French Foreign Legion information. An online project dedicated to the famous Foreign Legion.
On January 18, 2016, fifty members from the Foreign Legion’s 3rd Company, 2nd Foreign Engineer Regiment (2e REG) were going through a mountain warfare basic training in the French Alps while an avalanche caught them. Five legionnaires had been killed immediatelly; the sixth legionnaire died a week later.
Read moreFive years ago: Six legionnaires killed by an avalanche in the French Alps
In late November 2020, legionnaires from the 2nd Foreign Engineer Regiment (2e REG) of the Foreign Legion participated in Cerces 2020, an annual mountain warfare exercise taking place in the French Alps in Savoie, a department in Southeastern France.
In early August 2020, Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, was affected by devastating explosions. The center of the capital was heavily damaged; over 200 people died, more than 6,000 were wounded. In response to the disaster, France sent an important aid and military assistance to Lebanon in mid-August, boarded on a French ship Tonnerre and several aircraft, as part of Operation Amitie (Operation Friendship).
To reply to the disaster in Beirut, the legionnaires from the 1st Foreign Engineer Regiment (1er REG) and 2nd Foreign Engineer Regiment (2e REG) were alerted and sent to the capital of Lebanon. They arrived there on August 13.
See a new video released by the 2nd Foreign Engineer Regiment (2e REG), the youngest regiment of the Foreign Legion. The video shows basic urban warfare training for the regiment’s recently arrived young legionnaires.
In early March 2020, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) organized a multinational winter exercise in Norway, near Narvik, called Cold Response 2020. Young legionnaires from the 2nd Foreign Engineer Regiment (2e REG) participated. See the video how they were prepared for.
In November 2019, two elite units of the Foreign Legion’s 2nd Foreign Engineer Regiment (2e REG) conducted a joint exercise to train an infiltration mission into hostile terrain. See the video.
Within a week, in late November and early December 2019, the two engineer regiments of the French Foreign Legion organized an annual commemoration of their patron, Saint Barbara (Sainte Barbe in French). See photos.
On Monday, 25 November 2019, two helicopters of the French Army crashed in Mali (West Africa), during anti-terrorist Operation Barkhane. The crash cost lives of 13 soldiers, including a French Foreign legionnaire from the 2nd Foreign Engineer Regiment (2e REG).
Read moreOperation Barkhane: 13 French soldiers died, including a legionnaire
The 11th of November marks in France the Armistice Day, when the entire nation commemorate the end of hostilities of World War I. As every year, even the French Foreign Legion units commemorated the 101st Armistice Day on November 11, 2019, and remembered the 36,000 legionnaires and foreign volunteers being killed or wounded during the war. See the photos.
In mid-October, around 150 legionnaires of the 2nd Foreign Engineer Regiment (2e REG), the youngest regiment of the French Foreign Legion, returned from their four-month overseas deployments back to their base at Saint Christol in south-eastern France.