Our Friends Beneath the Sands The Foreign Legion in France's Colonial Conquests 1870 - 1935

by Windrow, Martin

• ISBN13: 9780297852131
• ISBN10: 0297852132
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-03-01
• Publisher: WN

Summary

Thanks to countless films and books, an entire mythology surrounds the French Foreign Legion and the anonymous, desperate men who fought and died under the desert sun. But the reality is far richer, and Martin Windrow describes it in gripping detail, including the colonial missions in North Africa and Vietnam, the imperative to build empire, and the impact of Islamic fundamentalism.

Author Biography

Martin Windrow was born in 1944 and educated at Wellington College After working, in newspaper and magazine journalism in the 1960s he specialized in military and aviation subjects, and since the 1970s he was worked in book publishing as a commissioning and art editor. He has edited many hundreds of books and monographs mostly in specialist area of military history, and has written a number of titles in the same field. In 2004 Weidenfeld & Nicoloson published his The Last Valley; Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam to widespread critical acclaim. He currently works as a freelance editor from his home in Sussex. He is an Associate of the Royal Historical Society, and for nearly thirty years an Associate of the Foreign Legion Assciation of Great Britain.

Table of Contents

Maps	p. vii
Glossary and abbreviations	p. xxv
Picture captions	p. xxix
Preface	p. xlv
Prologue: 'Bloody Week'	p. 1
Soldiering in the Time of Fever
The Tools of Empire	p. 33
'France Overseas'	p. 45
La Mission Civilisatrice and the Straw Hat Trade	p. 74
The Year of the Five Kings	p. 93
General Vengeance and King Zinc-Nose	p. 135
Tiger Country	p. 166
'A Calling Devoid of Allurement'	p. 210
Maroc
The Instruments of Downfall - 1893-9	p. 249
Sixty Thousand Dead Camels - 1900-1902	p. 271
Blood and Sand - 1902-1903	p. 287
The Lyautey Drill - 1904-1907	p. 323
Two Kinds of War - 1908	p. 351
Falling towards Fes - 1909-12	p. 376
The Immaculate Raiment - 1912-14	p. 394
The Lobster Shell - 1914-18	p. 422
Flawed Blades - 1919-22	p. 454
'The Most Indomitable Race in the World' - 1923-24	p. 475
Dropping the Baton - 1925	p. 503
The Reckoning - 1926-30	p. 552
'Obscure and Unknown Sacrifices' - 1930-34	p. 579
Epilogue: The Fort at the Edge of the World	p. 603
Summary of Foreign Legion operations in Europe, 1914-18	p. 613
Summary of Foreign Legion operations in the Levant, 1925	p. 618
P.C Wren, 1875-1941	p. 622
Notes and sources	p. 628
Select bibliography	p. 666
Index	p. 672
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