I was born a few years before the battle of Dien Bien Phu
And the Legion was still giving basic training at Sidi Bel Abbes.
I was a small boy when I first made contact with the Legion.
Now I should carefully explain that there are two Legions. One is a very professional arm of the French Military. In itself, the French Foreign Legion is an arguable military elite. The 2e REP, the airborne arm of the Legion, is inarguable elite fighting force.
I am not going to get into that Legion at this time because as a small boy I was not introduced to them. That came later when I was in the service.
I was initially introduced to the other legion, the Hollywood Foreign Legion through 1950s American television. Buster Crabbe played Captain Gallant in the show 'Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion'.
The actual Legion has Legio Patria Nostra, The Legion is my Fatherland as one of their mottoes. The other is "Honor and Fidelity'.
The Hollywood Foreign legion is different. Their motto is simply 'Never let the facts get in the way of a good story'.
The show was really an American western format with a Legion setting, coupled with 'Leave it to Beaver' and a dose of Rin Tin Tin.This is most likely because the airwaves were clogged with westerns. It was so much of a western format that it even had horse chases.
Buster Crabbe's son, Cullen played a youngster that was sort of a post mascot. The storyline was that he was Captain Michael Gallant's ward because Gallant's best friend had died and left the boy to Gallant to raise.
'Cuffy' as the boy was known got to sometimes got to go on patrol with the legionnaires.
As a small boy I envied Cuffy. He got to hang out with real men that were big, strong and tough.
As I write this I look back on the basic decency of the show. For the early part it was made in Morocco and many of the people seen in the background were actual legionnaires. I recently read that after the first couple of seasons they moved the filming to Italy because of political unrest making things dangerous.
Still, it was all in all a decent, moral television show with good values and tried to pass a good lesson on to children.
The good guys won and things tied up into a happy ending.
Later Saturday mornings occasionally had shows involving the Hollywood Foreign Legion. There were a couple of Republic serials from the 1930s that aired. They took the Three Musketeers and made them Americans in a Legion setting.
Republic also took footage out of a few of them and made it into a movie called 'Desert Command' featuring a new to Hollywood actor named John Wayne who played an American flying officer.
Over the next several years I was exposed to the Hollywood legion a few more times with a few movies, most notably 'Beau Geste'. This movie has been made three times and was followed by a Marty Feldman spoof. I saw the third edition when it came out in the theater. I was in high school at the time. A year later I got to see the original silent film with Ronald Coleman at a film festival.
I finally got to see the second edition with Gary Cooper later after I got out of the US Army. I saw it at home with my family and will cover this later. It is one of my most cherished memories because Dad was so funny while we watched it.
The adventures of the Hollywood legion sort of drove me to hunt for truth. I wanted to know more about the real Legion. I put the subject of the Legion on my reading list.
I have always been a voracious reader. Literature on the actual legion was fairly sparse. This was decades before the arrival of the internet of today. There was little available regarding the actual legion of the time but what I found I read. I also read a number of books written by those that had served over the years. Most of this was written about Legion service in the early half of the 20th century, pre WW2.
Later as books from recent legionnaires were printed I read a few of them. Some of the writers had finished their contracts, a couple had deserted. I found quite a difference between the attitudes of those that completed their contracts and those that had deserted.
A number of those that had completed their contracts went on to lead highly successful lived in the civilian sector. One Brit that deserted wound up getting jailed after he returned to the UK and on top of that tested HIV positive.
I went into the US Army and did well. I was promoted ahead of my peers. During my service I met a French officer that was observing things in the States. He seemed a little too arrogant for my tastes and when I was on a field problem I killed, cooked and ate a prairie rattler in front of him and watched him get a bit squeamish, much to the amusement of my battery commander. I am quite sure he was not a Legion officer.
Later on in my service I was detailed to accompany a small group of officers to Europe for a couple of weeks and met a couple of legionnaires. I was quite impressed with their professionalism. They were some of the most professional soldiers I have ever dealt with, although I thought that something 'just wasn't quite right' with one of them.
