Our Friends Beneath the Sands: The Foreign Legion in France's Colonial Conquests 1870-1935

Thanks to countless films and books, an entire mythology surrounds the French Foreign Legion and the anonymous, desperate men who fought and died under the desert sun. But the reality is far richer, and Martin Windrow describes it in gripping detail, including the colonial missions in North Africa and Vietnam, the imperative to build empire, and the impact of Islamic fundamentalism.