Foreign Legions?

[attila]

Do any other countrys have foreign legions like france?

[Enfield]

No.. Spain has a Spanish Foreign Legion, a relative of the French one, but it no longer accepts foreigners. The Legion is unique to France.

Enfield

[Weekend Warrior]

The Royal Gurkha Rifles are a similar(ish) idea-foreign soldiers fighting as part of a legitimate army.

[Weekend Warrior]

Oh yeah, India has Gurkas as well.

[Weekend Warrior]

And then of course there was Eagle Squadron, a WW2 Royal Air Force fighter unit made up solely of American pilots operating in British uniforms.

[Daredevil]

I think Belgium has a Foreign Legion also don't they?

I didn't know that about Eagle Squadron WW. That's interesting. The first RSM of the SAS was an American who had joined the British military and was part of the Coldstream Guards (is that right?) before hooking up with Stirling.

[Mike]

There was an Osprey book about the Spanish Foreign Legion.
also a web site, IIRC http://www.lalegion(something)

[Weekend Warrior]

I suppose that the Ost battalions of the Wermacht (WW2 German Army) could also be considered. They were made up mainly of conscripts from the republics of the Soviet Union, and originally served in the Far East before being moved to Northern France due to acts of dissension. In fact, North Koreans and Indians were captured by the advancing D-Day armies in German uniforms!
The Waffen-SS also enrolled Dutch and Ukranians amongst others into "Legions". There was also a "British Legion" formed from British traitors recruited from PW camps, who were sent to fight on the Eastern Front against the "scourge of Communism".
I'll try and trawl my brains for yet more useless information...

[Daredevil]

Norway and Finland also had homegrown SS units. The Norwegian one was small and short lived but the Finnish SS men were known to be valiant fighters. I don't think the Fins that joined did so out of a love for fascism so much as the chance to fight Russians again.

I also recently saw a documentary about the Tiger Legions. Indians recruited and trained by the Germans to give the British problems in India.

I had read that in the post-war years the French Foreign Legion was made up primarily of former German soldiers. I think after the war was over a lot of those guys didn't have anywhere else to go.

I had also read that much of the Legion today is made up of people from Eastern Europe. Apparently the Legion historically gets quite a few people from areas in the world that seem to be having trouble.

[This message has been edited by Daredevil (edited 01-05-2001).]

[Enfield]

The majority of the Legion after WW2 was German - Dien Bien Phu was essentially fought by the Wehrmacht =o) "Legionnaire" by Simon Murray describes how most of his NCO's in the end of the Algerin War were ex-SS or ex-German Para. Must have been some hard-core soldiers - WW2, then Indochina, then Alegria..that's, oh, 20 years of war in pretty tough units.

After WW2 the Legion went to POW camps and asked for volunteers - I guess a lot of SS guys took that way out.

Between the wars the Germans actually launched a propaganda campaign to get Germans out of the FFL. To keep the German Legionnaires out of Nazi hands after France fell, Germans were transfeered to forts deep in the Sahara or to Indochina.

Koreans and Indians in the German Army? Must have been some very confused GI's that capturd them!

Enfield

PS oh yeah.. there's the Vatican Guard, that's a unit of foreigners, doing their thing for 700 years.

[Daredevil]

The Swiss Guards. The Swiss are actually banned by international law from acting as mercenaries for anyone other than the Vatican.

[Repp]

My grand uncle told me about the "Wildcats" they were supposed to be finnish fighters only armed with a knife. Was my uncle talking bull, or is ther some truth?

Repp

[Tuukka]

The Finnish men joined because they had to so that Germany would still assist Finland, the Germans insisted that the men be facists but most eventually were not. These men guaranteed the German assistance to Finland, whey fought valiantly and didnt participate in any war crimes, that is an acknowledged fact. One man who also was a SS man was Lauri Törni or Larry Thorne to you Americans.

[Tracy]

World War 2: American Volunteer Group, China. AKA "The Flying Tigers"

[Enfield]

Here's an interestinf view:
James Davis, an ex-Cdn. Airborne soldier, in his book "Fortune's Warriors" considers the British Paras and SAS (and probably the RM and SBS, tho he doesn't mention them) a virtual foreign legion because of the high number of non-Brits (ie, Commonwealth volunteers) serving in them.

Enfield

[baboon]

Re Flying Tigers-
it must be remembered this was actually a covert operation by the US govt, who supplied all the aircraft. The pilots were USAAC/USMC/USN officers who were allowed to "resign" their commissions in order to go to China. (I believe the process is called "sheep-dipping").

Re British Army-
Good point Enfield. Apparently there are something like 700 Fijians alone in the British Army.

[Ty29]

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) there were approximately 48 thousand international volunteers known as the International Brigades who fought on the side of of Spanish Republic against the Nationalist Fascist army of General Francisco Franco during his ultimately succesful coup.

2800-3200 members of the International Brigade volunteers were Americans known as the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. About 1/3 of the American volunteers where killed in action during the war.

I also believe that there were some international volunteers fighting along side some of the civillian militia groups who where also fighting against Franco. One of these was the British journalist and author George Orwell who fought with the POUM militia in the Catalonia province.

The republic also recieved help from the USSR in the form of military advisors,volunteers and weapons.

General Franco received extensive support from both Italian dictator Mussolini and Adolph Hitler. Italy provided about 45,000 combat troops and weapons. Germany provided military advisors, weapons and the elite German Condor Airforce unit(forerunner of the Luftwaffe).