Miles wrote:
any unit that plots to assassinate the French president because he orders them to leave Algeria and abandon 100+ years worth of legionare graves and history.
has my respect
i have a book somewhere written by a pommy bloke who was in the Legions 2nd Para Regiment when that was going down. it's all diary entries, and it's really quite interesting. track it down if you can - "Legionairre" by Simon Murray.
some of the training he descries... christ. When they're playing with grenades, there's one bit where the NCO is in a pit (foxhole to you yanks) throwing grenades out to the hapless punter, who had to catch it and throw it back. The fun bit was that the NCO would pull the pin every so often. direct quote - "Better than catching cricket balls"