I was also quite impressed with their abilities to speak several languages. I knew the base language of the Legion is, of course, French. I also knew that most foreign enlistees also spoke their native tongues. However, the legionnaires I met spoke more than their native language and French. That in itself is quite impressive.
Immediately after I was discharged from the army I moved into a tipi in the Rockies where I was to spend a wonderful year. It was great experiencing the four seasons while living under canvas.
I knew it would eventually end and decided that it would be a good adventure and an interesting job becoming a game warden in Africa. I wrote the governments of several African nations regarding this.
Someone told me the Legion was in the law enforcement business in parts of Africa so I wrote the Legion also. I used my family's home as the return address and the letters trickled in.
One of them had a Legion return address from Aubagne. It seriously concerned my mother and she mentioned it to a couple of her friends.
Military organizations and small towns are total rumor mills. I don't have to explain that to anyone that has ever worn a military uniform of any nation. The rumor that I was planning to join the Legion.
I came home to visit my family that Christmas and was besieged with everyone and their cousin asking me when I was going to leave to join the Legion. It was like fighting a beehive.
What was worse is that my mother kept nagging me not to join the Legion and no matter what I said, the nagging was ceaseless. Finally my father intervened in his colorful way.
At dinner one evening he casually asked me if you still joined the Legion by getting sent to North Africa. I told him they had changed that back in '62 and one only had to get to mainland France.
Dad then asked me if I knew of any ships in Boston Harbor that we could stow away on. By now I had figured out what Dad was going to do and told him I'd find out.
My mother immediately grew suspicious and asked why my father wanted to know such a thing. Dad immediately sprung the trap and told her that we were BOTH going to join the Legion if she didn't settle down. All three of my sisters smirked.
It did settle Mom down. She did, however ask Dad where he learned how to join the Legion. He said that all of the kids in his neighborhood knew because when their mothers would order them to eat their vegetables they would threaten to run away and join the Foreign Legion and become a hero with a chestful of medals.
Mom asked Dad how that worked out. Dad shrugged and replied he simply got spanked and had to eat his vegetables anyway. Hero or no hero, he had to obey his mother just like everyone else.
Then Dad asked me to watch a movie with the family the next evening. I agreed.
I chuckled when I found out the movie was the Gary Cooper black and white rendition of Beau Geste. Dad had seen this movie when it first came out and there was nothing that was a bigger treat than watching dad watch a movie he had already seen. Dad would give his narration of the movie which was always better than the movie itself.
During the movie in one scene the legionnaires were marching through the desert. Mom commented that the uniforms looked pretty heavy for desert wear.
With a straight face Dad explained the uniforms were thick wool and that the French government issued no underwear. My mother shuddered at the thought of such a thing and asked why.
With a straight face Dad explained did that that because anybody that had walked in such a uniform for more than fifty yards in the stifling heat like that was most assuredly so hot, sweaty, uncomfortable, itchy and just plain angry that they would cheerfully kill anybody just for the hell of it.
My sisters and I laughed while Mom rolled her eyes.
Incidentally, of the three Beau Geste movies I consider the Gary Cooper edition to be the best of the three, followed by the Ronald Coleman silent.
The letters from the African nations mostly proved to be disappointing. Much of Africa was in turmoil. Nobody seemed to be looking for game wardens. They were looking for mercenaries and I was not interested.
Strangely enough, the letter I got from a Legion officer probably saved my life. To this day I believe it did.
In a long, thoughtful letter a Legion officer told me that if I became a game warden I would likely see more combat in a year or two than a Legionnaire would in an entire 20 year career. He explained that any poacher would not think twice about shooting a game warden as the price of poached ivory and rhinoceros horn was incredibly high.
Most likely I would wind up in the Serengeti a pile of hyena eaten bones with a bullet lodged in my head. Of course, I immediately changed my plans and decided to head to Alaska.
