France The stuff of legends.....

[Colin Davie]

I assume most of them were in prison for killing their tatooist?

Stories of guys like these are great.

C

[Chris Boonzaier]

What is less well known is that P.C. Wren actually did serve with the Legion for a stretch, which he parlayed into a literary career.

I always thought that was unconfirmed...

What did strike me was there are "little things" in his first book that strike me as "insider" things... he must have got that from somewhere...

[peter monahan]

Chris

You must have been pretty bored this morning to be digging up these old posts! I must admit to a faint unease in citing Wren's serevice in La Legion, as I don't recall ever reading a detailed biography of the man but based my statement on 'received wisdom' and the notion which you mention, that he must have been there to get all the details so right.

So, I did some poking about and have come to the conclusion that, as a Scottish jury would have it, the case is not proven. Wren had an adopted son who always maintained very strongly that he had served, probably during a 3 year [or 5 year] period when he travelled the world and worked, among other things, as a dock labourer, circus roustabout and so on. I couldn't get more authoritative info. because the good on-line bigraphical dictionaries are all subscription only but here's Wikipedia's take on it:

Wren as legionnaire

Wren was a highly secretive man, and his membership of the Legion has never been confirmed. When his novels became famous, there was a mysterious absence of authenticating photographs of him as a legionnaire or of the usual press-articles by old comrades wanting to cash in on their memories of a celebrated figure. It is now thought more likely that he encountered legionnaires during his extensive travels in Algeria and Morocco, and skillfully blended their stories with his own memories of a short spell as a cavalry trooper in England.

While his fictional accounts of life in the pre-1914 Foreign Legion are highly romanticised, his details of Legion uniforms, training, equipment and barrack room layout are generally accurate. This may however simply reflect careful research on his part—the descriptions of Legion garrison life given in his work The Wages of Virtue written in 1914 closely match those contained in the autobiographical In the Foreign Legion by ex-legionnaire Edwin Rosen, published Duckworth London 1910.

The Historical and Information Service of the Foreign Legion hold no record of service by anyone of Wren's name and have stated their belief that he obtained his information from a legionnaire discharged in 1922. In a recently published history (2010) the military writer Martin Windrow examines in detail the evidence for and against Wren's service with the Foreign Legion before concluding that in the absence of some further documentary discovery the question is an insoluble one.

So there you have it!

Peter

[Chris Boonzaier]

Chris

You must have been pretty bored this morning to be digging up these old posts!

Indeed!

Was checking up a few things on items gathering dust and a question or two poppoed up ;-)