Unique Course

29 July 07 27-28 Oct 07, DTI is conducting a Vehicle Defense and Deployment Course in Rochester, IN. This unique event will be co-instructed by John Farnam, Henk Iverson, Jeff Chudwin, Chuck Soltys, Frank Sharpe, and Doc Gunn. We're covering defensive aspects of vehicle operations, as well as medical and trauma issues involved when operating in, and around, vehicles. Open to all who have a DTI pistol and rifle course, or equivalent. We will be deploying with both handguns and long guns. Ideal training for law enforcement officers and security contractors, and anyone else who may see a use for such training in our ever-changing world. Contact Frank Sharpe, Jr., at _dtomfrank@yahoo.com_ (mailto:dtomfrank@yahoo.com) or 708 362 0786 for information and sign-up. /John

Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-the-last mistake!

29 July 07

The French Foreign Legion, and the Mini-Alamo, 30 Apr 1863

France in the 1830s was (as ever) anything but stable. The post-Bonaparte era brought with it social upheaval as well as political intrigue and treachery on a grand scale. Weak sovereigns came and went, incessantly dabbling in political and military adventurism. Riots were nearly a daily occurrence in Paris and other cities, and bands of disenfranchised soldiers and mercenaries, unemployed and bored, routinely engaged in robbery, extortion, and murder-for-hire.

In 1831, an exasperated Minister of War, Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult, sarcastically suggested, "They want to fight? Let the shovel and bleed in North Africa!" With that casual muse, the French Foreign Legion was born!

Conceived as a semi-nationalized, semi-autonomous, mostly clandestine force that would do the dirtiest of jobs, but only outside French borders, the Legion quickly acquired a life and agenda of its own. Actively recruiting resident foreigners but also those fleeing estranged wives, estranged families, angry creditors, and police, the Legion offered a new life, a new name (Nomme de Guerre), and complete anonymity. It provided an attractive disappearing act for many who needed a new start, but also appealed to the usual "users, boozers, and losers."

The only thing the Legion guaranteed was brutal discipline, right from the start, and hard-bitten, dirty, gritty, dangerous assignments in far-away, disease-ridden, bug-infested, forgotten places, and scarcely even a "thank-you" from an unappreciative nation who would prefer to forget you even existed! Not surprisingly, the Legion's unauthorized, but familiar, slogan became, " Legio Patria Nostra," (The Legion IS our Nationality!)

Hollywood has traditionally dramatized only the Legion's exploits in North Africa, specifically Algeria, and they were surely there as well as the Crimea and other places in Europe. But, their most famous battle, the one that is revered above all others, even today, yet is largely unknown outside the Legion itself, took place in, of all places, Mexico!

The Legion's very existence was such an embarrassment to (first he called himself "President," although he was never elected, subsequently brushing aside all remaining pretenses, he conferred the title, "Emperor" upon himself) Louis Napoleon, nephew of Bonaparte, that he looked for an opportunity to get them all as far away from France as he could. His chance came in 1861 when he found it necessary to send an expeditionary force to Mexico in order to collect overdue debts and, of course, extend his influence into the Western Hemisphere. The Lincoln Administration in the United States, openly unhappy with this French incursion, still could do little more than politely protest, as the War Between the States currently occupied all its attention.

Landing at Vera Cruz ("True Cross," so named by Cortez three-hundred years earlier), the expedition's plan was to march directly to Mexico City and oust tottering President Benito Juarez. However, it got inland only as far as the town of Puebla, where it was stopped and turned back, complements of the floundering Juarez Administration and a host of hastily-recruited, local irregulars. A convoy was eventually organized for the purpose of bringing cannon from Vera Cruz to Puebla to pound the resistance and restore the expedition's offensive. Word of the convoy and its importance soon reached Mexican forces, and the Mexican high command immediately dispatched a calvary unit, under Colonel Francisco Milan, to intercept it.