To this day I attribute living to a ripe old age because of the wonder, well written, thoughtful letter from a kind Legion officer. I was headstrong, naive and ignorant at the time and the letter made me think.
After my visit I returned to the tipi and shortly after I folded it up I packed a backpack, stuck out my thumb and hitch hiked to Alaska and landed in Kodiak. I didn't see my family for over five years.
I took a couple of jobs out of town and at the time communications were not like they are today. My family seldom heard from me and often it was by having a friend call my father at work and tell him I was OK.
I have always been glad I made it home when I did after the five year absence. It was the last time I got to see my father alive.
I had been home for a very short time when someone asked me if I was on leave from the Legion. Immediately I smelled a rat of some sort and as soon as I got back from my errand I asked my mother what the Legion question was all about. She told me to ask my father.
I did and was treated to a very rare sheepish look. He went to the refrigerator, handed me a beer and pointed to the cellar door. We went into the cellar.
It seems that Dad grew tired of a certain someone's questions regarding my whereabouts. The someone that I will call Al was one of those nosy types that is always asking for details.
While I was in Alaska there were not a lot of details that came back to my parents, just a few things in general terms. Part of this was lack of communications and part of it was me being tight lipped. My mother would have been horrified if she heard even half of what was going on.
Al started asking my father a number of questions my dad simply had no answers to. My father told Al that he didn't know and said that for all he knew it was like I had joined the Foreign Legion. He had simply used it as a figure of speech.
Dad explained that Al had told his wife, Elsie. Elsie screwed up the story and if hit the rumor mill fast and hard. He warned me to expect a lot of people wanted to play '20 questions' with me.
He also told me the rumor had kicked him right in the ass. It had gotten back to Mom shortly before he got home from work. He had arrived a few minutes after Mom heard I had supposedly joined the Legion. She was horribly upset when dad arrived home and Dad said he had played hell getting her calmed down. We shared a laugh about it.
This visit home was to be the last time I ever saw my father alive. Besides the laugh over the silly rumors I helped him clean up a few things and tie up some loose ends. When it was time for me to return to Alaska we parted on excellent terms.
Several years later my mother told me the rest of the story. It was hilarious.
Four years later after my father died my mother met me in Vancouver, BC. I was cruising my sailboat down the inside passage and we spent a wonderful week together living aboard. My mother was a beach, boat and water person and took to it like a duck to water.
It was a time of healing. I was in my mid to late 30s and mom finally realized I was no longer a small boy. She finally saw me for what I was and got over her disappointment. I had not married a nice Catholic girl and become one of the men in the grey flannel suit.
While she had always loved me, she began to enjoy me and respected that I had taken the road less traveled. It was a wonderful time and after all those years communication opened up.
She explained that when she heard the rumor she went straight into shock. A few minutes later my father walked in and she croaked to him I had joined the Legion.
Dad must have had a bad day at work because he wasn't on top of his game that evening. He instantly went into shock himself and told her that he was going straight to St. Christine's to make a novena and light a candle. Mom said she was going to join him.
As they were going down the stairs she said Dad froze in his step and told her to wait a minute and went back inside. Mom said it was like he had been hit by lightning. He went to the back of the phone book and looked at my emergency contact numbers. He immediately called Tony's Bar in Kodiak and asked the bartender if I had been seen in the past couple of days.
The bartender said I had just left 15 minutes earlier.
Dad reported that I was still 'safe' in Kodiak. He also called Al and chewed his ass royally. Mom laughed when she told me she was so relieved she forgot to give Dad hell.
We were sitting int he cockpit of my sailboat when mother told me about this and the sun was coming down. I broke out a bottle of brandy and we enjoyed a drink in the clear fall air.
I asked my mother why she ever even thought for a second that I would have joined the Legion. I had told both her and Dad that I had considered my enlistment in the US Army to be enough and had no desire to join the Legion.
