4e RE: 2025 Challenge of the Recruits

A new video released on the official YouTube channel of the French Foreign Legion offers an authentic look into the final stage of basic training in the 4th Foreign Regiment (4e RE) in Castelnaudary. As part of the new combat hardening course (module d’aguerrissement), recruits face a series of intense physical and mental trials designed to test their resilience, endurance, and cohesion.

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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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4e RE: 2025 Remise de Kepi blanc in Spain

On March 6, 2025, a historic ceremony took place in Andalusia, the southernmost region of Spain, strengthening the bond between the French Foreign Legion and the Spanish Legion. For the first time, a platoon of enlisted volunteers of the French Foreign Legion’s 4th Foreign Regiment (4e RE) took the military oath and received the White képi outside mainland France, and alongside the Spanish legionnaires.

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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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60 years ago: Foreign Legion’s Regiment of Morocco was disbanded

60 years ago, deep in the Algerian Sahara in late April 1964, an entire Foreign Legion regiment was disbanded, victim of the reorganization of the French army after the end of the Algerian War (1956-62). Activated in French North Africa in late 1920 and given the nickname the “Regiment of Morocco,” its units fought in Morocco, Tunisia, Madagascar, Indochina, Mauritania, Spanish Sahara, and Algeria. In 1980, its number, history, and traditions were taken over by the training regiment of the Legion in Castelnaudary.

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