Exit Beau Geste

At its headquarters in the Algerian city of Sidi-bel-Abbes, the French Foreign Legion last week awaited the sound of Taps. On the surface nothing was changed.

In the Legion Museum lay the wooden hand of one-armed Captain Jean Danjou, who died with 39 other Legionnaires in a last-ditch stand against 2,000 Mexicans in 1863. In the courtyard surrounded by the pink-walled barracks stood the Monument to the Dead--a bronze terrestrial globe guarded by four bigger-than-life statues of Legionnaires. Sentries in white kepis still stood guard before the gate bearing the inscription Legion Etrangere, but packing cases were piled on stair landings and in mess halls, and Legion tanks and halftracks were clanking down the road to Oran to embark for France.

The Foreign Legion, which was created 131 years ago for the express purpose of conquering Algeria, must now leave Algeria. The vanguard of a 1,500-man detachment has already gone to its new training area in the hills of Corsica. Another detachment is moving to new headquarters at Aubagne, a suburb of Marseille --marking the first time that the Legion has been stationed on the French mainland in peacetime. "Transporting the Legion from Sidi-bel-Abbes is like uprooting a gnarled olive tree," says Legionnaire Colonel Alberic Vaillant. "It requires care and attention to make sure the old tree will flourish in new soil."

To generations of reading romantics, the Legion is inextricably linked with flying clouds of Touareg horsemen, toy-soldier forts in the midst of the Sahara, and nobly born Englishmen hiding their mysterious pasts under assumed names. To career soldiers, the Legion is one of the world's few elite organizations, comparable to the U.S. Marines and Britain's Brigade of Guards. To its own members (over the years the majority have been German or Slav), the Legion is an unparalleled string of battles, from Constantine in 1837 to Sebastopol, Magenta, the Somme, Verdun, Narvik, Bir Hakeim, Cassino, Dienbienphu, and Algiers in 1960. Its flag, "whose staff bends under the weight of its glory," is one of the most cited and decorated of all the world's regimental standards.

With the end of France's colonial empire, the Foreign Legion seems obsolete. Some units may stay in Saharan outposts until 1965; others have already been sent off to French Somaliland and Madagascar.

The abandonment of the old headquarters at Sidi-bel-Abbes makes many Legionnaires feel that the days of glory are over. They cannot get the old thrill from plans to reshape the Legion into a crack, technical-minded force able to carry out all tasks, including nuclear ones. The change of headquarters from sun-scorched Sidi-bel-Abbes to the French mainland has been accompanied by a sharp decline in candidates for enlistment. An ex-Legionnaire, who was not surprised, grumbled, "Men joined the Foreign Legion for adventure, to see camels, giraffes and Tonkinese girls--not the suburbs of Marseille."

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