I pointed out that I had cheerfully shown her the letter that had arrived so many years later when I was looking toward Africa and there was nothing said about enlistment in the Legion.
Her reply is that the plain and simple fact that we were sitting on my sailboat that I was cruising was evidence that I had too much adventuresome spirit for my own good.
One thing the pair of us did sitting there was to look back on things and realize that we, all of us, had spent a lot of time worrying about an awful lot of stupidity.
The subject of the Legion didn't enter my life for the next several years except for an occasional movie or if someone handed me a book.
The only time the subject came up with Mom after that was the day I turned forty. I called her and told her I was now too old to join the Legion and we laughed.
The next time the subject came up showed me the tenacity of small town rumors.
It was at my 45th high school reunion that a couple of my classmates came up to me and told me that about 35 years ago they heard I had run off and joined the Foreign Legion.
The icing on the cake came last summer when I came back to my hometown and walked into the small general store up the street from my childhood home. An old woman recognized me after nearly half a century and asked me when I got out of the Legion.
I was stunned to say the least.
Still, looking back on things I do owe both Legions.
I likely owe the French Foreign Legion my life thanks to the kind letter one of their officers sent me so many years ago.
I owe the Hollywood Foreign Legion something for the entertainment they have provided me over the years.
I do also believe that I owe both Legions a little something simply for being there during my twenties and thirties. Simply by being there it gave me a feeling of some security because I knew that if things ever got really bad the Legion was there for me as a last resort. There is a certain comfort in knowing that there is a fallback no matter how uncomfortable it might be.
My recent reunion made me think about all of this as it has been an awful long time since I had given it much thought. The other day I received a special book I ordered. It's title is 'Piccolo's Adventures in the Foreign Legion', by Piccolo.
It is a beautifully bound book, and the cover is printed in gold leaf and would be welcome in anyone's library. It covers all my adventures in the Legion.
Of course, I have never been in the Legion so it is a book of blank pages. I figure that when someone finds it in my footlocker they will be wondering what it is all about.
There is something to be said of leaving behind some confusion from the grave.
I was a small boy when I first made contact with the Legion.
Now I should carefully explain that there are two Legions. One is a very professional arm of the French Military. In itself, the French Foreign Legion is an arguable military elite. The 2e REP, the airborne arm of the Legion, is inarguable elite fighting force.
I am not going to get into that Legion at this time because as a small boy I was not introduced to them. That came later when I was in the service.
I was initially introduced to the other legion, the Hollywood Foreign Legion through 1950s American television. Buster Crabbe played Captain Gallant in the show 'Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion'.
The actual Legion has Legio Patria Nostra, The Legion is my Fatherland as one of their mottoes. The other is "Honor and Fidelity'.
The Hollywood Foreign legion is different. Their motto is simply 'Never let the facts get in the way of a good story'.
The show was really an American western format with a Legion setting, coupled with 'Leave it to Beaver' and a dose of Rin Tin Tin.This is most likely because the airwaves were clogged with westerns. It was so much of a western format that it even had horse chases.
Buster Crabbe's son, Cullen played a youngster that was sort of a post mascot. The storyline was that he was Captain Michael Gallant's ward because Gallant's best friend had died and left the boy to Gallant to raise.
'Cuffy' as the boy was known got to sometimes got to go on patrol with the legionnaires.
As a small boy I envied Cuffy. He got to hang out with real men that were big, strong and tough.
As I write this I look back on the basic decency of the show. For the early part it was made in Morocco and many of the people seen in the background were actual legionnaires. I recently read that after the first couple of seasons they moved the filming to Italy because of political unrest making things dangerous.
Still, it was all in all a decent, moral television show with good values and tried to pass a good lesson on to children.
The good guys won and things tied up into a happy ending.
Later Saturday mornings occasionally had shows involving the Hollywood Foreign Legion. There were a couple of Republic serials from the 1930s that aired. They took the Three Musketeers and made them Americans in a Legion setting.