French Legionaries, who had been tasked with protecting the supply route from Vera Cruz to Puebla, learned of the Mexicans' planned interception of the convey, but had scant additional intelligence. Moreover, tropical diseases had taken their toll on French soldiers, including Legionaries. With half of a company, Captain Jean Danjou fearlessly set out to intercept the interceptors, or find the convoy, whichever came first! His force numbered only sixty-two.

Milan's calvary numbered over one thousand, and Danjou's small force of Legionaries soon found themselves surrounded at an abandoned, isolated hacienda, called Camerone. There, like the defenders of Rorke's Drift just a few years later in South Africa, like the defenders of the Alamo in Texas just a few years before, despite tormenting thirst and dwindling ammunition, they held out for a day, in the process inflicting hideous casualties upon the Mexicans.

Danjou and his Legionnaires knew they couldn't hold out long, and they knew, as at the Alamo, there was no escape, but they also knew that so long as they commanded Milan's total attention, the convoy would be safe. When asked by Milan for an honorable surrender, Danjou politely and graciously declined. Danjou was killed shortly thereafter, but his successors, in turn, declined surrender also. Milan was heard to say, "These are demons, not men!" in much the same way the German commander at the Battle of Belleau Wood in France during WWI would refer to American Marines as, "Devil Dogs." In retrospect, Milan should have simply abandoned the siege of Camerone and attended to his original objective, but he became so entangled in a do-or-die struggle with these exceptional fighters, he just couldn't leave it unfinished.

When only six Legionaries remained, all out of ammunition, all six conducted a daring, coordinated bayonet charge into a solid wall of Mexican infantry. When only the last three Legionaries remained upright, all wounded, but still defiantly waving bayonets in the enemy's face, a Mexican officer asked for the last time, "Gentleman, will you surrender now?"

The three tentatively agreed, but insisted on keeping their weapons, and their flag, and that their captors providing medical care for wounded comrades. The Mexican officer was said to have replied, "For soldiers such asthese, no request is unreasonable." Sixteen Legionaries, all wounded, ultimately lived through the Siege at Camerone and all were repatriated shortly thereafter. Milan was good to his word.

The convoy made it to Puebla, and resistance there was quickly broken up. The French Expeditionary Force proceeded on to Mexico City, brushed aside all remaining resistance, and installed a puppet governor, Maximilian.

But, the tide quickly turned. The American Civil War ended, and the United States, now under the Johnson Administration, threatened to intervene militarily unless all French forces withdrew from Mexico. Louis took the threat seriously and pulled his forces out. In 1867, an abandoned Maximilian fledMexico City, but was quickly captured and summarily executed. European military adventurism in Mexico thus came to an end.

During fighting in Algeria in 1853, then Second Lieutenant Danjou was wounded in his left hand. The wound was so destructive, the hand had to be amputated. Months later, his left arm was fitted with a sophisticated, articulated wooden prosthesis, which he wore the rest of his life including at the Battle of Camerone.

Years after the Battle, a local farmer inadvertently unearthed Capt Danjou's wooden hand. The rest of his remains were never found. The wooden hand eventually made its way back into French custody and is today the only relic from the Camerone Battlefield known to exist. The French Foreign Legion displays it proudly, and every new recruit sees it and learns of the heroic holdout at Camerone and the standard to which he is expected to aspire..

A small memorial was erected at the site. The inscriptions reads:

"They were here fewer than sixty, opposed to a whole army. Its masscrushed them. Life, rather than honor, gave up these French soldiers at Camerone on30 April 1863. In memory of them, the Fatherland has erected this monument."

Somewhere nearby, Danjou's remains, and those of most of his command, lie forever in unmarked graves.

Comment: "In this business, you find the enemy, then go after and destroy him. Everything else is rubbish!"

Eddie Rickenbacker, WWI Flying Ace

"Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow, and of the man who leads, that gains victory."

George Patton Jr

/John