Legion Music: French Foreign Legion song

In mid-September 2019, the exceptional and well-respected Foreign Legion Music Band (MLE) performed a concert in Attignat, a small town in the Ain department in eastern France. During the concert, an Eastern-European legionnaire was praised with a great applause for singing the French Foreign Legion, a song from 1958, well-known due to its original performer Frank Sinatra. See the video.

The concert of the Foreign Legion Music Band was organized by the Mémoires de l’Ain 1939 – 1945 (Memories of the Ain), a history association. In the Ain department, there were two well-known military camps closely connected to the Foreign Legion: Camp of Sathonay and Camp of La Valbonne, both situated close to Lyon, the second-largest urban area of France. Several Foreign Legion provisional units were established and trained there in 1939-40.

Note that the Foreign Legion musicians are decorated with a fourragère. As members of the 1er RE, the motherhouse of the Legion, they were awarded (with the rest of the regiment) with the Foreign Theater Operation War Cross fourragère during the 2019 Camerone Day. The 1er RE legionnaires, including the Music Band, paraded for the very first time with their new decoration in mid-July in Paris, during the Bastille Day Military Parade 2019.

The Foreign Legion musicians had to pass the same four-month basic training as every legionnaire have to. The majority of them had also served with a combat company before they joined the Music Band.

A Russian(?) legionnaire competing with Frank Sinatra this September:

 

Related posts:
Foreign Legion Music: Presentation of Drummers in Paris 2019
Foreign Legion Music: Game of Thrones
A legionnaire receives standing ovation in Canada
Legion Music: Keep smiling
Music band of the Foreign Legion 2013 official video