Republic also took footage out of a few of them and made it into a movie called 'Desert Command' featuring a new to Hollywood actor named John Wayne who played an American flying officer.
Over the next several years I was exposed to the Hollywood legion a few more times with a few movies, most notably 'Beau Geste'. This movie has been made three times and was followed by a Marty Feldman spoof. I saw the third edition when it came out in the theater. I was in high school at the time. A year later I got to see the original silent film with Ronald Coleman at a film festival.
I finally got to see the second edition with Gary Cooper later after I got out of the US Army. I saw it at home with my family and will cover this later. It is one of my most cherished memories because Dad was so funny while we watched it.
The adventures of the Hollywood legion sort of drove me to hunt for truth. I wanted to know more about the real Legion. I put the subject of the Legion on my reading list.
I have always been a voracious reader. Literature on the actual legion was fairly sparse. This was decades before the arrival of the internet of today. There was little available regarding the actual legion of the time but what I found I read. I also read a number of books written by those that had served over the years. Most of this was written about Legion service in the early half of the 20th century, pre WW2.
Later as books from recent legionnaires were printed I read a few of them. Some of the writers had finished their contracts, a couple had deserted. I found quite a difference between the attitudes of those that completed their contracts and those that had deserted.
A number of those that had completed their contracts went on to lead highly successful lived in the civilian sector. One Brit that deserted wound up getting jailed after he returned to the UK and on top of that tested HIV positive.
I went into the US Army and did well. I was promoted ahead of my peers. During my service I met a French officer that was observing things in the States. He seemed a little too arrogant for my tastes and when I was on a field problem I killed, cooked and ate a prairie rattler in front of him and watched him get a bit squeamish, much to the amusement of my battery commander. I am quite sure he was not a Legion officer.
Later on in my service I was detailed to accompany a small group of officers to Europe for a couple of weeks and met a couple of legionnaires. I was quite impressed with their professionalism. They were some of the most professional soldiers I have ever dealt with, although I thought that something 'just wasn't quite right' with one of them.
I was also quite impressed with their abilities to speak several languages. I knew the base language of the Legion is, of course, French. I also knew that most foreign enlistees also spoke their native tongues. However, the legionnaires I met spoke more than their native language and French. That in itself is quite impressive.
Immediately after I was discharged from the army I moved into a tipi in the Rockies where I was to spend a wonderful year. It was great experiencing the four seasons while living under canvas.
I knew it would eventually end and decided that it would be a good adventure and an interesting job becoming a game warden in Africa. I wrote the governments of several African nations regarding this.
Someone told me the Legion was in the law enforcement business in parts of Africa so I wrote the Legion also. I used my family's home as the return address and the letters trickled in.
One of them had a Legion return address from Aubagne. It seriously concerned my mother and she mentioned it to a couple of her friends.
Military organizations and small towns are total rumor mills. I don't have to explain that to anyone that has ever worn a military uniform of any nation. The rumor that I was planning to join the Legion.
I came home to visit my family that Christmas and was besieged with everyone and their cousin asking me when I was going to leave to join the Legion. It was like fighting a beehive.
What was worse is that my mother kept nagging me not to join the Legion and no matter what I said, the nagging was ceaseless. Finally my father intervened in his colorful way.
At dinner one evening he casually asked me if you still joined the Legion by getting sent to North Africa. I told him they had changed that back in '62 and one only had to get to mainland France.
Dad then asked me if I knew of any ships in Boston Harbor that we could stow away on. By now I had figured out what Dad was going to do and told him I'd find out.
My mother immediately grew suspicious and asked why my father wanted to know such a thing. Dad immediately sprung the trap and told her that we were BOTH going to join the Legion if she didn't settle down. All three of my sisters smirked.
It did settle Mom down. She did, however ask Dad where he learned how to join the Legion. He said that all of the kids in his neighborhood knew because when their mothers would order them to eat their vegetables they would threaten to run away and join the Foreign Legion and become a hero with a chestful of medals.
