J. R. Lawrence - My Camp: Life in the French Foreign Legion

My Camp

Life in the French Foreign Legion

J. R. Lawrence

Copyright 2017 J. R. Lawrence

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978152159687

Table of Contents

1: Escape to the Legion

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

Hunter S. Thompson

What follows is my account of the French Foreign Legion, for the period of my engagement: Starting in August 2007, and ending in September 2011.

It was a crisp, sunny morning in August, when I arrived at Ashford International train station. All I had with me was a small rucksack with my passport, a packed lunch, and around 300 in cash inside. This would be the first time that I had left my country. I was both anxious and excited about the journey that lay ahead. I had recently been released from serving twenty-one months of a three and a half year prison sentence for robbery, and was still on licence.

I had returned home, after nearly two years away in Her Majestys Prison Rochester YOI (young offenders institute), to the council estate where I lived in East Sussex, which is in the southeast corner of England. I soon discovered that not much had changed while I had been away; everyone was still doing exactly what they had been doing when I left: living with their parents, playing computer games, and smoking weed.

I had decided, during my time in prison, not to let myself slip back into my old lifestyle, and that now things had to change. It may sound a bit clich, but prison, for me, was a blessing in disguise. Yes, I hear you; living with, to put it frankly, a bunch of fucking violent loons in a cage and having people watch you take a dump is not ideal, but it got me off drugs, made me give up smoking, start going to the gym, and introduced me to some good people.

It was while in prison that I first met Frank. Frank had been in the British parachute regiment. He was a funny guy and he had a lot of interesting stories. Frank didnt think he would be able to get back into the parachute regiment after being in prison, but he missed the army life. His new idea was to join the French Foreign Legion. He would talk about it all the time. I had no idea what he was going on about at that period in my life. I had never considered joining the army. To hell with getting shot, I thought. Frank was not on a long sentence, it was around two months if I remember correctly. His time soon passed and he was gone.

Several months after Frank had been released, I was in my cell watching Channel 4 when an advert came on for Escape to the Legion, a four-part TV series starring survival expert Bear Grylls. In that show Bear takes eleven people to an old Legion fort near Tazzougerte, which is on a high plateau in the Sahara desert, and puts them through their paces.

I remembered what Frank had said about the Foreign Legion and decided to watch it. The show was entertaining enough. They had three ex-legionnaires taking part: a short, obnoxious, loudmouth American sergeant; a corporal from the UK; and a German sergeant-chef. The show consisted of the eleven volunteers going through a four week boot-camp style program to test their resolve. It had its funny moments: like when one guy, Terry, couldnt even do a single chin up, then got frustrated and kicked the wall like a zeta male; or when one slimy guy tried to pretend that he had a bad back, got found out, and put in jail for 24 hours with people throwing buckets of water over him on a regular basis. The show looked ridiculous at first, but by the end I was starting to feel the pull of the Foreign Legion and the fresh start it could offer to someone like me.

It was the last episode in the series that got me though, when they showed the modern day Legion in action. I thought to myself, this could be the way to escape my unpromising existence in England, get away from my past of criminality, and actually do something meaningful. That was the moment I went down the Foreign Legion rabbit hole, and it would be a long time before I came out the other end.

Once my mind was made up, I began preparing myself so as to have the best chance of passing the selection. I started going to the gym, and I went to the library and got out a book called Legionnaire by Simon Murray, which was a good read, but a bit outdated as the author joined in 1960. I also began learning French in my cell. I would copy out from a French book, into a note book, for a couple of hours over lunchtime each day, while I was locked up. I kept this routine up over the last ten months of my sentence.

It was a grey, drizzly, autumn day when I was released from Rochester prison. I had been up since the break of dawn with all my stuff packed into large plastic bags ready to go. There was one other lad who was getting released on the same day as me. I cant remember his name, but he had the dishevelled appearance of an alcoholic, or junkie. After a brief exchange of words I established that he was, to put it mildly, not very clever, but one is a prisoner of ones circumstances and we set off for the train station together.

I should explain that when you leave prison in the UK, you are given a free rail ticket home and around forty pounds in cash, plus whatever you have saved through earnings from work done whilst in prison. My new travel buddy, fresh out of prison, decided that he wanted to use some of this cash to buy some alcohol, so he went in an off-licence and got an eight pack of inexpensive Australian lager. I stood outside the shop thinking to myself, this guy is a fucking train wreck. On your first day out of jail you are required to report to probation, and you cant be intoxicated for that, so it wasnt boding well for him already.

We, eventually, reached the train station at the bottom of Rochester high street, got our tickets, and sat down on a bench to wait for the train. It turned out that we would be travelling part of the way together. Our train arrived after roughly thirty minutes and we went aboard. My travelling companion had already demolished two cans of beer by this point. There were plenty of free seats on the train, so we each took a seat next to the window, on different sides of the carriage.

It was about an hour into the journey when a skinhead-looking type, with prison tattoos on his face and hands, came walking down the isle of our carriage. The man, who had been released with me, and who was by now quite drunk, began to shout, easy mate, easy, to this guy for no reason other than that he was being a drunken idiot. The skinhead took umbrage at this and unleashed a tirade of punches into his face. From his slumped position on the train seat, the man, who I had only met that morning, stretched out his arm and pointed at me. The skinhead looked at me and barked, You fucking want some too? I answered that it was nothing to do with me, then he turned and apologized to the other train passengers for pummelling a man in their presence, and got off at the next stop. I couldnt believe it. I had only been out of jail a few hours and this cretin had almost got me into a fight. Luckily, it was just two more stops until I changed trains, so I sat their quietly and waited for my stop, then left without a word.

It was late afternoon when I arrived in Lewes, East Sussex, for my probation meeting. I had told the probation service, six months prior to my release that I would have no fixed address upon being let out. My reason for claiming no fixed abode was that I didnt want to expose myself to the same people and influences that had landed me in prison in the first place. There were no hostels in the town I came from, so I assumed that this would be a good way to avoid going back there.

However, when I arrived for my first meeting the lady who was my probation officer had completely neglected to arrange anything. According to my licence conditions, I had to have a fixed address, so I needed to find somewhere fast; otherwise I would be recalled back into custody. My probation officer rang round every homeless shelter in Sussex. The only one that had a spare bed was in Crawley, which was almost thirty miles away.