France created the Foreign Legion in 1831, during the reign of Louis Philippe. Initially, it was a formation intended to keep colonial peoples in check, and now, as a volunteer formation, it is part of the French rapid reaction forces. It is said to be famous for its bravery, good weapons and excellent training. Every year, during the parade on July 14, the marching representation of the Foreign Legion arouses the greatest interest, especially since the legionnaires slowly march to the rhythm of their anthem called “Le Budin”, which translates as “They give a kick”. Le boudin is a type of French bloody sausage, which, in addition to pork blood, also contains pork loin and bacon, and is seasoned with cream and, apparently, even cognac. The ending of the Legia anthem reads as follows: “Tiens, voila du budin, voila du budin, voila du budin, pour les Alsaciens, pour les Suisses et pour les Lorrains, pour les Belges y en a plus, pour les Belges y en a plus, ce sont les tireurs au cul” – which translates as: look, here’s the gut, here’s the gut, here’s the gut, for the Alsatians, for the Swiss, for the Lorraines, but for the Belgians it is not there, but for the Belgians it is not, because they are shooters for d …
I came into contact with the Foreign Legion indirectly and fleetingly. When I was in France at the grape harvest in the late 1980s, our patron had an intern, a young Frenchwoman, who had a “Legion Etrangere” badge stuck to her car window. It turned out that her father was an officer in the Legion, so I asked her to get me one too. At first, she didn’t want me to, saying that I wasn’t a legionnaire, but she was amused by the argument that I had already half-earned the badge, because I was a foreigner. Once again, the opinion was confirmed that you can get anything done with the French – but only if you make them laugh. So the very next day I had a sticker, which I stuck to the rear window of my big Fiat. After a while, we started working as vendors for another winemaker, who employed young Arabs, among others. One of them noticed my car with the badge and asked the patron whether I was by any chance a former legionnaire. The Frenchman caught wind of the joke and replied seriously: oh yes, he was a non-commissioned officer in the Legion! The young Arab walked around me and walked around, finally he got up the courage, showed me a recruitment leaflet, where the legionnaire’s decalogue was written. Among other things, it contains a commandment that every legionnaire is a comrade in arms for another, which is expressed in solidarity, as if they all belonged to one family. He asked me if that was really true. I told him to enlist, then he would find out. I don’t know if he cursed me or blessed me afterwards, because I never saw him again.
And now President Macron, accommodating my advice, has sent 100 legionnaires to Ukraine, supposedly to Donbas. I wonder if the Russian soldiers will be scared of them, or if their officers will remind them of Napoleon’s campaign? “The enemy experienced a lot in the whole day, what does a Russian battle mean, our Russian-Passionate battle,” Lermontov wrote in his poem “Borodino,” which translates to “the enemy experienced that day, what a fierce Russian battle means; our hand-to-hand combat.”
If it’s there, it’ll be there; There will always be something. It may be the case, for example, that both sides will carefully avoid coming into direct combat contact, because although the Russians are conscripted soldiers and the legionnaires are mercenary soldiers, both of them prefer to survive rather than risk being shot by the enemy. head. As a result, they can use artillery over long distances. There’s a lot of noise, and the ammunition consumption is high, but if someone doesn’t stick their head out where it shouldn’t be, nothing will happen to them. This was also the case before 2022, when we heard about weeks of “fierce fighting” in the Luhansk Oblast, in which all… 3 soldiers died. It was easy to explain this phenomenon; there were mercenaries fighting on both sides – but the fact that he who pays is the one who demands, it had to be reconciled somehow. And this is where artillery came to the rescue, with which both sides fought from a distance, thanks to which both the wolf was fed and the sheep were whole.
So, as the good soldier Švejk used to say, somehow things will work out there, because it has never happened before that somehow things wouldn’t work out – and in this situation let’s not worry about the legionnaires, who know what they should do themselves. Let’s worry about us – who will we send to Ukraine, when an order comes from Washington or Berlin that we have to go there too? In accordance with the positive thinking that everyone encourages us to do, in this situation we could use the migration pact recently adopted by the European Parliament. Although the head of the Volksdeutsche Partei, Donald Tusk, is threatening that he will not support it – but I think it is because of the elections to the European Parliament. Once the vote takes place, the Volksdeutsche Partei will support everything that is necessary, because otherwise the Reichsfuhrerin, or the new Reichsfuhrer, will say to Donald Tusk: “You know, you understand, Tusk; you better support what needs to be supported, because otherwise it will be an ugly affair with you.”
However, let us not lose heart, because among the multitude of negative advantages in this migration pact, there are also positive advantages, namely one: the fact that families will be able to be separated. So, although the relocation is to be forced, it is worth considering in advance whether we should accept only men and give the women and children to someone else? Such men could be recruited as volunteers for the Polish Foreign Legion under pain of being denied asylum, then placed in green garrisons somewhere, where they would undergo military training, and then sent to Ukraine. In fact, our unfortunate country is faced with the following alternative: whether, at the request of the Ukrainian authorities, we should organize roundups in Poland of Ukrainians who have no desire to go to war, or – in order to meet in advance the need to take direct part in the war in Ukraine – use for this purpose, they could become migrants who could be guarded during the training by Ukrainians staying in Poland – of course, after training in the camp in Trawniki near Lublin and under the supervision of our invincible army.
Stanisław Michalkiewicz
Each FPG24.PL columnist presents his/her own views and opinions.