Simon MurrayBesprekingen
Auteur van Legionnaire: Five Years in the French Foreign Legion
Besprekingen
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Murray is an excellent storyteller and has a gift for painting a portrait of Legion life in detail and shows a keen ability to read human beings and make what is most likely a spot-on assessment of most of the characters that crossed his path. Suffice it to say that any romantic ideas about service in the French Foreign Legion are squelched right away. Training, service, both at the front and in daily life, are a nearly unending recital of brutality, cruelty, sadism, suffering, and extreme duress and that's putting it mildly, without even counting the administration of punishment for offences minor and major. Even celebrations like Camerone Day (a remembrance of an event during the French occupation of Mexico in the 1860's) and the Christmas holiday were orgies of drunkenness and sometimes broke out into serious episodes of violence. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating read, and Murray is a more than an able chronicler of the trials of life in the Legion.