With the ol’ RMLE
While traveling around New Orleans, I often come across old French Foreign Legion insignia in antique and curious goods shops. My guess is that Francophiles and Cajuns in the area often, at one point, would sign up for life in the old Legion Etrangere and then return home at the end of the contract.
Holding their old insignia as souvenirs of places long gone, these items would eventually ebb away from them when they passed on to the great barracks in the sky. Echoes of history, I suppose.
This one is appropriate today.
Insignia of the Marching Regiment of the Foreign Legion, (Regiment de Marche de la Legion Etrangere = R.M.L.E) designed in 1943 with France Dabord (“France First”) motto:
This is the scarcer metal and enamel type insignia made for officers. It is marked Drago, Paris, and was likely manufactured in late 1944, post-Liberation.
The RMLE was created in July 1943 at Sidi-bel-Abbes, Algeria, under Colonel Gentis from the remnants of the old 1st and 3rd REIM (régiments étrangers d’infanterie de marche) which had fought against Rommel in the final days of the North African campaign, specifically at Djebel Mansour. The original “les anciens” RMLE had been formed in the Great War under the famed “father of the Legion” Colonel Paul Frederic Rollet so the name was very symbolic to Legionaries at the time.
Assigned to the 5th Armoured Division (5e DB) at Oranie, the unit was equipped with American uniforms and equipment, including Springfield M1903 bolt action rifles, and had the same general structure as the 3e REI.
Some 80 years ago today, 20 September 1944, the RMLE landed at Provence near Saint-Raphaël on Dramont beach as part of the Dragoon Landings and raced towards the Rhine, helping liberate Alsace in the process.
Along the way they fought at Belfort– where I/RMLE was decimated at Montreux-Château– helped reduce the Colmar Pocket, broke through the Siegfried Line, crossed the Black Forest, entered Stuttgart, and made it into Austria by VE Day.
13 November 1944 at Valdahon, General de Gaulle, Sir W. Churchill, Generals Juin, and de Lattre de Tassigny review a detachment of the RMLE the day before leaving for combat.
Respected by the Allied troops it fought alongside, the RMLE earned a U.S. Presidential Unit Citation and Distinguished Unit Citation (“Rhine-Bavarian Alps”).
At the end of the war, the RMLE was transferred back to North Africa. Once there, on 1 July 1945, it was renamed 3e REI.
Its regimental flag carries honors from the old RMLE of Great War fame (Artois 1915, Champagne 1915, The Somme 1916, The Verdun Mountains, Picardy-Soissonais 1918, and Vauxaillon 1918) as well as our WWII era RMLE (Alsace 1944-1945 and Stuttgart 1945) and those it has earned under its own name (Indochina 1946-1954— where the regiment lost 3,396 officers and legionnaires– and AFN 1952-1962).
