Foreign Legion: 2025 Victory in Europe Day

On May 8, 2025, Foreign Legion units took part in the celebrations marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe. Honor guards from various regiments participated in ceremonies held primarily in their garrison towns, with several detachments also representing the Legion in other cities across their regions. Below are images from this year’s commemorations.

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Foreign Legion: 2025 Camerone Day

April 30, 2025, marked the 162nd anniversary of the Battle of Camerone, the defining event in the French Foreign Legion’s history, when 62 legionnaires under the command of Captain Jean Danjou faced a force of 2,000 Mexican troops. Refusing to surrender, they fought to the very end, with only three able-bodied legionnaires left standing. Commemorations of this anniversary were held across all Legion units and garrisons, both in France and abroad. The following post includes images from several of these ceremonies.

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Foreign Legion: 2024 Christmas Challenges

Christmas Eve marks the second most important holiday in the French Foreign Legion. Before the actual celebrations, each Foreign Legion regiment organizes Christmas challenges. The challenges help to maintain cohesion within the units and provide a bit of fun for their hard-working men. See several images taken in different Foreign Legion regiments during the Christmas challenges that took place in late 2024.

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80 years ago: Foreign Legion’s last artillery batteries were disbanded

With the conflict in Ukraine, a long-neglected component of Western armies, artillery, has once again stepped to the fore. It might come as a surprise to many Foreign Legion enthusiasts that a 1920 law allowed the Foreign Legion to establish, along with a cavalry regiment, also a separate artillery regiment. Equally surprising might be the fact that, in 1941, the legionnaires probably served in as many as 11 artillery batteries at the same time. The last of these units were disbanded 80 years ago, in 1944.

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3e REI: Exercise Caraïbes 2024

In late May and early June 2024, the armed forces of Martinique and Guadeloupe, overseas departments of France in the eastern Caribbean Sea, were mobilized as part of the exercise Caraïbes 2024 (Caribbean 2024). The aim of this full-scale exercise was to train teams to intervene effectively in the event of a natural disaster in the French West Indies, where the hurricane season is slowly approaching. The men of the Foreign Legion’s 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment (3e REI) also participated.

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