases heading back into civilian life).
It was our last night of being together as a section, 5 months of sharing everything, toilets, bivouacs, buses, food and going through tests.
Most of the guys I would never see again apart from the 12 volunteers to 2REP including myself. We put on our TDF uniform for our formal ceremony with the Chef-de-corps in the salle d’honneur and the crypt of the Legion where the famous Captain Danjou’s prosthetic wooden hand rests together with the names of all the legionnaires killed in service throughout all the Legion’s history of almost 200 years since its inception from 1831. Following the ceremony where the Colonel donned his white gloves to congratulate personally to the 4 mostly highly ranked legionnaires within our section, Tucker, Dacier, Lekof and Macaud.
We proceeded to visit the museum but weren’t given any time to read any of the content or study any particular artifact because Caporal Chinda was ordering us to hurry up. There, the details of the most celebrated battle of Camerone was displayed where over 60 effective legionnaires bravely resisted against around 2000 Mexican warriors.
In this battle of 31 April 1863, Captain Danjou was assassinated with a bullet to the chest and the only 3 legionnaires survived the ambush to their fortified Hacienda in Camarone, Mexico. One of them spoke Spanish and was able to make a plea to care for their injured and return home. The Mexicans allowed the 3 legionnaires to return home with their injured and since then, legionnaires have been given legendary status within France for their bravery and for being elite soldiers based on this legend.
The Mexican commanders referred to the legionnaires as devils and from then on, ‘le diable marche avec nous’ has become the official chant of the 2REP superimposed onto a former Nazi war song ‘Tief Im Feindesland’. Following the Second World War, the Legion was to receive thousands of German recruits escaping from the fallen Third Reich and thus forging German tradition within the Legion and particularly 2REP where we were obliged to sing in German, Westerwald and Edelweiss within the 2eme compagnie de montagne.
The following day after the ceremony, we assembled in the place d’arme to go to our respective regiments. We stood to attention while our names were called out one by one. Everybody departed with their baggage and embarked on their buses, within a few minutes most of us were gone apart from us at 2REP because we had to stay an extra day to do some extra medical checks at the military hospital Laveran to check if were sufficiently apt to begin jumping from planes within a week or two. We were put in order of our ranking at Castelnaudary, Dacier, Tucker, Lekof, Paulino, Gaston, Restrepo, Campelo, Kokes, Bensaeh, Dubrovsky, Erdenee and Babic.
“Gaston Neil”.
I got escorted by a young nurse into the X-ray room where she instructed me to take my clothes off, just a small pair of running shorts and t-shirt which I just threw on the floor instead of hanging them up neatly on the door. I stood in this machine while it scanned my entire spine and within a minute or two it was all done. I was told to get dressed and wait with the others, my first conversation with a woman in a few months and I did it butt naked.
The next day, Sergeant Patat was waiting for us to deliver us to Calvi for the overnight ferry.
“Just call me Moniteur, as you can see my name is Patat, so I’ll be taking a run if you want to join”.
To have ‘Patat’ in French means to be physically strong or full of potato. In fact, Moniteur Patat didn’t invite us to run that day because he complained about the night before in a nightclub filled with cougars. We took our bus to Marseille port for our ferry to Corsica, dressed up in our TDF uniforms for all the public to watch while sat in the waiting room for the departing ferry. It was an emotional moment and a new chapter in our life because it was expected that we spend our entire first contract of 5 years in the same regiment. Corsica was our new home and we had to embrace it or get the fuck out.
We put our bags down in our rooms on the ferry and went straight to the bar to buy rounds of drinks, cocktails, beers and wine, everybody got a round in while we listened to Moniteur Patat, a big personality with about 15 years of service and praising the 2REP as the best regiment in the Legion. We gathered on the front deck of the vessel with our cups and gave a big cheers a few miles off the coast of Marseille. The city lit up in the setting sun, ahead, eternal darkness of the black Mediterranean Sea and an unknown fate on a distant island.
Diaries of a Legionnaire 