Mom asked Dad how that worked out. Dad shrugged and replied he simply got spanked and had to eat his vegetables anyway. Hero or no hero, he had to obey his mother just like everyone else.
Then Dad asked me to watch a movie with the family the next evening. I agreed.
I chuckled when I found out the movie was the Gary Cooper black and white rendition of Beau Geste. Dad had seen this movie when it first came out and there was nothing that was a bigger treat than watching dad watch a movie he had already seen. Dad would give his narration of the movie which was always better than the movie itself.
During the movie in one scene the legionnaires were marching through the desert. Mom commented that the uniforms looked pretty heavy for desert wear.
With a straight face Dad explained the uniforms were thick wool and that the French government issued no underwear. My mother shuddered at the thought of such a thing and asked why.
With a straight face Dad explained did that that because anybody that had walked in such a uniform for more than fifty yards in the stifling heat like that was most assuredly so hot, sweaty, uncomfortable, itchy and just plain angry that they would cheerfully kill anybody just for the hell of it.
My sisters and I laughed while Mom rolled her eyes.
Incidentally, of the three Beau Geste movies I consider the Gary Cooper edition to be the best of the three, followed by the Ronald Coleman silent.
The letters from the African nations mostly proved to be disappointing. Much of Africa was in turmoil. Nobody seemed to be looking for game wardens. They were looking for mercenaries and I was not interested.
Strangely enough, the letter I got from a Legion officer probably saved my life. To this day I believe it did.
In a long, thoughtful letter a Legion officer told me that if I became a game warden I would likely see more combat in a year or two than a Legionnaire would in an entire 20 year career. He explained that any poacher would not think twice about shooting a game warden as the price of poached ivory and rhinoceros horn was incredibly high.
Most likely I would wind up in the Serengeti a pile of hyena eaten bones with a bullet lodged in my head. Of course, I immediately changed my plans and decided to head to Alaska.
To this day I attribute living to a ripe old age because of the wonder, well written, thoughtful letter from a kind Legion officer. I was headstrong, naive and ignorant at the time and the letter made me think.
After my visit I returned to the tipi and shortly after I folded it up I packed a backpack, stuck out my thumb and hitch hiked to Alaska and landed in Kodiak. I didn't see my family for over five years.
I took a couple of jobs out of town and at the time communications were not like they are today. My family seldom heard from me and often it was by having a friend call my father at work and tell him I was OK.
I have always been glad I made it home when I did after the five year absence. It was the last time I got to see my father alive.
I had been home for a very short time when someone asked me if I was on leave from the Legion. Immediately I smelled a rat of some sort and as soon as I got back from my errand I asked my mother what the Legion question was all about. She told me to ask my father.
I did and was treated to a very rare sheepish look. He went to the refrigerator, handed me a beer and pointed to the cellar door. We went into the cellar.
It seems that Dad grew tired of a certain someone's questions regarding my whereabouts. The someone that I will call Al was one of those nosy types that is always asking for details.
While I was in Alaska there were not a lot of details that came back to my parents, just a few things in general terms. Part of this was lack of communications and part of it was me being tight lipped. My mother would have been horrified if she heard even half of what was going on.
Al started asking my father a number of questions my dad simply had no answers to. My father told Al that he didn't know and said that for all he knew it was like I had joined the Foreign Legion. He had simply used it as a figure of speech.
Dad explained that Al had told his wife, Elsie. Elsie screwed up the story and if hit the rumor mill fast and hard. He warned me to expect a lot of people wanted to play '20 questions' with me.
He also told me the rumor had kicked him right in the ass. It had gotten back to Mom shortly before he got home from work. He had arrived a few minutes after Mom heard I had supposedly joined the Legion. She was horribly upset when dad arrived home and Dad said he had played hell getting her calmed down. We shared a laugh about it.
