The following was written in a comedic tone. The details in it are factually correct, but it would be a mistake to make generalized assumptions about the Legion or its personnel from this writing alone. Please keep an open mind, think for yourself and most importantly have fun.

I went, I looked and then I came back. Here is the gist of it: Volunteered on March 6th, Monday, in Fort de Nogent, Paris, where they did the preliminary IQ, health, psychological tests and the motivational interview. In other words the pre-selection process. In these I was extremely lucky and went through the whole process by Wednesday night (some people had to stay at the selection center for a week), they put us on a bus and we traveled 11 hours into Aubagne, the Legion’s central base. Here the tests continued with another set of IQ, health and psychological tests , and as they called it the gestapo. At the gestapo they were questioning you about your past, where did you live, work, what tattoos you have, why, what crimes did you do, drugs etc… They claim they can figure things out, but this is unlikely. The only way they could find anything out that wasn’t publicly available online was to ask for it from the secret service from the candidates country of origin, which is obviously too much work.

In short, about 70-80% of candidates were rejected (the 3 other candidates I came through the door on Monday, were all gone by the second day). People failed mostly on the IQ tests or the health checkups (typical reasons were drugs being detected in your urine like marijuana, or some unknown health issue like arythmia). Anybody who got rejected typically just disappeared silently and we never saw them again.

We spent most of our time either being punished for some made up offense or waiting doing nothing. Sitting 3-4 hours for a 15 minute check wasn’t uncommon. The Legion’s main base for the candidates can be considered as a prison. You sleep, eat, wake up, wash at a specific time and you are always told where you can be. If there was a task to do they just picked some candidates for work, a horn would be blown and everyone would run and take up formation at a specific location. This happened about 20 times a day and we usually preferred it, as something was happening instead of nothing. There were other candidates at Aubagne who were doing their pre-selection there, they had their completely separate, fenced, little container village.

Boredom really messes with the mind and one could observe people slowly cracking. Almost everybody was thinking about options for living their lives outside the Legion, but for some reason you couldn’t leave between March 10 and 14. So everybody just waited. There were many people there though who didn’t have any other option. There was a guy who walked there from India (stopping somewhere to work for 3 months to be able to afford the plane ticket, but he got rejected), guys from Burkina Faso (central/north Africa) who have already served 11 years in their own military (you could see this on their faces too), white people from South-Africa, because there are no jobs in their country and inflation is making life really difficult. Besides there was every nationality under the Sun. People from Nepal, Mexico, Cuba, USA, UK, Netherlands, Moldova, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea and more. Most came from Mexico, Nepal and India, but about 90% of Indians were eliminated really quickly. The Nepalese are really friendly people, really upbeat and funny and very affectionate/physical. In their culture it is completely normal to put your head in a stranger’s lap to rest. If you can make a Nepalese mate, I highly recommend it! By the way, more Nepalese spoke English than the French in general. Now I have heard rumors that the French just dislike speaking English so much they refuse to do so, or maybe the Legionaries didn’t speak it I don’t know.

Until the weekend I was okay with how things were going, where there are no tests as none of the necessary people are working. These were the times when we were taken as basically slave labor to work from 7 until 19, cleaning, organizing or helping with various tasks. Everybody preferred this, because this meant you had something to do and didn’t have to battle the encroaching insanity induced by boredom. This was the time where I could observe how Legionaries spend their normal days and ultimately decided to peace out.

For example I was taken to help out in an officer mess hall and somebody called the guy in rank to prepare tables for dinner to X high ranking officers. Well, it was 10o o’clock in the morning but this guy got completely mental. Running and shouting like we had only 10 minutes to do the deed. On top of that he wouldn’t tell you what to do, if you tried to help he would yell at you (because he didn’t ask you to help), but if you stood still in the corner, he would yell at you for that too. Well, anyways we managed to set up nice and shiny tables, made sparkling silverware (hand polished by cloth), set up brandy and wine glasses at specific angles from the plates, it looked really nice. Then after about two hours it turned out that Mr. Chimpanzee here had misunderstood something and we had to prep dinner tables not for officers but for the birthday party of some officer’s child, and they brought their own plates, cups and everything. After two days of this on Sunday I decided that whatever problems I may have in life are much easier to fix, then to be bound here for 5 years potentially getting stuck under some crazy person. This was the norm too, sane people were the outliers.

So with another Hungarian we decided to leave and when we had signaled this a Hungarian officer, who was there for at least 20 years, yet couldn’t speak French properly, asked us why. My friend responded sarcastically:

“I didn’t expect to work with so many intelligent people.”

And to this the officer responded with full honesty: “Intelligent people? There are no intelligent people here!”

Not that he fully missed the sarcasm he honestly looked shocked by the remark as it would be completely absurd. We would have laughed if the situation wasn’t so shockingly absurd.

P.S.: Some wisdom from the toilet stall scribbles:

(As I wrote this I was told that the 3rd Hungarian peaced out as well, there were only 3 of us. My Legionnaire name was Almos Balint by the way, the other two were unlucky as the chimps gave them female names.)

Got back on the 16th and since then I have been resting. Got some nice sickness there, and now I am sicker than I have been in more than 5 years.

TLDR.: Best one week vacation you can get, very transformative. 10 out of 10. If you can spare a few weeks and have any inclination to join the military I truly recommend to give it a shot. Maybe you like it, maybe you don’t, but I can guarantee you will learn something from it.