Camerone Day is just around the corner. As most of you know, the Battle of Camerone was fought between a company of the Foreign Legion and over two thousand Mexican troopers and cavalry on April 30, 1863. The besieged legionnaires used an abandoned, walled hacienda to fight a last stand engagement, refusing, to surrender until just all were killed or wounded and they were out of ammunition. It’s the penultimate celebration for the Foreign Legion and is observed each year by individual (active and former) legionnaires and units of the Legion whereever they might be found. To start this blogs lead up to the event I’ve decided to post a quick update and collection of odds and ends–a hodgepodge, something that used to be a regular feature here. First some updates.
Foreign Legion Coloring Book. Actually named, French Foreign Legion Coloring Pages – livre à colorier, is something which actually started here in 2013. The first book with 106 pages was posted last year and since then I’ve added 22 more pages and some other images. So now we have version 2.0. Link
The Compleat Beau Geste. I added ten pictures of my copy of this wonderful book to the 30 January 2023 post. It truly is a great book and the pictures are provided to help you better see what it looks like.
The Library. I’ve added four more books to the Monlegionnaire Library. I’ve got several more I’m formatting and hope to have these ready soon.
The Bugle Sounds by Major Zinovi Pechkoff (1926)
Runaway!_Martin Chadzynski Martin (1960)
Biggles – Foreign Legionnaire by Captain W. E. Johns (1954)
Devil’s Guard_George Robert Elford (1985)
Now for some odds and ends….
1. The Foreign Legion Boot. No, I’m not talking about the old school, hob-nailed Brodequins referred to by veterans of North Africa and waxed on poetically by P.C. Wren. This is the rubberized boot perfected in the jungles of Indochina. The NY Times has a nice article on them that is actually not an advertisement but does have links to Palladium so you can buy their commemorative Pallabrousse Legacy complete with red and green threading and a Foreign Legion patch sewn on. (They seem to be sold out but I’m certainly adding these to my birthday list since I really need a good hiking boot to replace my old Merrells.) Oh, and they do have other styles including the Pallabrouse Legion Desert. 
2. Disco Boy. Disco Boy is the name of a newly released movie featuring the wayward life of a paperless vagabond from Belarus, who joins the Foreign Legion and promptly winds up in darkest Africa. Here is the promo video. A review can be found here. The short preview looks like the movie is a bit “artsy-fartsy” but I liked that old legionnaire with the vintage facial hair yelling “Welcome to Foreign Legion!”.
3. High Adventure #187. It’s hard to keep track of the many products released by Adventure House. Here is a newish (November 2022) release from their pulp reprint subscription magazine – High Adventure. It contains two foreign Legion stories by J. D. Newsom. Both appeared in Short Stories pulp magazine. A Man Stands Alone, the book length story, appeared in the 25 August 1932 issue and Junk appeared in the 10 May 1933 issue. These are two probably hard to find and pricey pulps so this is really a good deal.
