PHOTOS: A Legionnaire’s Photographs from My Tho, French Indochina, 1947–1949

May 22, 2026 · Posted in history, indochina, photos

This is a new part in our PHOTOS series. Once again, we turn to French Indochina — this time to southern Vietnam in the late 1940s. The photographs presented here were shared with us by a French reader whose grandfather, Emile Louis André, served there with the Foreign Legion. His granddaughter, Ms. Alcina Machado, provided some basic details about his service, while the rest had to be researched or pieced together from the photographs themselves. She also shared a few lines about her grandfather’s life, giving us a glimpse into the personal story of one of the tens of thousands of legionnaires who were deployed to the First Indochina War (1946–1954).

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PHOTOS: Foreign Legion Saharan Battery from 1939 to 1942

August 15, 2025 · Posted in 1re, Algeria, artillery, history, photos, wwii

The latest part in our series on interesting photographs presents an exceptionally rare collection depicting members of the first officially established Saharan unit of the French Foreign Legion, spanning from mid-1939 to the weeks following the Allied landings in North Africa in late 1942. These images include the only publicly known photographs of a Foreign Legion Saharan unit taken before the Second World War.

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PHOTOS: Golden Age of Foreign Legion Veterans’ Handcrafted Products (1975–1992)

July 6, 2025 · Posted in history, IILE, photos, veterans

A new part of the PHOTOS series. Today, we explore the now-discontinued products from the workshops of the Foreign Legion Institution for Disabled Veterans (IILE), which were prominently showcased in vibrant, regular color advertisements in Képi Blanc, the French Foreign Legion’s magazine, from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s.

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PHOTOS: 1st Battalion 2e REI in Vietnam’s Faifo around 1950

February 7, 2025 · Posted in 2rei, history, indochina, photos

Another part of the PHOTOS series. See a small set of nice pictures taken in French Indochina’s Vietnam from 1950 to early 1951, during the First Indochina War (1946-1954). These few photographs belonged to a German legionnaire serving with the 1st Battalion, 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment (2e REI) there at the time.

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PHOTOS: 100th Anniversary of the Battle of Camerone in Aubagne in 1963

May 12, 2023 · Posted in 1re, camerone, photos

A new part of the PHOTOS series. Rare photographs presenting the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Camerone, which was commemorated in Aubagne in 1963, within the new HQ of the Foreign Legion and the 1st Foreign Regiment (1er RE). This was also the very first Camerone Day celebrated in France and not in Algeria’s Sidi Bel Abbes.

Read morePHOTOS: 100th Anniversary of the Battle of Camerone in Aubagne in 1963