In France, an Enchanting Museum for Soldiers With No Past or Name

We were on the outskirts of Aubagne, a town about 10 miles east of Marseilles, when I saw the sign: Legion Etrangere.

I know only enough French to order cafe in a cafe, but Legion Etrangere I have known since I was a boy . . . since I first read “Beau Geste” and gloried in the exploits of the brothers Beau, John and Dirk.

And I have seen the movie--the silent version, the remake and the remake of the remake--I don’t know how many times. But never a real legionnaire.

Not until this quiet Sunday morning.

I heard him before I saw him. Just around the corner from the headquarters of the 1st Foreign Regiment is the Musee du Kepi Blanc, a museum named for the distinctive boxlike white cap worn by legionnaires.

We had let ourselves in and had begun our leisurely inspection when he took up his song. Softly at first. In French of course. I have no idea what he was singing about, but the song was so sweet, so plaintive and so absolutely appropriate for this place on a Sunday morning that I was struck dumb and had to remind myself to breathe.

I was drawn to the singer. My wife too. She had heard him up on the second floor. We followed his song to a duty room just off the foyer. And there he was--my first legionnaire. Not exactly the jut-jawed, hell-for-leather swashbuckler I had held in my mind all these years.

No, this was a tall, sparse man with a shaved head (cut in the regulation style known as boule a zero ), a whole rank of missing uppers and an impressive gash--just beginning to heal--that arced down from his right temple to just below his eye.

But, oh, his bearing was proud and his every movement eloquent.

He bade us bon jour and then “good morning.” I had questions for him and it was obvious it had been a while since he had been presented with this much English. But he warmed to it and before long the words were rolling out.

There are two things about a French Foreign Legionnaire I have always known: You never ask his name, and you never ask where he is from. These are, after all, men who have taken new names--Legion names. And they have only present and future--no past. So I was very careful to keep it to small talk.

Whereupon my wife piped up, “Your accent . . . is it Scottish?”

Oh, my!

He smiled. “Oh, no, ma’am, I am from Canada.”

“Canada!” she exclaimed. “Where in Canada?”

Oh, my! Oh, my!

He smiled again. “New Brunswick,” he replied.

“My husband and I grew up in Canada . . . in the West,” she continued.

“I had an uncle who had a farm out in Alberta,” our Legionnaire replied. “About 10 miles from a town called Lethbridge.”

“Lethbridge!” my wife exclaimed again. “We were married in Lethbridge.”

And that is how we came to make the acquaintance of Corporal-Chef Fraser MacDonald of St. John, New Brunswick, a 13-year veteran of the Legion who is concierge-caretaker-curator of this remarkable museum that celebrates 160 years of the purest tradition of soldiering.

Everything is French Foreign Legion--from the marble floor to the red tile roof. When, in 1962, the Legion withdrew from Algeria, where it had been headquartered since its inception, it literally dismantled 130 years of history and brought it--stone by stone--here to Aubagne.

“What you see is Legion,” the corporal said. He wanted to be very sure we did not mistake any of it as France’s doing or, God forbid, the regular army’s. He tipped back a straightback chair, one of four pulled up to a long conference table. Its seat was beautifully inlaid with rare woods.

“These chairs were made in 1846 by a Legionnaire while serving a disciplinary sentence,” he explained. “They are made from old ammunition cases.”

He bade me to get down on my knees to note the stenciling on the underside. It was an old ammunition case, all right.

He swung open a massive black iron door--a crimped and tortured work of art. “This door was made in 1963 by a Legionnaire,” the corporal explained. “There are precisely 645.84 meters of welding in its construction.”

The door opened onto a parade ground, at one end of which stood a huge bronze globe supported by an enormous stone plinth, a memorial to the Legion dead. Only heroes walk there. We were not permitted beyond the doorway.

Every April 30, the Legion’s most sacred relic--the wooden hand of Capitaine Danjou--is paraded in this square. It was discovered in the rubble of a farmhouse in Camerone, Mexico, following a fierce, all-day engagement in which Danjou and 60-some Legionnaires (three of whom lived to tell about it) held off a force of 2,000 Mexican soldiers.

“La Fete de Camerone is the most important day in the Legion calendar,” Corp. MacDonald explained. “The hand comes out of its box and is carried by an old Legionnaire--the most decorated among us.”

Otherwise it rests in a reliquary in the Legion Hall of Honour, where the names of the 903 Legion officers killed in battle are inscribed, and where Legion campaigns--Crimee, Tonkin, Dahomy, Maroc . . . I count more than 20--march in close order across the cold marble.

We stood at the head of the stairs and looked down into the room. It was as still and cold as the bed of an old dark pond. The ashes of a Legionnaire from Chicago--William Moll--were tucked into a little windowed recess.

It went on like this for two floors--a melange of religion, romance and proud military tradition: bloodied battle flags, ordnance and weapons, the accouterments of cavalry, the medals of Legion heroes and the kepis of its famous fallen, a grand parade of Legion uniforms that steps off with the first fusilier.

And here and there something unexpected:

--A macabre display: a scattering of bullets dug out of the exhumed bodies of legionnaires.

--Exquisite carvings, parquetry, sculpture, metalwork and tapestries turned out by the rough hands of soldiers.

--A brass cross wreathed in barbed wire. “In beloved memory of Lt. Alain de Woillement who fell in battle Dec. 28, 1948 in French Indo-China,” the card next to it reads. And then this: “I rose from the chill ground and folded my soldier in his blanket and buried him where he fell.”

And all around are heroic paintings, watercolors, photographs and portraits of the men of many nations--crusaders, they used to be called.

(The latest crusaders, we learned from news reports when we returned home, have been East Europeans. Hungry for work, they have been flocking to join the Legion since their borders opened, a senior officer was quoted as saying. Each month now, of the 120 men who enlist for five years, more than 30 come from Eastern Europe, with the exception of Albania and East Germany.)

When we had seen it all, we stopped at the regimental shop for a souvenir, something to remind us of this morning spent with the French Foreign Legion. My wife settled on a water pitcher and six drinking glasses--rough-worked, blue as the May sky and just $29 for the set.

“Made by retired legionnaires at our rest home at Puyloubier,” the corporal told us. And he threw in a look that said “by now you should have it figured out--everything is Legion.”

As for myself, I came away with a kepi blanc for which I paid $20. The instant I put it on the memories came crowding in--the burning African sun, the sift and drift of the Sahara, the furnace blast pounding against the parapets at Ft. Zinderneuf.

“It makes me very thirsty, wearing this cap,” I said. Of course the corporal had easement for that, too. Wine from the Legion vineyards at Puyloubier bottled under the Capitaine Danjou label. I tried a little of the red. I would pronounce it . . . wellborn and proud.