Just finished reading The Making of a Legionnaire by Bill Parris ( Cassell 2004, ISBN-13 978-0-3043-6697-2). Subtitled ‘My life in the French Foreign Legion Parachute Regiment’ and one of the best autobiographical accounts of military training and experience I’ve found yet. This chap is not just a grunt. Originally he wrote it for his sons because, having hacked it in at the deep end in Rwanda and helped fight off rebels-cum-insurgents backed by Colonel Gadaffi in Chad, he seems to be dying of some unrelated illness.
Where on earth the Old English come in is because I was looking for some sort of bum-steer as to the fighting man’s point of view to things for the kiddies’ book I’m writing. Several of my child characters grow up to be hearthtroopers, and one makes good as the de facto commander of Lady Etheldræda’s hearthtroop during the Reconquest of the Danelaw in the early tenth century. All too many military autobiographers skimp through their training so as to get stuck into the career-and-combat side, which is why Parris’s book is a ‘find’ for me.
In particular, hands up all those who long knew that Old English warriors sang their lays, and no doubt made a few vaunts, passing round the glee-wood in the mead-hall… but always had a bit of trouble joining the dots as to quite how fighting men, tough hombres with hairs up their nostrils and all that, could genuinely enjoy any kind of sing-song? Like me? No offence to any grizzled veterans out there who know eighteen ways to rip my arm off, but it’s never been the kind of thing I’d think of as quite your cup of tea.
Well for some idea as to quite how that might work, I am indebted to Bill Parris for an account of how much store the French Foreign Legion sets on its special songs, and even poems and prayers, that Legionnaires are expected to memorise along with Le Code d’Honneur. Even for his word that he enjoyed learning them, and not just because it made a break from the march-or-die training they were put through! Their singing lessons lasted “for hours” and their instructors, mostly one and the same instructors as were harrying them through weapons drills, route marches etc., were every bit as exacting as for the tough stuff. Not that all were in French “some were rendered in German and others in English” and Bill Parris says he never became a fluent French speaker. Nor was he the only one who enjoyed it, and remember there’s lectures that give them a break from the hectic physical training. Indeed “it was the company song you burst a lung for and sung with added gusto and enthusiasm”. But generally, “we were somehow inspired and when an entire section’s voices are on song there is no sound like it.” Musically literate folk will correct me if I’m wrong, but from the “very deep, low register, but good and loud” in which they were taught to sing, I’m guessing that these songs were pre-adapted to the natural intonation habits of a burly squaddie, rather than expect to make choirboys out of them. Legionnaires are also taught to sing whilst marching, making me realise that a hearthtroop might do the same riding to and from battle, or just about a bit. “The sight of forty Legionnaires singing in tune and marching with slow purpose… seeming to bristle with contained strength truly is a force, awesome to behold.”
Because of course this is all wrapped up with the history and traditions of the FFL generally, in which they are also steeped. Knowing a bit about the Regimental System of the UK armed forces ( I was even in the Air Cadets for three years, boy and boy) I’ve already made sure to portray the different lords’ hearthtroops as differing in customs and battle-lore, along with different trophies ( warlooms if you will) hung up on the wooden pillars of each longhall, each hearthtroop wont to believe that they are a cut above all the others. Yet I now see that the repertoire of lays known amongst Lord This and Lord That’s hearthtroop had better have their differences, too. During her husband’s rule, when his ‘court’ such as it is has to be billeted on other lords when on circuit, I’ve already portrayed Lady Ethelflæda making an effort to see that there aren’t any spats between her husband’s hearthtroopers and ones sworn to the lord on whom they’re billeted: “with a strange hearthtroop and even stranger courtiers billeted on the neighbourhood, there was always a risk that somebody would forget that Mercians were on the same side.”
Another idea I might pinch was Parris’s experience at the FFL’s retirement home at Puyloubier. Told it was a holiday, he and his comrades found themselves trucked over and told to listen, talk to and help look after les ancients, elderly and wounded veterans who, usually for lack of relatives to look after them, end their days there. “Speak to the men who have fought,” their officer ordered, “veterans who have survived horror in the battlefield and built the Legion’s fearsome reputation, for these men are also our family now, they are still Legionnaires and your comrades.” This made me realise that elderly and crippled veterans would also be a feature of your typical mead-hall, and I’ve already caught myself making out that falconry was a popular job with wounded hearthtroopers because a lord’s falconer needn’t lose touch with his old shield-mates, who could look out for him.
And I wouldn’t want to be the only one. Parris also made me realise that the UK armed forces appear to have no such practice. When we have the Chelsea Pensioners for instance, to whom our squaddies-in-training could be bussed over to meet and treat. I know some ġesīþas are ex-servicemen so how about you raising that suggestion at the next regimental reunion? Or given the current cesspit state to British society, this is an idea our bloody schools and fuck-witted parents might like to adapt.
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The moral right of the author to be identified as a member of the 1st Earth Battalion ( Territorials) has been asserted.
