March Or Die: France And The Foreign Legion

Why does France still retain the Foreign Legion, a unique fighting force of men drawn from a hundred nations with no common culture? More important, why do they need France?

The best-selling author of Who Dares Wins analyses the legend and re-examines the battle honours of the Foreign Legion, and his revelations illuminate the darker side of its historic relationship to the motherland. Called into being in 1831 as a device to absorb the footloose veterans of Napoleon’s old armies, the French Foreign Legion subsequently won some astonishing victories on farflung battlefields, but its most important role has been as a scapegoat for the politicians; the legionnaires – so many of them French not by birth but by blood shed in battle – became the expendables of France.

Tony Geraghty has spent many years researching the annals of this elite force and interviewing legionnaires and ex-legionnaires throughout Europe. March or Die will be read not only for its wide-ranging stories of adventure and courage, but also for the light it sheds upon many episodes of recent history.