3e REI: 2025 Fourragere Day | French Foreign Legion Information

On October 17, 2025, the 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment (3e REI) gathered in Kourou, French Guiana, to celebrate the regimental day, Fourragere Day.

Held a month later than the usual mid-September date, the event commemorated the 107th anniversary of the Foreign Legion’s Marching Regiment (RMLE) breaking Germany’s formidable Hindenburg Line, a heavily fortified defensive network built in northern France, on September 14, 1918. This was a pivotal moment during World War I that hastened a German retreat from the Western Front and the war’s end.

The RMLE, the predecessor to the 3e REI, earned the rare double fourragère (braided cord; a French military award), cementing its status as the most decorated unit in the French Army at the time, though at a heavy cost: 275 men, including 10 officers, were killed, and 1,158 were wounded during that action.

Presided over by General Cyrille Youchtchenko, commander of the Foreign Legion, and accompanied by the Foreign Legion Band, the ceremony included a tribute to Major Forget, a 3e REI battalion commander killed in Indochina in 1950. The regiment’s military base in Kourou is named in his honor: Quartier commandant Forget.

Among the various commemorative activities, four members of the regiment were granted French citizenship in recognition of their outstanding service.

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