It should be LE, for Legion Etrangere, non?Dackelstaffel wrote:Just one more thing, don't use FFL for the French Foreign Legion besause for a french FFL means Forces Françaises Libres or Free French Forces.
Not so fast. I would say one would need a few more correspondences in order to make a match. And that it's extremely common to have duplicate names when working with a large pool of individuals. There were probably a division's worth of "John Smith's" in the whatever-million plus WWII US Army.So it's nearly sure that Friedrich Metzger and Frédéric Metzger was the same person.
from the chapter "Epilogue" p. 451:...Contrary to the accepted myth that the Foreign Legion was made up largely of "former SS troopers," many of the Foreign Legionnaires came from the East European countries overrun by the Soviet armies in 1945. (since the average age of the Foreign Legionnaire was about 23 in 1954, most of them had been small boys in 1945.)
It's likely that a handful of former W-SS soldiers served in the Legion during the French-Indochina war. But despite the literary efforts of Robert Lewis Elford with his "Devils Guard" books in the 1970's and the speculation of SS veterans in the BILOM units, I haven't seen much concrete evidence to indicate that there were a significant number of SS veterans fighting in Vietnam, or that they played a disproportionate role in their units or had a disproportionate effect on the course of events. It's not like Jochen Peiper was chasing "Charlie" through the Plain of Jars in 1955....Lastly, there is the myth of Dien Bien Phu as a "German battle," in which the Germans were said to "indeed made up nearly half of the French forces."...On March 12, 1954 - the day before the battle begain in earnest - there were a total of 2,969 Foreign Legionnaires in the fortress, out of a garrison of 10,814. Of the almost 4,300 parachuted reinforcements, a total of 962 belonged to the Foreign Legion. Even if one wrongly assumes (there were important Spanish and Eastern European elements among the Legionnaires at Dien Bien Phu) that 50% of the Legionnaires were German, then only 1,900 men out of more thatn 15,000 who participated in the battle could have been of German origin. But old myths, particularly when reinforced by prejudice, die hard.
In french we just call it "la Légion" but we can use LE for the 13 DBLE (Bir Hakeim) which means "13eme Demi-Brigade de la Légion Etrangère" or 13th Half Brigade of the Foreign Legion. Anyway for the another units we call them :It should be LE, for Legion Etrangere, non?
from: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... RK:MEWA:ITSie bieten auf ca 50 Fotos aus dem Nachlass eines XX Soldaten welcher nach dem Krieg zur Französichen Fremdenlegion ging. Leider sind nur 4 Bilder aus seiner Zeit bei der XX erhalten diese sind aber dafür sehr schön. Einige Bilder sind hinten beschriftet mit" Indochiona 25.II 1955 Sued-Amann (Indochina) oder L´afrique du Noerd pre de Neorama le 14.Mai 1956 oder Indochina 1954 usw. Man sieht schöne Aufnahmen mit Hubschraubern im Feld wohl bei Gefechten, mit Kettenfahrzeugen, Schützenpanzerwagen, Ausrüstung bei Ordenverleihungen irgendwo in der Wüste usw.Siehe Bilder. Der Junge Soldat soll nach dem Ende Krieges und der Gefangenschaft um 1947 zur Legion gewechselt haben und die schweren Kämpfe in Indochina zw 1947-1954 mitgemacht haben. Denke anhand der Bilder , Armabzeichen usw kann man eventuell mehr über den Mann erfahren.Leider weiß ich nicht die Einheit aber ich werde nochmals nachfragen und versuchen noch mehr heraus zu bekommen