This visit home was to be the last time I ever saw my father alive. Besides the laugh over the silly rumors I helped him clean up a few things and tie up some loose ends. When it was time for me to return to Alaska we parted on excellent terms.
Several years later my mother told me the rest of the story. It was hilarious.
Four years later after my father died my mother met me in Vancouver, BC. I was cruising my sailboat down the inside passage and we spent a wonderful week together living aboard. My mother was a beach, boat and water person and took to it like a duck to water.
It was a time of healing. I was in my mid to late 30s and mom finally realized I was no longer a small boy. She finally saw me for what I was and got over her disappointment. I had not married a nice Catholic girl and become one of the men in the grey flannel suit.
While she had always loved me, she began to enjoy me and respected that I had taken the road less traveled. It was a wonderful time and after all those years communication opened up.
She explained that when she heard the rumor she went straight into shock. A few minutes later my father walked in and she croaked to him I had joined the Legion.
Dad must have had a bad day at work because he wasn't on top of his game that evening. He instantly went into shock himself and told her that he was going straight to St. Christine's to make a novena and light a candle. Mom said she was going to join him.
As they were going down the stairs she said Dad froze in his step and told her to wait a minute and went back inside. Mom said it was like he had been hit by lightning. He went to the back of the phone book and looked at my emergency contact numbers. He immediately called Tony's Bar in Kodiak and asked the bartender if I had been seen in the past couple of days.
The bartender said I had just left 15 minutes earlier.
Dad reported that I was still 'safe' in Kodiak. He also called Al and chewed his ass royally. Mom laughed when she told me she was so relieved she forgot to give Dad hell.
We were sitting int he cockpit of my sailboat when mother told me about this and the sun was coming down. I broke out a bottle of brandy and we enjoyed a drink in the clear fall air.
I asked my mother why she ever even thought for a second that I would have joined the Legion. I had told both her and Dad that I had considered my enlistment in the US Army to be enough and had no desire to join the Legion.
I pointed out that I had cheerfully shown her the letter that had arrived so many years later when I was looking toward Africa and there was nothing said about enlistment in the Legion.
Her reply is that the plain and simple fact that we were sitting on my sailboat that I was cruising was evidence that I had too much adventuresome spirit for my own good.
One thing the pair of us did sitting there was to look back on things and realize that we, all of us, had spent a lot of time worrying about an awful lot of stupidity.
The subject of the Legion didn't enter my life for the next several years except for an occasional movie or if someone handed me a book.
The only time the subject came up with Mom after that was the day I turned forty. I called her and told her I was now too old to join the Legion and we laughed.
The next time the subject came up showed me the tenacity of small town rumors.
It was at my 45th high school reunion that a couple of my classmates came up to me and told me that about 35 years ago they heard I had run off and joined the Foreign Legion.
The icing on the cake came last summer when I came back to my hometown and walked into the small general store up the street from my childhood home. An old woman recognized me after nearly half a century and asked me when I got out of the Legion.
I was stunned to say the least.
Still, looking back on things I do owe both Legions.
I likely owe the French Foreign Legion my life thanks to the kind letter one of their officers sent me so many years ago.
I owe the Hollywood Foreign Legion something for the entertainment they have provided me over the years.
I do also believe that I owe both Legions a little something simply for being there during my twenties and thirties. Simply by being there it gave me a feeling of some security because I knew that if things ever got really bad the Legion was there for me as a last resort. There is a certain comfort in knowing that there is a fallback no matter how uncomfortable it might be.
My recent reunion made me think about all of this as it has been an awful long time since I had given it much thought. The other day I received a special book I ordered. It's title is 'Piccolo's Adventures in the Foreign Legion', by Piccolo.
It is a beautifully bound book, and the cover is printed in gold leaf and would be welcome in anyone's library. It covers all my adventures in the Legion.
Of course, I have never been in the Legion so it is a book of blank pages. I figure that when someone finds it in my footlocker they will be wondering what it is all about.
There is something to be said of leaving behind some confusion from the grave.
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