Lieutenant Colonel Jean Pierre Bissey

The 5th of August 1933 marks the day when Lieutenant Colonel Jean Pierre Bissey, a lesser-known officer of the French Foreign Legion, was killed in a battle with local rebels during the French Pacification of Morocco. All but forgotten nowadays, he remains not only the highest-ranking officer of the Foreign Legion killed between the two world wars but also during the long campaign in Morocco. The following article was written in his memory.

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75 years ago: An elite airborne unit of the Foreign Legion was activated

75 years ago, in France’s North Africa in early July 1948, an airborne unit of the Foreign Legion was officially constituted to take part in the First Indochina War (1946-1954) in Southeast Asia. There, the resolute unit would become a legend, as the very first French airborne battalion lost in combat.

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Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Jeanpierre

On May 29, 1958, during military operations in the Guelma region of Northeastern Algeria, a helicopter hit by rebel fire crashed to the ground. On board, along with the pilot and a mechanic, Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Jeanpierre, a legendary officer of the French Foreign Legion and the head of what was then one of the best units of the French Army. All the three were dead. To this day, Lt. Col. Jeanpierre remains the last high-ranking officer of the Foreign Legion to be killed in action. The following article was written in his memory.

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45th Anniversary of the Battle of Kolwezi

45 years ago, on May 17, 1978, legionnaires of the French Foreign Legion’s 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment (2e REP) in Corsica were alerted and the next day, they took off in direction of then Zaire in Central Africa. There, on May 19, they jumped over Kolwezi, a mining center in the south of the country. The legionnaires would rescue over 2,000 Europeans captured and held by local rebels…

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Lieutenant Colonel Gabriel Brunet de Sairigné (1913 – 1948)

On March 1, 1948, on the road from Saigon to Dalat in French Indochina, a French military convoy was ambushed by the Viet Minh. As soon as the first shots were fired, Lieutenant Colonel Gabriel Brunet de Sairigné, a popular French Foreign Legion officer, was fatally wounded. In him, the French Army lost one of the youngest commanding officers in its history; he had just turned 35. The following article was written in his memory.

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