French Foreign Legion Information

From May 10 to 22, 2026, an operational training detachment (DIO) of the 5th Foreign Regiment (5e RE), based on the French overseas island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, provided military training to members of the Malawi Defence Force. The detachment, made up of personnel from the 5e RE and the Mayotte Naval Base, ...

80 years ago, in early June 1946, a new Foreign Legion disciplinary unit was established in French Indochina. Stationed on a remote island off the coast of Vietnam, the unit’s mission was to reform ill-disciplined legionnaires who had been deployed to the Far East to fight in the First Indochina War (1946–1954), and whose offenses ...

On May 18, 2026, a White Kepi Ceremony (Remise de Képi blanc) of the French Foreign Legion took place in Toulouse, a major city in southwestern France. New legionnaires from the 4th Foreign Regiment (4e RE), the Legion’s training regiment, donned the iconic White kepi for the first time at Place du Capitole, the city’s ...

50 years ago, on May 24, 1976, a helicopter transporting Foreign Legion elements crashed during a military exercise in the Horn of Africa. Six legionnaires died immediately; another two died from their injuries later. At the time, this was the deadliest day for the Legion since the end of the Algerian War in 1962. Although ...

This is a new part in our PHOTOS series. Once again, we turn to French Indochina — this time to southern Vietnam in the late 1940s. The photographs presented here were shared with us by a French reader whose grandfather, Emile Louis André, served there with the Foreign Legion. His granddaughter, Ms. Alcina Machado, provided ...