North Africa 1942-43

At Oran, North Africa, our anti-aircraft guns were strategically placed around the port of that city. Fortunately, the German Luftwaffe had ceased bombing this area. We liked to believe that German military intelligence was aware of our presence.

With authorization and assurance that the battalion was medically covered by a nearby evacuation hospital, another officer and I drove our jeep to Sidi Bel Abbes. This town was the home of the French Foreign Legion and its museum. It lay about one hundred miles due east at the edge of the Sahara desert.

The drive through French Vichy country was uneventful.

		The French Foreign Legion Museum

We joined up with a small group of British officers who were being guided by a local Legionnaire, and who instructed us not to take pictures of the camp. But we were allowed to photograph our guide and the inside of the museum. We helped ourselves to prints of their heroes that were stacked on a table. French Generals pictures covered one wall of the museum.

		General officers.

Well, needless to say, having never traveled out of the USA before, I was thrilled visiting an exotic foreign country. Here I was walking and talking to a real French Foreign Legionnaire. These were people heroically portrayed in Hollywood movies like Beau Guest and other exciting productions. Wow!

Taking in all that I could with my trusty Argus camera, I had not noticed that I was lagging behind the group that our guide was stewarding. He was holding the rear door of the museum open just for me, patiently, and called out in Yiddish, “Noo Lontzman?” (In English what that amounted to was, “Well, tribesman?”)

That blew it for me! He broke my bubble of being in a far away land with the French Foreign Legion in the Sahara Desert. It was like when a kid was in the Bronx, and someone yelled out, “Hey Stinky, yer mudder is callin' ya”!

He turned out to have come from the Bronx. It is still a mystery to me why he joined up with the French Foreign Legion. Would he have told me the truth if I asked him? We swapped hats and he took a picture of me.
So much for exotic foreign travel...

		Guide of French Foreign Legion from The Bronx, N.Y.			Doc Sanders