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(More customer reviews)...when I was a child, that running away to the French Foreign Legion was a romantic and adventurous thing to do (ignore that awful Jean-Claude van Damme movie). Few romantics realized it was a punishing, grueling lifetime commitment for men with sordid pasts who needed to get lost forever, usually by dying at the hands of Arab marauders (these books were written in the 20s) or later by rebellious French colonials.
But forget all that for a moment. P.C. Wren wrote a number of wonderful novels about life in the Legion and North Africa during the last days of the Empire. He didn't pull punches about the life, but his heroes and heroines overcame the adversities to demonstrate the strength and sense of adventure that drove them to desolate areas and into tribes of dangerous nomadic bandits and, as one plucky young woman is wont to say in one of the trilogy, "Sheikhs!"
Three young men of good family run away to join the Legion when a precious jewel is stolen during a dinner party. The older twin decamps that night, his twin right after, and the youngest brother, reluctant to have the scandal fall on his beloved brothers, also runs away, knowing the others, influenced by tales of the Legion told by a guest, have run away to France to enlist.
They encounter all kinds, from a sadistic sergeant to two down home Americans, sleazy gamblers, murderers and sneak thieves. These are their companions-in-arms with whom they face every kind of marauder, bandit, thief, card sharp, murderer - within and without their ranks.
There is a trilogy, Beau Geste, Beau Sabreur, and Beau Ideal, not easy to track down, that carries the brothers and their companions through the rigors of the Legion, the luxuries of living among the nomads, and the horrors of prison camp for desertion.
There is enough rough tough manly action to suit boys and men, and romance ("Sheikhs!") to please any female reader. These are best read when young, but my set gets dragged out every few years for a rerun, and I am always satisfied when I reach the end.
I heartily recommend all of Wren's books. If they are not in print, they should be, like Alexandre Dumas' Musketeers books, for they are classics ageless in their appeal.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Good Gestes: Stories of Beau Geste, His Brothers, and Certain of Their Comrades in the French Foreign Legion
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