MURRAY : Legionnaire (fülszöveg)
The well-dressed young man was little prepared for the consequences of the naive impulse that took him to the grim Old Fort in Paris one cold winter morning. As the massive gates swung open he was confronted by a soldier dressed in khaki, a blue cummerbund, bright red epaulettes, white gaiters, and a white kepi. The Legionnaire slammed the doors shut behind him.
Five short years later Simon Murray left the legendary French Foreign Legion a battle-hardened veteran, a man who had plumbed the depths of physical and emotional experience. In this unsparing journal he describes how he endured a military discipline that drove strong men to desertion and suicide. He watched all kinds of men simmer and explode in murderous hatred, releasing their tensions in orgies of blind drunkenness. He felt the forging of a transcending esprit de corps that made the Legionnaires the most feared of elite corps of warriors. And he watched the climax of the Legion's romantic history when President de Gaulle agreed to Algeria's independence, ending a generation of war. The Legion found itself simultaneously the rearguard of the French Empire, hunting down bands of Algerian guerrillas in the mountain wilderness, and the mutinous vanguard of an abortive Generals' revolt, poised to jump on Paris. In the event, the Empire—and the Legion—was lost, but Simon Murray lived to pass on his enthralling true-life Beau Geste.
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| KATALÓGUS | TARTALOM |
