From Al-Milah to Fort Saint Nicholas - With the French Foreign Legion from 1969/1970

Inspired by the heroic life of a former Foreign Legionnaire acquaintance Count Waldemar Rosenborg (the son of Foreign Legion Commandant H.R.H Prince Aage of Denmark), after a farewell luncheon at The Travellers Club (Paris) the author joined the French Foreign Legion for five years at the Fort de Nogent. Previously, in the British Army in the South Arabian Campaign 1965-1967 fighting the Red Wolves of the Radfan in the desert (temperature up to 65°C), he also participated in savage street-fighting against Soviet-backed terrorists in Aden. This was no preparation for the Foreign Legion, but, he had wanted to walk the razor's edge. One Legionnaire hanged himself and another was shot dead in full public view at the airport. Men began to disappear. There were 300 recruits in the Fort Saint Nicholas at the beginning, but most were thrown out as unfit, physically or mentally. Of 48 selected, after training, 28 remained. Months of humiliation and beatings from sadistic sous-officiers made the author decide to depart. At the risk of being shot 'while armed with a stolen weapon, resisting arrest' or another fiction, the author contrived an escape from the island of Madagascar. Growing restless as a civilian he volunteered to fight communist guerrillas with a mounted cavalry unit in Portuguese Mozambique. Later while working as an author, journalist and copy-writer in Paris he was invited to join a foreign intelligence organisation, which he declined.